Prometheus in Blues - New version 2010
Idea and acting: Raffaele Schettino
Fonts: 'Prometeo Incatenato'– Eschilo
Scenography and dresses: Groucho Teatro, Giada Conte
Light design: Marco Laudando
Drammaturgy e text: Mara Calcagni
During the dictatorship of the colonels in Greece, Alexander is arrested. In his last 5 minutes before his execution, he tells us about Prometheus, who has donated the fire to the men. In its deliriums, Alexander 'enbodies' the mythical personage, speaking its same language, the ancient Greek. He tells about the myth in first person, in parallel with its experience of resistance, in the background of ancient and recent musics that recall the deep sense of the Blues of the origins.
The Myth
Prometheus is the one who gave the gift of the fire to humanity without the permission of the Gods of the Olympus. For this he was punished by Zeus, condemned to stay bound on a remote rock of the Caucasus, with an iron eagle eating his liver. The fire for the men, 'defenseless as the children', is symbol and instrument of knowledge, of the Memory: 'the acting mother of the Muses' chorus'. Prometheus' courage and "humanitas" both let him suffer these pains, without death, because of his Titanic nature. He knows the secret of the future enthronization of Zeus, but his rebellious obstinacy doesn't let him reveal it, even if it should be the end of its pains.
The Story
In the night between the 20th and the 21th of April 1967 they decided to act. At 2:00 A.M. Papadopoulos, Makarezos and colonel Ioannis Ladas entered in the building of the General Army and announced the golpe to chief in fuction Georgios Spantidakis. Spantidakis didn’t oppose resistance, indeed he facilitated the plans of the colonels. At 2:30 a regiment of parachutists leaded by Georgios Konstantopoulos occupied the building of the Ministry of Defence. Greece fell under a dictatorial regime. The units of the Military Police, following the lists already predisposed from Ioannis Ladas, arrested more than 10.000 persons. Political leaders, included the first minister Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, figures of relief and also simple citizens who had shown sympathies for the left, were arrested.
The USA ambassador in Athens Phillips Talbot disappointed the military conspiracy asserting that it represented "a rape against the democracy" , but the responsible of the CIA in Athens, Jack Maury, answered: "how it is possible to rape a prostitute?"
The Prometheus of ancient times starts to walk around the islands without time, in each place where a dominant power exists and lets his slaves in the ignorance. It comes to our days, where there are still heroes taking the chains of the oppressed: the revolutionaries of our times.
"We are Prometheus, Prometheus is me. His actions have the same meaning that the avanguardias in the present and in the past. Prometheus robes the gods' fire, the symbol of knowledge, and gives it to the humanity: he's condemned for this and pays for the emancipation of the oppressed multitude. The Power bounds him: the Power, the executive arm of the New Law, materializes his function for punishing those who dared to discuss the unjust rules of oppression".
Eschil, our ancient parent, continues living in the contemporary times, like all the writers of the ancient Greece. Their secret is the writing with archetypes, the matter that Groucho Teatro's performance try to investigate. The research of the archetypes in Eschil's text and their actualization is one of the targets that the performance is aimed to realize. Prometheus' value is his actualty: he is an avant-garde, his need of rebelling against the tyranny generates heavy conseguences, that he suffers with no repentance for his action. His action is a planned and scientific one and it breaks the plan and resigned reality, generating a Good (the fire, symbol of knowledge, which frees the humanity) and a Bad (the god's punishment, who wants to keep the exclusivity of the knowledge). Prometheus, for destiny, for need, takes the weight of the chains from his collective action.
The performance is affected by the training with the principles of Orixà's dance, focusing on the research on principles of Theatre Anthropology. It is an experiment of how the research on the archetypes, through the use of concrete symbols, ancestrally encoded in the Orixà's dance (that derives from the Afro-Brazilian ritual of Candomblé) revels the different qualities of potential energies present in the actor; these qualities of energies are used during the creation of the physical and vocal actions.
As in a theatrical group, everything is done by the group's members. The process of creation is artisan and it is related not only to the creation of the scenic partitures and to their montage (direction), but also to the creation of the scenography and of the scenic costumes, to the lights' map and to the administrative organization of the group in general. This 'choral process' is testified by the spectators during the performance: Prometheus in Blues, even as a solo performance, is a testimony of this 'choral lung', which always breathes in the daily ritual of the group, in the social relations in and out of it.
As work-in-progress, Prometheus in Blues was presented to invited guests (actors, directors, professors and men of the theatre), with the aim of enriching the performance trough their suggestions. Between others, in this place, we'd like to thank: Antonello Antonante (director of Teatro Acquario, Cosenza), Carla Filosa, Carlos Simioni (actor-researcher of Lume Teatro, Campinas), Dimir Viana (director of Teatro Albatroz, Belo Horizonte), Lau Santos, Naira Gonzalez (director of Centro Teatrale Umbro), Norberto Presta (director of Via Rosse), Tony d'Urso.
Presentations as performance:
Brasil:
Festival de teatro de Curitiba “Fringe” – March 2007 (Premiere)
Bolivia :
La Paz , Teatro de Camara – Abril 2007, patrocinio embajada de Italia en Bolivia
Santa Cruz de la Sierra , Café Lorca, sala de teatro Federico Garcia Lorca - Abril 2007
Argentina:
Buenos Aires, Teatro Baldio, May 2007
Brasil:
Sao Paulo, Sala Crisantempo, May 2007
Bolivia:
La Paz, FITAZ 2008, April 2008, patrocinio embajada de Italia en Bolivia
Perù:
Lima, Festival de Teatro Universidad UCSUR, Abril 2008, supported by Teatro Cuatrotablas
Lima, FITECA, May 2008, supported by Teatro Cuatrotablas
XI encuentro internacional de teatro de grupo en Ayacucho, Novembre 2008
Festival di teatro indipendente, Roma, Giugno 2008
Festival GO, Roma, Giugno 2008
Festival di teatro indipendente ‘Fuori dal Comune', Roma, Giugno 2008
Festival GO!V municipio, Roma, Giugno 2008
Festival Arterie 2008, Cantalupo in Sabina (RI)
Festival Salerno Invita, Salerno
Università degli Studi di Cassino (NUOVA VERSIONE) Roma, Giugno 2010
Teatro Biblioteca del Quarticciolo (NUOVA VERSIONE) Roma, Giugno 2010
Teatro dei Veleni (NUOVA VERSIONE) Lecce, Settembre 2010
With this aim, that we call 'metodology of presentation-with-feedback', Prometheus in blues was presented as a work-in-progress, in:
Italy:
Rome – Arci Nazionale
Bologna – Palazzo del Paleotto, Xm 24 occupato
L'Aquila – Brucaliffo Teatro
Cosenza – Centro RAT (Ricerca Arte Teatrale), Teatro dell'Acquario
Venice – Nodo Teatro
Milan - CIRT
Brazil:
Campinas (SP): Taba das Artes, Espaço Semente
São Paulo: USP
Belo Horizonte (MG): Centro Cultural UFMG
Diamantina (MG): Escola das oficinas
Nova Lima (MG): Encontro Internacional de Teatro 'Linha Trasversal'
Rio de Janeiro: Casa do Teatro de Anônimo
Pedro Leopoldo: Teatro Municipal
Salvador de Bahia: temporary center of Groucho Teatro
Photo Gallery
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