The historic production by the leading Greek director and teacher
continues its triumphant progress internationally
and at selected theatres in Greece

 

The first collaboration between the internationally acclaimed Greek director and teacher Theodoros Terzopoulos and the National Theatre of Greece, Aeschylus’ emblematic The Oresteia, is a landmark in the history of Greek theatre. Continuing its triumphant progress, the production travels to Budapest on Friday 9 May, where it will be performed at the National Theatre of Hungary as part of the MITEM - Madách International Theatre Meeting. On 31 May and June 1, it will be presented at the Huichang Theatre Village in China, and on 29 and 30 August it will conclude its international tour at the Art Carnuntum international theatre festival in Austria.

The tour of Greece takes in Vyronas on 11 and 12 June, Dion on 5 July, Ancient Olympia on 10 July, Thessaloniki on 17 and 18 July, Delphi on 25 and 26 July, and Kavala on 2 & 3 August. Finally, on 22 and 23 August, The Oresteia will close this year's festival season at Epidaurus.

Terzopoulos’s Oresteia is a work of intellectual and philosophical depth, which, with electrifying energy, succeeds in pushing the boundaries of art and, ultimately, in telling the story of humanity itself. Both an unquestionably political act and a transcendent experience functioning on multiple levels, it met with a rapturous reception both from the thousands of spectators who saw it and from the Greek and international media.

After its premiere in Epidaurus in 2024, The Oresteia toured Greece and Cyprus, and was also performed in Vicenza, Italy, where it opened the 77th Classical Shows Season at the historic Teatro Olimpico. Now this extraordinary production returns to the place where its exhilarating journey began, offering us the opportunity to witness it once again. 

 

Translation Eleni Varopoulou
Direction & Adaptation Theodoros Terzopoulos
Associate director Savvas Stroumpos
Set, costume & lighting design Theodoros Terzopoulos
Original music Panayiotis Velianitis
Dramaturgical adviser Maria Scicchitano
Production dramaturg Irene Moundraki
Directing assistant Theodora Patiti
Associate costume designer Panagiota Kokkorou
Associate lighting designer Konstantinos Bethanis
Artistic associate Maria Vogiatzi

 

The cast (in alphabetical order) Babis Alefantis (Pylades), Evelyn Assouad (Cassandra), Tasos Dimas (Watchman/Leader of the chorus/Athenian citizen), Konstantinos Zografos (Orestes), Ellie Iggliz (Nurse), David Malteze (Aegisthus), Anna Marka Bonissel (Prophet), Nikos Dasis (Apollo), Dinos Papageorgiou (Herald), Aglaia Pappa (Athena), Myrto Rozaki (Electra), Savvas Stroumpos (Agamemnon), Alexandros Tountas (Servant), Sophia Hill (Clytemnestra/Ghost of Clytemnestra) • Chorus Babis Alefantis, Katerina Amplianiti, Evelyn Assouad, Christoforos Vogiatzis, Natalia Georgosopoulou, Katerina Dimati, Pyrros Theofanopoulos, Ellie Iggliz, Vasilina Katerini, Thanos Magklaras, Elpiniki Marapidi, Anna Marka Bonissel, Lygeri Mitropoulou, Rosy Monaki, Aspasia Batatoli, Nikos Dasis, Dinos Papageorgiou, Vangelis Papagiannopoulos, Stavros Papadopoulos, Myrto Rozaki, Yannis Sanidas, Alexandros Tountas, Katerina Hill, Michalis Psalidas

Photographs Johanna Weber
Video Nikos Pastras
 

Tour dates and locations
Wednesday 11 & Thursday 12 June:  Vyronas, Melina Mercouri Open-air Theatre (Theatro Vrachon) 
Saturday 5 July:  Katerini, Ancient Theatre of Dion
Thursday 10 July:  Theatre of Ancient Olympia
Thursday 17 & Friday 18 July:  Thessaloniki, Forest Theatre (Theatro Dasous)
Friday 25 & Saturday 26 July 2023:  Delphi, Phrynichus Theatre
Saturday 2 & Sunday 3 August:  Kavala, Ancient Theatre of Philippi

Tickets
Tickets are now available for the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus: more.com
Tickets go on sale for the other venues on 14 May: ticketservices.gr

 

Running time: 200 minutes
 

Production Sponsor

About The Oresteia
In 458 BCE, at a time of violent social and political upheaval, Aeschylus presented The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides), the only surviving trilogy of ancient drama and his last extant work, completed just two years before his death, which reflects many of the rapid changes of his era. 

The trilogy revolves around the tragic fate of the House of Atreus, the curse of blood that spreads successively to all the characters and the chorus, leading from destabilisation to desperation. This situation is exploited by the goddess Athena, who establishes a precarious peace. 

In the first two parts of the trilogy, Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers, the murders that put an end to the tyrannical rule of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are the culmination of a new period of crisis and destabilisation that is reflected in The Eumenides. The Furies, the chthonic deities that represent instinct and impulse, preserve memory. Knowing that any dispute with the gods is doomed to end in defeat, they rebel and threaten the good order of the city. Orestes must pay so that not only the crime but also its repetition are punished, and the memory of the conflict is kept alive. 

Athena uses every means at her disposal in her attempt to achieve peace between the gods and the Furies, offering the latter various rewards and privileges. To achieve their capitulation, she brings violence into the realm of language. Her speech introduces deceitful persuasion, lies and deception into the political arena. The Furies yield of their own accord. Wearing the characteristic purple robes of metics (resident aliens), they are renamed the Eumenides (“Gracious Ones”) and move away from the heart of the city. Their ultimate fate is obscurity and oblivion, deep within the bowels of the earth. Democracy has been established. But not without cost. Whatever is incompatible with the new regime – the part of the living body associated with memory, instinct, animal drive – has been banished. The new order of things is imposed by the mechanisms of power in such a way that it is as if these vital forces had never existed.

The Furies are reconciled, accepting the social position of metics, yet their internal structure is not altered. Like natural phenomena that do not disappear from the earth, but spiral through transformation, escalation and de-escalation, so the chthonic deities can be imagined retreating and withdrawing, only to re-emerge, constantly assuming new, unexpected forms.

 

Director’s note
Why does The Oresteia continue to exert such a tremendous attraction? One answer might be our need for a deeper relationship with myth. The myth of The Oresteia is dangerous, belonging to the world of the strange and unknown, initiating terror because it reveals the intractable, the violent, and the deepest laws that cannot be tamed. Clytemnestra invites us to join in breaking the mirror, so that a new nightmarish image will be created from its shards, while the dark roots of the myth are preserved.

We intend to dig deep into the myth of The Oresteia and to search for the unpredictable, the unusual, and the paradoxical. The characters offer their bodies at the altar of the unfamiliar, posing constant questions and dilemmas. The aesthetics of the production arise from the dynamic relationship of the body with myth, time and memory. We once again ask the fundamental ontological question “what is it about?”, a question to which there are no definitive answers, but which constantly drives us towards ever deeper research into the roots of sounds, words, the multidimensionality of the human enigma, and the reconstruction of a new myth.

Theodoros Terzopoulos

 

The Oresteia at the National Theatre of Greece 
The National Theatre of Greece has presented five productions of The Oresteia at Epidaurus: in 1954 and 1959, both directed by Dimitris Rontiris; in 1972, with Takis Mouzenidis at the helm; in 2001 under the direction of Yannis Kokkos; and in 2019, when Io Voulgaraki, Lilly Meleme and Georgia Mavragani took on Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides, respectively, in their first directorial outing at Epidaurus.  

 

Latest updated: 26/05/2025