Do you have what it takes to go beyond yourself? And are you willing to go there?
“Damn my mother, damn my father,
What has this to do with me?!”
Simultaneously down to earth, in your face, dizzying and hallucinatory – My First Tragedy is a wild ride. A fever dream that doesn’t follow the lines of a psychological story, but rather makes an attempt to share the power of myths and rituals.
Don’t expect Euripides’ original play; only parts of the original text recur as lyrics. Bit by bit the performers deconstruct the tragedy, only to use the fragments to reconstruct a dizzying and hypnotic fever dream of dance, music and live percussion.
What moves someone to sacrifice themselves? How do you renounce yourself to allow change to occur? How do you make room for something new? And to what extent is this really your choice when the outcome seems inevitable?
In My First Tragedy: Iphigeneia, Mart van Berckel and Angela Herenda bring the Greek tragedy of Iphigeneia back to its source: a penetrating ritual in which individuals struggle with self-sacrifice and the mercilessly striking and inevitable fate. Van Berckel and Herenda previously co-produced the Parade hit play, Carry/Jump/Catch. The Parool wrote about it, “You get the most energy, without a doubt, from the seven dancers of Club Guy & Roni’s Poetic Disasters Club. Young people who go beyond themselves.”
CREDITS
directed by Mart van Berckel, Angela Herenda
cast Joost Bolt, Camilo Chapela, Sofiko Nachkebiya, Arno Verbruggen, Femke Arnouts, Yung-Tuan Ku
dramaturgy Aukje Verhoog
composition Tijn Wybenga
set and lighting design Vera Selhorst
costumes Rosa Schützendorf
directors assistent Merit Vessies
