Ájax

Other

Thursday 1 October · 19:00

A theatrical reflection on power, democracy, and human dignity, based on Sophocles' tragedy Ajax, premiering at TMJB.

Aïas or Ajax Telamonius or, simply, Ajax the Great, was considered at the end of the Trojan War the second best Greek warrior, only behind Achilles. After a failed attempt to assassinate Ulysses and his army, Ajax falls into disgrace and commits suicide. But his half-brother, Teucer, despite the dishonor of suicide and the opposition of Agamemnon and Menelaus, decides to give him the proper honors. Who, like Ajax, driven by primal instincts such as the impulse for revenge for an injustice, has not been a victim of illusions caused either by their own weaknesses, by the intervention of others, or by an event or a specific social context? The information age, or rather, the discrediting of information and the fog that often surrounds its sources, is today the ideal context for the development and spread of cruel, unjust, anti-democratic, and regressive political discourses, social measures, and ideologies. Thus, the path is gradually drawn towards the total eclipse of the universal declaration of human rights and human dignity and the rights of all sentient living entities, and thus profoundly inhumane acts are allowed, vulgarized, and disseminated globally. How to face this era, this time, this threat to the complete and abysmal degradation of our civilizational values? We live, therefore, under constant attacks on democracy and civilizational evolution. The absence of dialogue, extremisms, and the deafening noise of our time gain strength and perpetrate their attack through the weakening of thought and, consequently, of discernment. Limitations on freedom of expression, disinformation, or its manipulation, and its political and economic exploitation undermine the heart of democracy. What to do in the face of established social dementia, in the face of social hysteria manifested in consumerism and unbridled speed? Sophocles' Ajax is a reflection on the limits of power and is also, it seems to us, a response to totalitarian and totalizing threats. A response that comes from the depths of our civilization and the cradle of democracy. Starting from the text of Ajax, probably the oldest tragedy by Sophocles, this show, which premieres at TMJB, makes a theatrical approach to the text and the figure of Sophocles, crossing them with testimonies, narratives, and artistic interventions in order to create an original and incisive object. What we propose, given the context we live in, is the presentation of a deeply human theater that returns our gaze. An eye-to-eye theater.