September 22, GDK GAVELLA at 8:00 p.m.
Slovenian National Theatre Ljubljana, Slovenia

redatelj: François-Michel Pesenti

Jean Racine: Phedra
Director and stage designer: François-Michel PESENTI

French director Francois-Michel Pesenti puts on Phedra, the quintessential piece of classical French theatre about a stepmother's love for her stepson, which raises questions about the fairness of moral laws, family and society, when faced with such a powerful passion. The texture and trigger of Jean Racine's tragedy, lie in a series of admissions, be they deliberate, accidental, indirect, faked, shameful... entailing the most severe punishments before leading to a resigned calm-down.
In the poetics of Pesenti's theatre, characters in a drama are as a rule tied in knots of mental symptoms and complexes - obsessions, neuroses or instincts.
The director's technique reveals similarities between actors' personalities and the form of a character in a drama. The actor does not necessarily show his private being, but a cluster of all the tools that make up a dramatic character, which render visible the life experience of a private person, the motivation of the interpreter, the acquired skill, the character's intention, in voids of a character portrayal. The Slovenian staging of Racine's Phedra -- put on by one of Europe's best theatre directors, who tests the classical tragedy's artificiality in creating a show for the new cultural milieu and its language - represents an intriguing viewing experience. Tragic protagonists from the family triangle Phedra-Hippolytus-Theseus are interpreted by Veronica Drolc, Marko Mandic and Ales Valic.