Ájax

Theatre

Sunday 4 October · 16:00

A theatre piece based on Sophocles' tragedy Ajax that reflects on the limits of power and totalitarian threats, crossing the classical text with testimonies and artistic interventions.

Aïas or Ajax Telemone, or simply Ajax the Great, was regarded at the end of the Trojan War as the second-best Greek warrior, behind only Achilles. After his failed attempt to murder Ulysses and his army, Ajax falls into disgrace and kills himself. But his half-brother Teucer, despite the dishonour of the suicide and the opposition of Agamemnon and Menelaus, decides to grant him the honours he is due. Who, like Ajax, driven by primary instincts such as the urge for revenge for an injustice, has not been a victim of illusions caused either by their own frailties, by the intervention of others, or by an event or a particular social context? The information age – or rather, the age of the discrediting of information and the haze that so 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, little by little, the path is drawn towards the total eclipse of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of human dignity and of the rights of all sentient living beings, and deeply inhuman acts are thereby permitted, trivialised and disseminated globally. How to face this era, this time, this threat of complete and abysmal degradation of our civilisational values? We are therefore living under constant attacks on democracy and civilisational progress. The absence of dialogue, extremisms and the deafening noise of our time gain strength and carry out their attack by weakening thought and, consequently, discernment. Restrictions 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 the installed social dementia, in the face of the social hysteria manifested in consumerism and unbridled speed? Sophocles' Ajax is a reflection on the limits of power and also, it seems to us, a response to totalitarian and totalising threats. A response that comes from the depths of our civilisation and from the cradle of democracy. Starting from the text of Ajax, probably Sophocles' oldest tragedy, this show, which premieres at TMJB, takes a theatrical approach to the text and figure of Sophocles, crossing them with testimonies, narratives and artistic interventions in order to create an original and sharp object. What we propose, given the context we live in, is the presentation of a deeply human theatre that returns our gaze. An eye-to-eye theatre.