Medea

Euripides

Berliner Ensemble, Berlin

Director: Michael Thalheimer

Performed in German with Hungarian and English subtitles

1 hours 45 minutes, without breaks.

Jason has abandoned Medea; she and her children are threatened with banishment. By marrying Kreon’s daughter, Jason will receive a definitive right of residence and a socially and economically secure position. Deeply hurt by this betrayal and distraught by Jason’s shameless defiance of their bond of marriage and vows of fidelity, Medea plots a cruel revenge. Boundless love turns into boundless hatred: Medea decides to kill their children. What can human beings relinquish, what can be taken away from them, before they lash out with no mercy?

There is hardly another name as fascinating and frightening at the same time as Medea’s, and hardly another antique text that has been interpreted and adopted so widely as her myth. The premiere of the version by Euripides, the playwright, took place in 431 BCE. Medea – an immensely humiliated victim, a passionately loving person and a cruel avenger – is one of the most contradictory figures in the world’s drama literature.

In 2013, Michael Thalheimer’s staging of Medea was invited to the Theatertreffen in Berlin, the festival that showcases ten of the best performances from German-language theatres. Constanze Becker in the role of Medea was honoured with the Faust Award, the German theatrical recognition for the best actress. So far, MITEM hosted two shows by Michael Thalheimer from the Berliner Ensemble: The Caucasian Chalk Circle (2018) and A Streetcar Named Desire (2019).

(Photographer: Birgit Hupfeld)

Actors

Nurse: Josefin Platt
choir of the Corinthian women: Bettina Hoppe
Medea: Constanze Becker
Kreon: Martin Rentzsch
Jason: Marc Oliver Schulze
Aigeus: Oliver Kraushaar
Herold: Gerrit Jansen

Stage designer: Olaf Altmann
Costume designer: Nehle Balkhausen
Choreographer: -
Composer: Bert Wrede
Dramaturge: Sibylle Baschung
Light: Johan Delaere, Ulrich Eh
Video: Alexander du Prel

Main Stage

Michael Thalheimer

He was born near Frankfurt/Main in 1965. From 1985, he studied Acting in Bern and worked as an actor at various city theatres in the German-language region, before presenting his first work as a director at Theater Chemnitz in 1997. From 2005 to 2008, he was head director and a member of the executive artistic team of Deutsches Theater Berlin. He has directed productions at the Vienna Burgtheater, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Residenztheater Munich, Thalia Theater, Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre and the Berlin Schaubühne among others. Since Oliver Reese became artistic director of Berliner Ensemble at the beginning of the 2017/18 season, Michael Thalheimer has been the theatre’s in-house director and a member of the executive artistic team. Michael Thalheimer’s productions have received numerous distinctions, among them the television channel 3sat’s Innovation Award, the Berlin Friedrich-Luft-Preis, the Moscow “Golden Mask” twice and the Nestroy-Award several times. Many of his productions were presented at the Berlin Theatertreffen, most recently “Medea” in 2013, and at international festivals like Salzburger Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen and Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro in Bogotá.

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