Aïas or Ájax Telemônio or, simply, Ájax the Great was, at the end of the Trojan War, regarded as the second best Greek warrior, behind only Achilles. With the failed attempt to murder Ulysses and his army, Ájax falls into disgrace and takes his own life. But his half-brother, Teucer, despite the dishonour of the suicide and the opposition of Agamemnon and Menelaus, decides to pay him the honours due to him.
Who, like Ájax, driven by primary instincts such as the impulse for revenge over an injustice, has not been the victim of illusions caused by their own frailties, by the intervention of others, or by an event or a particular social context?
The information age — or rather, the discrediting of information — and the fog that so often shrouds its sources is, today, the ideal context for the development and propagation of political discourses, social measures and ideologies that are cruel, unjust, anti-democratic and regressive. 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 entities — and thus profoundly inhumane acts are allowed, normalised and disseminated worldwide. How do we face this era, this time, this threat of the complete and abysmal degradation of our civilisational values? We live under constant attacks on democracy and civilisational progress. The absence of dialogue, extremism and the deafening noise of our time gain strength and carry out their attack through the weakening of thought and, consequently, of 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 social madness that has taken hold, in the face of the social hysteria manifested in consumerism and in unchecked speed?
Ájax by Sophocles is a reflection on the limits of power and is also, it seems to us, an answer to totalitarian and totalising threats. An answer that comes from the depths of our civilisation and from the cradle of democracy.
Starting from the text of Ájax, probably the oldest of Sophocles' tragedies, this show takes a theatrical approach to the text and to the figure of Sophocles, crossing them with testimonies, narratives and artistic interventions in order to create an original and incisive object. What we set out to do, in the context we live in, is to present a profoundly human theatre that returns our gaze. A theatre eye to eye.