Performing Medea as a Barefooted Refugee 1982 Theatro Technis

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En.wikipedia.org Medea 1982 Medea Theatro Technis My Observations and answers to some questions asked by Professor Stephanie Helmeryk-Donald  :  Regarding the performance of Medea at London`s Theatro Technis in January 1982, as a Barefooted Refugee . "It is imperative to take note of   the date of this performance as it   explains the context for the interpretation of Medea as a unwanted refugee. Cyprus,   part of the UK Commonwealth   was a victim of a Turkish invasion in 1974 which resulted in many Greek Cypriots being displaced from the northern part. The British Nationality Act 1981 is a  law that defines British citizenship and nationality 1 2 3 .  It was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1981 and came into force on 1 January 1983 2 3 . Medea a victim of the Turkish invasion, according to the terms of this Nationality act would have been excluded from the right to stay in Britain. The production was an act of protest. Not only was Cyprus part of the Common Wealth , but Britain was also a Guarantor of Cypriot sovereignty.   Britain failed to prevent the Turkish invasion. In Kenneth Tynan`s terms: “theatre as an independent force – a sleeping tiger that can and should be roused whenever the national conscience needs nudging” from A Dairies of Kenneth Tynan by Kenneth Tynan, 2001 or ·          `No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.` o     As quoted in "Critic Kenneth Tynan Has Mellowed But Is Still England's Stingingest Gadfly" by Godfrey Smith in  The New York Times  (9 January 1966)     The Times critic Ned Chaillet is dismissive of the politicization of a Greek Tragedy and in this instance of Euripides`   Medea. For me as the actress playing Medea it was   a tricky navigation of incorporating “the reconciliation of opposites” to use Coleridge`s famous phrase – a Brechtian interpretation of a political question , performing the whole text facing the audience to achieve a kind of distance (achieved according to leftwing critic Tom Vaughan of The Morning Star), and incarnating the raw emotional fabric of Euripides drama based on Aristotle`s Catharsis and three rules of Unity   : unity of action, unity of time, unity of place:  and drawing on Chaillet`s   observation that   the `wrath of Medea #Scorned ` was “encouraged to erupt in the dangerous passions of Angelique Rockas”,   some sort of reconciliation of opposites was achieved. On Italy`s La Notizia.net when providing the schedule for     RAI `s broadcasts of various performances of Medea by different Italian actresses,   they do refer to the variation of the Myth. “”Variazioni sul mito Angelique Rockas, Medea, Theatro Technis,Londra. Nel corso dei secoli molti autori si sono cimentati con il dramma di Euripide, creandone versioni che differivano più o meno ampiamente dal modello originale, a seconda del momento storico e del luogo in cui erano state scritte. “ ( Over the centuries, many authors have tried their hand at Euripides' play, creating versions that differed more or less widely from the original model, depending on the historical moment and the place in which they were written.) https://www.la-notizia.net/2021/12/15/anticipazioni-per-il-grande-teatro-di-euripide-in-tv-del-15-dicembre-alle-15-45-su-rai-5-medea-con-sarah-ferrati/ The Wrath of Medea encompasses many dimensions. A powerful Princess by her own birthright in Cholchis , a virgin viewing herself as erotically alluring, committing heinous betrayals for love of Jason, providing him with 2 male heirs, only to be brought to Corinth as an outcast , a Princess dethroned, erotically rejected, her sons   deprived of any Princehood and benefit of the gains of the Golden Fleece,   by Jason choosing to legally marry a younger Princess of Greek blood.   The blood of the barbarian as anyone not Greek at the time was called a barbarian – was stained. Total loss of identity and respect. (Reminds one of some of the Gaza victims of the current genocide) This wrath has its political dimensions – in modern terminology – Human RIGHTS   Racism , eugenics . It explains why the unpopular Euripides grants Medea and her children a deux-ex machina escape of a Goddess at the end- triumphant on her golden Chariot with her sons   . Euripides was able to de-gender himself and occupy the   female soul - understanding the pangs of childbirth, the powerlessness of a woman without economic means to support herself in a strange land , cast aside as piece of garbage a `skoupidi ` in modern Greek , her children bastards, having no legal status in Corith at the time. Of course the depths of the Greek language contribute to understanding the hurt of Medea : “ I myself have experienced the volcanic existential depths of the Greek language. It was during a performance of Medea by Tzeni Karezi at the Herod Atticus theatre in Athens ,when she was pleading to the callous Jason to take pity on her and she used the word ' splachniasou'. 'Pity' is too weak a word to describe the emotional and psychological depths ' splachniasou' expresses. 'Splachna 'is the part of the body where a woman carries her unborn children, the very root of ontological existence.”   (Hellenism.net Interview) reminding Jason of where children are conceived in Medea`s 'Splachna`. Angelique Rockas' interview at Hellenism.Net - Hellenism.Net interviews (archive.is) One of the reasons that George Eugeniou , director and founder of Theatro Technis, London cast me as Medea   was not for my `dangerous passions` but because of the vulnerability of my performance as the rape victim by Turkish military branded   with a crescent above her vagina ( based on a true story) and initially rejected by her husband in the play “Afrodite Unbound”. Damaged goods – stained , a Dalit, an untouchable, lower than dogs as the Nazis branded the Slavs , and not only the Jews. This is where Medea finds herself in the span of 24 hours . A trapped Lioness with her cubs facing existential extinction. Rather than her children being reduced to beggary Death is preferable. Medea draws on her knowledge of death potions and uses them no matter what the consequences. Neither does she have any foreknowledge that the Gods will save her. She embraces the abyss rather than lose her identity. (Maybe Silvia Plath, Virginia Woolf but for psychological reasons)   Medea sees her children as a creation of her womb so her identity is ontologically and existentially connected to her children. Self immolation involves the sacrifice of her children too. Maybe Greek tragedies like Medea where the normal Apollonian Order is set aside and the Dionysian revolt occurs unpunished inspired Nietsche`s   definition of Greek tragedy. Or Camille Paglia`s . `` The Dionysian is no picnic.  It is the chthonian realities which  Apollo  evades, the blind grinding of subterranean force..., the dehumanizing brutality of biology and geology, the Darwinian waste and bloodshed``( Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson  ) In Greek tragedies we are overcome by AWE (Kenneth Tynan ) the awe that we the audience are allowed to attend the unfolding of `such large catastrophic things`. Hence the heightened language . Not Television behaviourism , but enthralled by a dithyrambic   spell. The Refugee Blowback We have Ben Gurion planning to ethnically cleanse Palestinian territories to create a Jewish state for European Jewry . The Torah Jews, the Hebraic Jews reject this claim by European Jewry whether Ascenazi, Sephardic etc etc . The West`s illegal wars in the Middle East , Iraq, Lybia, Syria, Afghanistan have resulted in a problem for Europe . And poor Greece where poverty rules in almost 50% of the population is supposed to become the depot of the outflow of refugees from these areas. You want to sort out the refugee problem of Europe tell the USA to stop their imperial wars . When it comes to Latin American refugees wanting to enter USA , be reminded Anglosphere that a great chunk of southern USA belonged to the Hispanics originally. To the Dalits of India , the refugees in their own land , revolt . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As a conservative Orthodox Christian feminist- true womens` liberation can only be achieved by economic independence. If you have your own room aka Virginia Woolf you can tell the partner to leave . Respect the great mystery of birth that God us given us. Respect your womb . Eroticism and sex can deceive. There is more to real relationships than pop music stimulation to conjugate. Educate your mind – it too has its orgasms. The `Pornification` (James Joyce)   of life   is a shallow reward . Some Refugee Stories : From Mary Kostakidis on @x “My earliest political thought was the recognition of the extent to which our lives are determined by the powerful - the impetus, my own family history. I had assumed my grandmother - expelled as a refugee in 1922 then again uprooting herself to join her sons in Australia decades later - was referring to Greece when she spoke with longing about ‘the homeland’. But it was in fact Asia Minor - for centuries - no thousands of years - a rich tapestry of race and religion. Her historical connection to that land did not dissipate with the compensation she and her husband received of a house in a village and a few pockets of land they cultivated (I saw that land for the first time last year and realised the distance my father walked as a child for some hours to simply get to the patch of land he had to till, and faced the same journey home at the end of the day). That house and that land had belonged to Muslims refugees, also expelled and resettled across the new border of Greece and Turkey. There is a body of scholarship on their experience also. They formed the wave of humanity ‘exchanged’ by Ataturk and Venizelos into nation states of peoples intended to foster less diversity. A settlement of complex historical events. For the waves of Palestinians who have been expelled or fled over decades - in similar numbers to the situation above, most of them in 1948 - with no right of return, they went predominantly to refugee camps in neighbouring Arab countries or fled to ever diminishing Arab parts of Palestine and Gaza, an open air prison. UNRWA had been documenting the expulsion of each family, in the event of their right to return, making the U.N. agency a target. The ICJ statement has confirmed that right in international law. It remains to be seen how the U.N. General Assembly will use the Court’s declaration”. The family of Mohamed Hadid (Bella’s father) sheltered a Jewish family that fled from Poland out of fear of being killed by the Nazis The Hadid family sheltered the Jewish family at their home in Safad, Palestine  for 2 years before that same family made the Hadid family refugees by kicking them out of their own homes, as the State of Israel was created by Zionist militias ethnically cleansing and murdering Palestinians The Hadid family then fled to Syria and lived in refugee camps In 2024, Adidas move to cancel Bella Hadid for supporting Palestine and opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza   By Angelique Rockas Date 29 th July 2024  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For a more academic exploration of Refugees and Medea sent to me by brilliant young classics lecturer Ryan Pascoe at Harvard Classics Department : some contemporary scholars whose work might be worth considering:   Bakewell, Geoffrey. 2013.  Aeschylus’ “Suppliant Women”: The Tragedy of Immigration . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Kasimis, Demetra. 2020. “Medea the Refugee.”  Review of Politics  82.1: 393–415.  Link. Kennedy, Rebecca Futo. 2014.  Immigrant Women in Athens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the Classical City . Routledge University Press: Oxfordshire, UK.  Link . Kennedy, Rebecca Futo. 2023. “Fear of Foreign Women in Aeschylus’  Suppliants ” in  A Companion to Aeschylus , ed. Peter Burian and Jacques Bomberg. Wilmer, S.E. “Cultural Encounters in Modern Productions of Greek Tragedy.”   Nordic Theatre Studies  28.1 (Crossing Borders): 15–26.  Link . -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------