Tiago Rodrigues
‘They consciously opt for tragedy’ EN | At the Kaaistudios,
leading Portuguese theatre director Tiago Rodrigues presents an Antony and Cleopatra that takes aim at your heart and head. Michaël bellon
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wrote one of the many possible versions of Antony and Cleopatra,” Tiago Rodrigues tells us. Twenty years ago, he took a workshop with the Flemish theatre company tg Stan in Lisbon, he has taught classes at P.A.R.T.S., and he was recently appointed director of the Teatro Nacional in Lisbon. “Many playwrights translate stories that their audiences already know into the aesthetic and politics of their age. Even the Greeks were nourished by mythology and existing stories. Shakespeare was too. Just before he wrote his play, an Antony and Cleopatra had been performed in London, and 1,500 years before Shakespeare, Plutarch had already produced the script for which he simply had to write dialogue. I have turned the monumental tragedy into a play for two actors and translated the Baroque writing into melodious but sober language.” Your two actors talk about the characters in the third person, but this distance creates closeness. Tiago Rodrigues: You don’t actually have to perform a role to ensure that a character moves you or gets you thinking. The idea of the play is that if you try to tell the story of “the other” and to understand it, that other will become part of yourself. When Plutarch talked about Antony and Cleopatra, he
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emphasised that their love was an attempt to see the world through somebody else’s eyes. This also has a political dimension. Through their ill-advised relationship, Antony and Cleopatra embody a human, emotional reaction to the complex political and military situation that Rome and Alexandria found themselves in at the time. And they were not naïve teenagers like Romeo and Juliet, but adults who consciously opted for tragedy. From the very beginning, there is no doubt about the end. Rodrigues: That is one of the rules of tragedy. However much I love Hitchcock, it is not about the suspense or whether or not they die, but about how they die. Invisibility plays an important role in the script and staging. Rodrigues: It’s a common concern of mine: what should we show and what not? Having somebody die on the stage is not an ambition that we should strive for as theatre directors. The Greeks always sent a messenger to announce that somebody had died. This Antony and Cleopatra is being performed “in the present”. Both characters are so imprinted in our collective consciousness and our culture that there are even strip clubs called Cleopatra. So you don’t have to impose your own version, but flirt with all the possible versions that are in the heads of your audience members. In fact, seduction and desire also play an important role in the play. You could never maintain a radical reaction against the rest of the world if you didn’t have tremendous desire.
Antony and cleopatra
13 > 15/10, 20.30, Kaaistudios, www.kaaitheater.be
© magda bizarro
COURT-circuit