What we can say with some degree of certainty about the person, Medea, in Greek Mythology, is that she was the daughter of the King of Colchis (modern Georgia) and she suffered an ill fate. She became well known as the character in Euripides’ play Medea (431BC) and she has continued to inspire literary figures from Seneca to Corneille and many others. Euripides depicts the mythical Medea as a woman who carries out revenge on her husband Jason for his cruel betrayal. Because of the awful magnitude of her decision to murder her two sons, her deed is at times labeled ‘monstrous’. What is important to note, is that she is a ‘foreigner’ to the Greeks, something ‘Other’ to the Greek community. In this sense she is endowed with a dangerous charm that ‘we’ as onlookers might be are in danger of being attracted to in a merely one sided relationship, viewing her as merely an exotic object. Needless to say, whether in the world of the tragedy, in modern society, a relationship should be based on mutual understanding and not one sided with just observer and object. We tend to forget that this ‘other’ character has personality and emotions, which usually has unfortunate results.

In this production from Uzbekistan, Ovlyakuli Khojakuli has based his character on three texts by: Euripides, Seneca and Fransua-Benua Gofman as well as a modern Russian rendition by the contemporary playwright, Ludmila Razumovskaya

(Tadashi Uchino)

In Greek Mythology, Jocasta was the wife of Laius, King of Thebes, and the mother of Oedipus. According to the myth, Oedipus eventually killed his father and married his mother without knowing their true identities.

This story was made well known through Sophocles’ masterpiece, Oedipus Rex (420BC). In the play, when the truth is made known, Jocasta commits suicide and Oedipus blinds himself.

Freud, in his psychoanalytical theory, drew upon this myth referring to a son’s unconscious desire for his mother as ‘Oedipus Complex’. Recently, this concept has become the ‘Mother Complex’ of common parlance in Japan. Recent feminist critics, however, have criticized Freud’s theories as being too male dominated.

Mohammad Aghebati, shifts the focus from mother/ son to man/woman and takes up as his theme the primal human desires which, though they could be called Oedipus related , do not stop at mere sexuality but include the desire for dominance and possession, to paint a picture of the complex conscious and unconscious relationships in contemporary Iran.

(Tadashi Uchino)

In Greek mythology, Helen is the ‘beauty without peer’ whose father is known to be the god Zeus. She is married to Menelaus, King of Sparta, but then the Trojan prince, Paris, carries her away to Troy, which is reputed to be the cause of the ten-year Trojan War. Concerning the fate of Helen after the fall of Troy, there is a wide difference of opinion, depending on whether you are relying on the tragedies, the epic poetry or on the movies made in Hollywood. Some sources have Helen returning to Sparta with her husband, others have her escaping Troy with Paris, her lover, and still others assert that she had never been to Troy at all. Her personality has also been rendered in a variety of ways but what they all have in common is her ‘peerless beauty’. Nowadays, to interpret the Trojan War as the long drawn out struggle between men over a beautiful woman seems hopelessly out of date. Even in Homers epic poem The Cypria it is evident that the real cause of the war was Zeus’ stratagem to reduce the surplus population of the area.

Director Abilash Pillai of India, focusing on Helen’s monologue as the central part of the play, acutely reinterprets her as the outsider aspect (which includes the slave community) of the male dominated democratic society. And, at the same time, he constantly shifts the action between past and present, all the while, keeping the main theme of ‘women’ in the forefront, and poignantly delves into the issues of community and violence.

(Tadashi Uchino)