THE ORESTEA # 2 LATTE (Milk)

The tragedies that make up the Orestea represent a single family history divided into three episodes, whose roots lie in the mythical tradition of ancient Greece: the murder of Agamemnon and his lover-slave Cassandra by the bride Clitennestra (# 1 Nests), the revenge of the son Oreste who, with the complicity of his sister Elettra, kills his mother (# 2 Milk), the persecution of the matricide by the Erinyes and his final acquittal by the Areopagus court (# 3 Pupil).

By implanting his own poetic signs on the classic tragedy, Lenz confines the saga of the Atridia to the aesthetic excess of the psychic pathology of the protagonists, taking as an object of scenic investigation the iconology of excess and violence. In this contemporary reinterpretation of the tragic, the historical and sensitive actors of the Lenz ensemble are confronted, in an indispensable need for linguistic fusion.

The neo-mythological landscape inhabited by the family is a place of sentimental awe and ethical dissonances, where the opposition between honor and love, obedience and disobedience, subordination and superiority can only be resolved in a degenerative act.

Forced into mechanical hereditary conjunctions, in forced genetic conjugations father, mother and children are determined by irreconcilable psycho-moral systems and inevitably destined to an irreducible chain of destructive accomplishments: Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia in order to obtain the power and benevolence of the gods; Clytemnestra kills her husband guilty of the murder of her daughter and together with him the innocent Cassandra, her slave and lover; the sons – Oreste and Elettra – kill their mother to avenge the murder of the father.

Returning to the Parents’ House after the departure wanted by the Mother – having lived an orphaned, humiliated and derided childhood – he was convinced by the Electra Sister to establish, in revolt against maternal power, an anti-authoritarian, intolerant, antagonistic child collective. The accomplishment of extreme acts such as the destruction of the house and the killing of the mother will transfigure the child into a delusional and furious adult.

In Milk, the second episode taken from Le Coefore, the stage installation prepares – symmetrically to the nest / bed inhabited by the mother Clitennestra, some ordinary and active elements of domestic physics, an artificially nutritive table – inundated by the black milk of hatred inspired by Paul Celan’s Todesfuge and Anish Kapoor-‘s liquid whirlpools and a den / cradle in which Oreste will hide to escape the fury of the Erinyes.

Interpreters of Orestea # 2 Milk macaws Sandra Soncini, in the role of Clytemnestra and Barbara Voghera, in the role of Oreste, sensitive actress already interpreter of Hamlet and of the major creations of Lenz starting from the late nineties. Together with them Lara Bonvini in the role of her sister Elettra and Valentina Barbarini in function of Iphigenia and Chorus.

THE ORESTEA # 2 MILK
from Aeschylus’s Coefore
Dramaturgy | Francesco Pititto
Installation, direction, costumes Maria Federica Maestri
Music | Lillevan
Interpreters | Valentina Barbarini, Lara Bonvini, Sandra Soncini, Barbara Voghera
Care | Elena Sorbi
Organization | Ilaria Stocchi
Press office, communication, promotion Michele Pascarella
Production | Loredana Scianna
Technical care | Alice Scartapacchio
Assistants | Elisabetta Zanardi, Marco Cavellini
Video media | Doruntina Film
Lenz Foundation production
duration | 50 ‘

In an extreme vision, through the poetics of excess, dark, dreamlike desires become visible […] great theater. Extremely long, powerful applause.

Valeria Ottolenghi, Journal of Parma

The myth to objectify human action. Reflect its social resonance, decoding it culturally.

Emilio Nigro, Hystrio