Matthias Langhoff
Heiner Müller, Philoktet
This year’s programme of events at the Little Theatre of Ancient Epidaurus gets underway with a work by Heiner Müller (1929-1995), the “poet of the fragments of the century”. Philoktet retains the raw material of the ancient tragedy – the island, the wound, the weapon, the negotiations – and its three main heroes – Philoctetes, Odysseus, Neoptolemus – in its radical reworking of Sophocles’ “violent political drama” which hinges on modern-day guile and cynicism and the wounds they leave behind.
Written between 1958 and 1964, the play – which was premiered in Munich in 1968 – marks the transition in the East-German writer’s oeuvre from his post-Brechtian early period to a dramaturgy employing contemporary themes in a dialogue with ancient drama.
The Hellenic Festival has invited Matthias Langhoff, an important German director with profound links both to Müller and his work, to stage Philoktet with a cast of three well-known Greek actors: Minas Hatzisavvas, Lefteris Voyatzis and Christos Loulis. [D.Κ.]
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Little Theatre of Ancient Epidaurus
- 27/06/2008 at 21:30
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