Herakles by Euripides – Translated & Adaptated by Peter Meineck

The Michael Cacoyannis Foundation presents for the first time in Athens the internationally renowned theatrical company Aquila Theatre from New York, with its new production “Heracles”. The performance is based on the thrilling play “Hercules Furens” by Euripides, which has been firstly presented at the Bovard Auditorium, of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles in March 2012.

The play is going to be hosted at the Theatre Hall of the MCF for just three performances: Sunday 22, Monday 23 & Tuesday 24 July 2012, at 21:00. The performances are accompanied by workshop, as well as open discussions with the audience following every performance.

Workshop: “The Truth of the Mask” with Peter Meineck
Monday, July 23rd 2012, 17:00 – 18:30 – Participation Fee: €10
More information with a click here

SYNOPSIS
The play opens at the house of Herakles in the Ancient Thebes. Herakles has been away for well over a year, undergoing his service to the ruler of Argos, Eurytheus. His final labor was to go down into the underworld
and recover the guard dog from the gates of Hades. Nobody has heard from Herakles since, and now his Thebean wife Megara believes he is dead. While Herakles is still away, Thebes has been crippled by civil
war, and the ruling family, of which Megara belongs, has been overthrown and executed by Lycus, who’s own family once ruled Thebes. Lycus has condemned Herakles’ family to death believing that if he does
not, the son’s of Herakles will grow to exact revenge. Herakles is the son of Zeus, but he also has a mortal father Amphitryon who is desperately trying to buy time believing that his son will return.

A staged workshop performance of Herakles as presented at Bovard Auditorium, University of Southern California, Los Angeles March 2012.

Herakles was first performed in Athens around 416 BCE during the devastating Peloponnesian War against Sparta and its allies. Euripides takes the familiar myth of Herakles, one of the most famous of all legendary heroes, and creates a gripping tragedy about the return of a warrior who, instead of saving his own family, turns on them in a fit of madness. Euripides created this play for a society traumatized by years of brutal conflict and it shows the effects of war on a family left at home. Herakles presents difficult questions about how a man bloodied by combat might ever be reincorporated back into peacetime society. Though extreme in its content, Herakles articulates the strain of war, the effects of combat trauma and the psychology of a man driven to violence. Herakles is a story that speaks directly and urgently to people today.

Aquila Theatre was founded in London in 1990 and has been based in New York City since 1999. The company brings international artists to America to perform innovative productions of classical drama all over the country in the belief that theatre creates shared emotionality, thought and dialogue. Aquila’s performances and workshops have been seen by thousands of people across the United States in all manner of venues from the White House, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to theatres, public libraries and community centers in inner city and rural communities. In each location our aim is to expose people to the rich experience of live drama and create human dialogue, often in very difficult issues that might otherwise not be addressed.

One of the most pressing issues facing the United States today is that of combat trauma or Post Traumatic Stress. American has been fighting two wars for ten years and over 1.6 million men and women have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. As they have returned home, many have brought the war back with them and there has been a marked increase in suicides, depression and Post Traumatic Stress. Since 2010 Aquila has been
leading a new program called Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives, which has been using Greek classical texts to create public discussions on this difficult subject. In 2011 the project was invited to perform at the White House (Aquila’s second visit) to help bring attention to these matters at the very highest level. To date Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives has bought programming to 87 communities across America.

Through this public program we have met many people with incredible stories to tell. They come to hear our actors read selected scenes from these ancient plays and are frequently so deeply moved by what they experience that it empowers them to relate their own stories. Sometimes it is clear that this is the first time they have been heard in public. Veterans, spouses and family members tell of the horrors of war, the struggles they faced when they came home, their anger at politicians and media. It is a truly remarkable experience to witness such frank and truthful exchanges.

Greek drama did not shy away from revealing the cost of war to warriors, their families and the societies within which they lived. Noted psychiatrist Jonathan Shay writes that Greek tragedy was “theater by combat veterans, for combat veterans, performed by combat veterans” – perhaps this is one reason why Greek
tragedy means so much to American former service men and women and their families today. As Americans we are all responsible for the wars we fight and to the people who fight them. It is our collective obligation to welcome our warriors home, knowing that they are not the same people who went out to fight – they have changed and experienced things that most of us will never see. Herakles may be an extreme mythic example but we must all live with the consequences of sending young men and women away to fight, whether or not we agree with the reasons for the wars or the politicians who sent them. Herakles is an ancient message from a society traumatized by years of brutal war. In this respect the Greeks still have much to teach us.

When we came to develop our production of Herakles we all felt deeply that we wanted to include the voices of the veteran. Therefore we decided to develop a new way to approach the chorus. In Herakles the chorus are Theban veterans: men who had served their country but were now too weak, both politically and physically to take on the new Tyrant, Lycus and protect Herakles’ family, who are condemned to die. The Ancient chorus was one of the most compelling aspects of an Athenian play in the fifth century BCE. In fact, when Athenians attended the theatre they would have told you they were “going to see a chorus”. We wanted to place our chorus at the center of the entire experience, just as the ancients did. The ancient chorus, sung, and danced, used gestures and movement to provide a multi-sensory experience to propel the narrative
action of the play. In keeping with this idea we decided to experiment with film and create a chorus on screen and just as the ancient Athenian’s recruited their chorus members from the community so we wanted to show real people who had witnessed the truth of war.

Our chorus is made up of American veterans men and women who served in World War 2, Vietnam, Iraq and
Afghanistan. We created a series of questions based on the content of the choral songs from Herakles then flew around the country interviewing people and filming their responses. These were then edited into the choral films that we screen as part of Herakles.
It is a bold idea for a Greek chorus, but one we hope has truth, emotion and depth and reflects this ancient play against modern concerns , the enduring power of Greek tragedy.

Euripides knew that wars could not be waged without having a devastating effect on the home. Our aim in producing Herakles is to use Euripides play to make people think about the cost and consequences of war and the duty of care we then owe to the people we send to fight them and the terrible damage they cause in the countries in which they are waged.

We have also been working with masks, created by David Knezz and based on the research of Peter Meineck. While no ancient mask from this fifth century has survived, Meineck believes there is evidence from vase painting and sculpture to reconstruct the classical theatre tragic mask. The masks we use are not exactly reconstructions, but are inspired by ancient prototypes. Our process has been to create modern methods for working in masks, an experiment that might be traced back to Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author in the 1920’s. In visiting Greece we hope to develop our work on masks further, by experimenting with them in ancient theatres and adapting their use for the contemporary stage. Meineck is interested in neuroscientific and cognitive studies on embodiment face recognition, emotional processing and the body. Much of this the artists instinctively knows and Shamans have been performing in masks for thousands of years in nearly every culture. We believe that the mask acts as a means of projecting the different emotional states each individual spectator places on it. Therefore, watching an actor in a mask could in fact be far more compelling than watching a naturalistic performance. We still have far to go with our research but we hope our work on Herakles will further enhance our work both artistically and academically. We invite audiences to join us in discussion after each performance.

Aquila Theatre’s mission is to make classical works accessible to the greatest number. A play becomes “classical” because we recognize that after a time it transcends the original culture it was created for. It retains the power to provoke the central question of what it means to be human. As a company dedicated to the classics, we feel a responsibility to acknowledge and explore newfound classical works. Founded in London in 1991 by Peter Meineck, Aquila is now based in New York City.

^{The taking of photographs or the use of any kind of recording device is strictly prohibited.} 

Aquila Theatre’s production is part of Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives, a national program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.