Kein Schicksal, Klytämnestra (UA)

Clytemnestra did not confine herself to opening temples and orphanages. She dared to rule. For ten years. The years which her husband Agamemnon spent as a military leader in the Trojan War. Now Agamemnon has returned victorious to Mycenae and would like everything to return to the way it was.

Expectations collide, as do memories. And wounds are ripped open. The deepest wound is the death of their daughter Iphigenia. Iphigenia is at odds with her parents’ position and joins the revolution that arises in the streets of Mycenae. Her future fate grounds the play and is one of the uncertainties that inform the life of its characters.

Like a murder mystery, the drama reconstructs the story’s tipping points and the ways that the characters deal with them. The desire for change is just as strong as the longing for the past. The will to remember is confronted with the will to forget.

Rather than rewriting ancient history, dramatist Nino Haratischwili continues the myth. The scenes of the play cover a period of more than eleven years: Some are set before the outbreak of the war, others after and during it. But at the same time, the text encompasses much more: scenes overlap, time periods extend – and both the Trojan war and Mycenae become resonance chambers for wars, conflicts and cancelled revolutions of our own times, too.

The play is shaped by strong and highly ambivalent characters. Characters who are bound up with the ancient events but also appear to know our present times. Between them stands Cassandra – fatefully connected with the characters and their entanglements. The end, however, opens up an unexpected way out of the story: No fate, Clytemnestra – but your own decisions for the future that make it impossible to go back.

The Georgian-German director and author Nino Haratischwili is one of the leading literary voices of the present times. She writes both dramas and fiction, such as “Das achte Leben (Für Brilka)”, “Die Katze und der General” or “Das mangelnde Licht”. Born in Tbilisi/Georgia, she now lives in Berlin. The world premiere production of “Kein Schicksal, Klytämnestra”, commissioned by Schauspiel Leipzig, was staged by Schauspiel Leipzig’s artistic director Enrico Lübbe. After the enthusiastic resonance to the world premiere at the ag(o)ra, the production will now move to Diskothek.