ALEXIS. A GREEK TRAGEDY
Motus (Italy)
THEATRE
Presented by Theatre Junction
February 19-22, 2014
$20-$44
Athens, December 2008. Alexis, 15, is killed in the street by a police officer in suspicious circumstances and becomes an icon of the insurgent youth. It is from this event that Italian political theatre company, Motus, draws a parallel between this incident and the figure of Antigone, offering us a powerful theatrical moment that lies between a documentary and a performance. Tracing the testimony of the police officer who shot Alexis (a “Polynices” in a Sex Pistols T-shirt,) and the subsequent student riots that followed his death, Motus reflects on the radiant stubbornness of Antigone as a means to explore the theme of contemporary revolt. How do we turn indignation into action?
“Where are the parents? Where are the artists? Why don’t they step outside?
We aren’t terrorists, we aren’t the usual hooded, faceless ones…We’re your kids.”
-From a letter sent to the press by Alexis’ friends
Motus was founded in 1991 by Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò, who have always sculpted their projects like litmus paper, translating the contradictions of the culture and making them active material for reflection and provocation. Alexis is the company’s fourth production to contemplate the moral and political issues of Antigone, Sophocles’ eternal tragedy of resistance against power. Deeply inspired by Bertold Brecht’s version of Antigone, Motus’ work causes the past and the present to confront each other in a primal, physical performance as old as the theatre itself.
Alexis. A Greek Tragedy was named Best Foreign Performance for the season 2011-12 by the Association of Theatre Critics of Quebec
