Mount Olympus - epic trip in the ancient time

             Mount Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy – a 24-hour performance by the  Belgian director Jan Fabre is one of the most significant events in the history of modern theatre. It has been played only 7 times. It's still up to date.  Wait for the group to visit your county and don’ t miss this amazing experience. 

24 hours in one place, you are attending in some kind of special ritual spoken with language of modern theatre. Myths like the greatest narrative in the history of humans are representing like thousands years ago. This performance expects from you to give all yourself with true emotion, without intellect and thinking. 24 hours audience are in some kind of hypnotic state, elementary feelings, tired but ready to feel everything. 

In this play we can see 27 actors. During one day, they are always in front of us, actually, we are in front of them, because everything has to be in some kind of perfect connection. We are, like audience, included in the ritual old thousands of years, but present in this moment of watching. Actors are always with us, they are dancing, singing, talking, eating and sleeping on the scene with great and surprising energy. That energy is so big, like that is from gods, not from humans.      

 Mount Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy, directed by Jan Fabre,  Antwerp, Belgium. │  SOURCE

  What is in the sense of ritual?    

            Ancient mythological material are the basics of these performance.  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides are transformed in the modern concept of theatrical language, but in the same time they are staying old, like the humans are. We are traveling thought time with stories of Hecuba, Oedipus, Jocasta, Orestes, Electra and Medea. Performance started with grate scene of Oedipus with the moment of repetition, like some kind of leitmotif of this play. 

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We are watching extreme limits of physical and mental endurance and asking ourselves what can be symbol of that. 24 hours we are watching great ancient narratives, with focus of tragedians like a sense of ancient literature. They are celebrating tragedy like basic sense of human been. In ancient literature is everything: gods, humans, love, pain, death, body and soul. They wanted to show us, what the world and life can be in the beginning and in the end of time. So, when we see Oedipus in the first scene fighting with unknown enemy, we know that is metaphor for our fight with evil. Ancient tragedy send us that message: we are fighting with ghosts all our life but in our endurance in possibility of salvation.

Last scene is performance where we can recognize story of Antigone - great Sophocles character. In the end everything is grate, incredible finale, with music, naked bodies and climax of drama art. Yes, that would be so close to feeling of catharsis.        

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Where is Dionysus?   

               Actually, the main actor in all tragedies is Dionysus – god of wine, grape, ritual madness and fertility. All the time we had impression that he is present, because everything was in some kind of ecstasy and Dionysus is there, where the emotion are in the hugest level. Dionysus is present when we are feeling some kind of body ecstasy. After 24 hours, we are feeling that our body is not actually in our property. That’s the point. 

Dionysus ceremonies lasted 3 days and 3 nights without stopping everything in the glory of God, who is giving body freedom to the people. He is always young and beautiful and because of that, cult of Dionysus was so important to the people in ancient Greece. Ceremonies in his glory were forbidden because of orgy character. In metaphorical way, his cult can be understood like a glorification of human body, nature and freedom. According to Jan Fabre, theatre director of this play, this is the most important thing. He wanted to show us how we can live in this earth with passion, ready to feel everything in its fullness, without thinking of time and the space. Because of that, Dionysus was present here, presented with basic visual and spiritual beauty.     

Scene with god Dionysus in the Tragedy Antigone.  │ SOURCE

Playing with the bodies.  

            The main asked question in the audience was: how the actors could endure it? They dance and move at the urging of a wordless inner force. They wake and sleep on stage. All the time they are in front of us and we are with them. There are no borders between scene and audience, we are called to participate in collective hypnotic state. Actors were practice this show more than one year every day. They had to be in specific state of mind and state of body, because they are participated in this performance more with their bodies than with intellect. So, this is about ours permanent state, about our real existence. Our intellectual potential is not so important. Everything is existing in emotions and passion.     

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 Time and the space in the eternal repetition    

               One of the main attribute of this play can be repetition. That would be because of her ritual characteristic or because of understanding of time. In the ancient philosophy time has cyclic character. Everything what happen in one moment of time, it has to be repeated once again. So, moments of death, birth, salvation and punishment of action heroes are alive again in many ways - that’s legality of the ritual. That what we are watching now, it happened again in symbolical way. Oedipus, Antigone and Medea are with us, because we are all together in the ritual ceremony. 

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There was one scene where we could see an actress that shakes her body fore than 30 minutes and pronounced one word thousands of times. That’s ritual - repetition of something until the extreme limits of endurance.  That was a journey to the mythical past, but not the journey in physical understanding of time. That was spiritual movement in a space. We are here, but we were there - in the Dionysian ceremonies. Way of performing was one of the signals that they wanted to imitate something what was happening thousands years ago in the ancient time.         

Scene of sleeping.  │ SOURCE

 The possibility of catharsis in our time   

                Mount Olympus was incredibly and perfect theatre experience. After 24 hours, you are feeling like that some invisible force is living in your body. You are not on the earth, because space is not important, you are coming back from the mythical travel. 

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This was performance of nature, full of ecstasy and celebration of the body. In the end, it stays a question – did we feel the catharsis? In that question will be answered in our next life experience, but that what we can know now is that Mount Olympus changed our consciousness. We are coming back from the travel of the mythical symbols. That’s the glory of this performance. That’s catharsis.      

Beautiful and spectacular final scene. │ SOURCE