István Tasnádi: Phaidra

...I proposed to my regular collaborator, the playwright István Tasnádi that we should make a new version of Phaedra. During our work we are using all the lessons learnt from the earlier adaptations. The focus of the staging will be unfolding the poetic text written in verse. The aesthetics of the theatre forms and of the style will be adjusted to the inner tensions of the text, between the extremities of the stage form and the style of the acting. In an incredibly rich, but mostly stylised environment Phaidra’s world appears very simply and personally. Despite all her efforts, love loses its ethereal quality and its value. Its physical aspect becomes stronger as a primitive fight between cruel and self-satisfied youth and the unavoidable aging. This phenomenon might best be called the fascism of youth. I took these dichotomies into consideration when casting the piece. A Hungarian star, a celebrated actress of the National Theatre and many films is going to be my Phaidra, she is her age. The three spoken male texts are going to be performed by German actors, while Theseus will be played by a Hungarian opera singer, for his texts will be heard in the form of an opera in the production. The Hungarian actress has an accent when she speaks German to her partners, but her monologues she’ll say in her old, barbaric mother tongue.\ Árpád Schilling