The 38th edition of the Almada Festival opens with four shows, one premiering by CTA: Hipólito, by Eurípedes, staged by Rogério de Carvalho, at 8:30 pm, at TMJB.
Half an hour before, at 8 pm, the exhibition “Uma árvore com espectadores à volta” is inaugurated, an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Almada Theater Company, by José Manuel Castanheira. The other three shows, also at 8:30 pm, are divided into three theaters: História da violência, by Édouard Louis, at Forum Romeu belt; Aurora negra, creation and artistic direction by Cleo Diára, Isabél Zuaa e Nádia Yracema, by Cama AC; e Amitié, by Eduardo De Filippo and Pier Paolo Pasolini, produced by the Avignon Festival, at Incrível Almadense.
The ill-loved Hippolytus, a bastard born of a connection between Theseus and an Amazon, ends up having as his stepmother Phaedra, who falls in love with her stepson as a result of an evil eye from Aphrodite. Faced with such traumas related to women, Hippolytus develops a clumsy misogyny, denying himself with virtuous pride to the carnal experience. “Euripides dealt with this subject twice. A first piece caused a scandal. Phaedra abandoned herself to her passion and declared it out loud to her stepson, who, horrified, covered his face with a veil. Such audacity is mitigated in the play that follows and which, in April 428 BC, a few months after the death of Pericles, obtains first prize [in the Dionysias].» (Marie Delcourt-Curvers).
Euripides was born around 480 BC on the island of Salamis. A renovator, he took the human condition and social problems into the theater. Of the many dozens of plays attributed to him, fewer than twenty have come down to us, eight of which are accurately dated, including Hippolytus, a text that celebrates the perennial modernity of classical tragedy and the immutability of human passions.
In the year in which it turns 50, the Almada Theater Company invited Rogério de Carvalho to stage Greek mythology, in a dialogue with Fedra de Racine, which the director directed in 2006 and which also featured the participation of the actress Teresa Gafeira, by the actor Marques D’Arede, by the set designer José Manuel Castanheira and by the costume designer Mariana Sá Nogueira.
