In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, the protagonist is the tragic hero, the lonely man who plays an impossible game against fate, facing it in the most noble way possible, without backing down even when he recognises himself as responsible for the atrocities that, as ruler of Thebes, he has undertaken to uncover and punish.

 

Oedipus Rex, defined by Aristotle in his Poetics as “the perfect tragedy”, represents a highly successful and effective dramaturgical model, containing the archetypes of theatre of all times: the chain of events that build the tragic complication in a crescendo of suspense that anticipates the structure of our detective drama, the rhythm of the scenes, the metaphorical language that provides the viewer with the subtext necessary to understand the subtle and elusive meaning of the tragedy, the characters of the protagonists, the anthropologically universal themes and, last but not least, the ambiguous subtleties of tragic irony.

 

Kerkís experimentally tackles a production with only three actors for the episodes, according to the ancient practice of the classical age, where the illusion of the stage allowed the protagonist, deuteragonist and tritagonist to play multiple roles. The show thus takes on a high value of study and re-evaluation of ancient tradition.

Through experimental solutions and refined performance techniques typical of contemporary acting, Kerkís's Oedipus Rex aims to respect the archaic nature of the myth and the text, but at the same time to bring this masterpiece of classical antiquity closer to our contemporary sensibility thanks to its staging.

 

Dramaturgical direction: Elisabetta Matelli

Stage direction: Christian Poggioni