«Orestes returnes»
Thomas Oberender in conversation with Romeo Castellucci about his new production «Ma» in Elfesina, his understanding of the image, the sacred and the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The Eleusinian Mysteries were a state cult of Athens that lasted 1100 years until their demise in the 4th century AD. This cult for the fertility goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone is considered the most famous and at the same time the most secret religious rite of ancient Greece. Its sanctuaries in Eleusis, today’s Elefsina, were a place of pilgrimage and transformation. At the centre of the Great Mystery was the return of Persephone from the underworld. The entrance to Hades, named after the ruler of the realm of the dead and Persephone’s abductor, was part of the temple complex. After several days of purifying preparation and a vigil, the initiates consumed a special drink, Kykeon, in the great hall. It was made by priests from barley and mentha pulegium, among other things, leading to speculation that it also contained ergot containing LSD. Over the course of two millennia, generations of priests refined this drug-based technology of expanding consciousness and crossing the threshold between life and death. In a sense, this potion was the ayahuasca of the European indigenous people, those Greeks whose thought, piety and cult practice formed the origin of our Western culture. Aeschylus, who was born in Eleusis, drank Kykeon, as did Socrates, Plato, many Roman emperors, slaves, people of all sexes, citizens and foreigners. Only matricides and barbarians, people who did not speak Greek, were excluded from the ceremony. The transgression of this former commandment is the starting point for Romeo Castellucci’s production of «Ma» in the ruins of the sacred sites of Elefsina. «Only through sacrilege can the sacred be reactivated,» writes dramaturg Lucia Amara about this project on the website of Castellucci’s Companie Societas. Over the course of eleven days, the audience wanders through the abandoned places of worship together with dancers and musicians and discovers Castellucci’s vision of the vitality and meaning of this place. Elefsina is European Capital of Culture in 2023, together with Timișoara in Romania and Veszprém in Hungary.
Thomas Oberender: There is a photo of you on the website of the «Genesis» project of the University of Thessaloniki. It is the only photo of you at the sanctuary of Eleusis that I could find.
Romeo Castellucci: I don’t know this photo.
It was taken in front of the walled entrance to the realm of the dead in the temple area of Eleusis. People still lay flowers there for their deceased. The place in front of the cave of Hades.
Ah, yes, at the Plutonion.
Why there?
Because of the cave. Other things happen in a cave. The cave is a tomb. The cave is a womb. I like this kind of place. Because it is a lack of something. It is a hole. Not an object. That’s beautiful. It’s a lack of something. I like that emptiness. It’s also a kind of via negativa. And I think, as Hans Blumenberg, the German philosopher, said, the first artist was a woman. According to palaeontologists, in prehistory, women stayed in place while the men were out hunting, had to feed the baby, and so they developed a different kind of power, Blumenberg said, they invented fantasy. And then they edited the history of the tribe. Women invented not only art, but also religion. Because only a woman knows the secret of life. To give birth is a mystery. And it was certainly a woman who invented the burial to return the corpses to the earth.
Demeter and Kore (Persephone), two women, were at the centre of the mysteries of Eleusis.
But you know, there is another figure. A man, Eubuleo. He was a little shepherd, a very young boy. He was in the field with his pigs and he witnessed the kidnapping of Persephone by Hades. After this event the myth says that Eubuleo establishes the Mysteries.
What were your reasons for carrying out this project in Elefsina, the sanctuary of ancient mysteries?
It is impossible to say «no» to such a proposal. Because for me, when I was a student, Eleusis was the starting point, the decisive point of everything. It was the beginning - in my personal work, but also for Western culture. Eleusis is the starting point. Probably more important than the theatre of Dionysus. It’s the origin. For me it was like a call. Not a call from someone, a call from the place. Eleusis is not important for some archaeological reasons, it’s the origin, the origin even now. Going there is a perfect rendezvous with theatre.
TO: In your work you often struggle with the framework and conventions of the theatre. You question and reflect this ritual very strongly in each of your works. But this time you are working in an ancient place, which is a former temple area, a sacred place. How does that change things for you?
RC: It’s much more challenging because you have to reinvent the framework. You have to reinvent the attitude, the habits of the spectator. You have to think about the body of the spectator. The whole structure of the theatre has to be reinvented. Because it is not dark, you can see the background of the landscape. On a stage you have complete control, you can choose what you see in the foreground and in the background. Everything is under control, in a way. In our case you have a landscape, which are the stones of Eleusis, which is precisely a character: Eleusis itself. Normally I am not comfortable with outdoor theatre. It doesn’t usually work for me.
Why is that?
Because I need darkness. The darkness gives us a sense of solitude, an encounter with ourselves. That is the meaning of darkness. In the case of this production in Elefsina, the landscape constantly pushes the form, the body, the meaning. That’s why this production is not a normal show. But I like the fact that the audience has to take a walk, has to create a focus, much more than normal theatregoers do. Because the situation affects their whole body.
This reminds me of your work «The Metopes of the Parthenon» in Basel in 2015. In a large industrial hall, the visitors entered a hall without chairs, into which 6 victims of crime came one after the other, each of them severely wounded and dying one after the other before the eyes of the visitors, who formed groups around the action, clearing the way for the actors, but above all confronted very directly with destroyed bodies, without any information about the contexts.
Yes. And the fact that the visitors are standing is very important. It’s a special kind of attention. It’s about what’s right in front of you, it’s no longer something to look at, because it’s an experience first and foremost.
The fact that your production takes the guests on a walking tour is close to the historical mysteries. However, you do not want to reconstruct historical practice with this performance. You want to create a «contemporary ritual». How do you do that?
That is actually the most difficult thing. In a place like this, it is easy to fall into a kind of reconstruction or, even worse, re-actualisation. That would be even worse, I think, because you are in the heart of the theatre. This place in Elefsina, where the theatre was perhaps born, is close to my heart, because I particularly like this forgotten tradition of the Western tradition. Because Western theatre is based on text. We started theatre with the written text. That was not the case in Eleusis.
In the announcement of «Ma» you refer to Antonin Artaud and his awareness of the Eleusinian Mysteries as something before any text.
Yes. There was no written text, no spoken words. Maybe some songs, music, apparently yes, sounds, objects, movements, the potion, the sudden light. But it is incredible how much importance they gave to the image. The image is enough. The image is a door, It’s a passage. It’s not anymore an object, it’s an experience. Because according to the belief of the ancients, the Epopteia - the act of seeing - was capable of producing what we see. It’s a ray, the gaze was able to build something. It’s not just receiving, it’s more like a wind, there’s a connection. You have to keep it inside you, without explanation or reassuring meanings. I like that a lot.
In your theatre work, images play a special role from the very beginning. They often create a kind of membrane, not so much a stage set as a presence of other forces on stage, for example in her Berlin performance of Scarlatti’s «Il Primo Omicidio ovvero Caino.» An exceedingly powerful appearance of light was also associated with Persephone’s epiphany in the great Mystery of Eleusis. Seeing this light has transformed people for a good millennium.
Yes, what I really like very much is this idea that what you see, is in fact able to transform you. You are in a certain state if you enter, and if you are going out - you are a different person. That is the role of any image. An image is not an illustration. An image is a personal, intimate journey. And the image is also a kind of a light, that was made also with a shadow. But there is another image in the shadow. I like it very much in Eleusis this relation between brightness and darkness. Here is light can become so strong that it turns into a kind of darkness. For me it’s a lesson. They want to keep a light on in our time, because we have in our time no relation to pictures anymore. Now we are floating in a white noise of illustrations. It’s important to go in Elefsina back to Eleusis to re-think the act of seeing. And giving this act of seeing his dignity.
«The metopes of the Parthenon» in Basel 2015 seems to me like a prelude to your performance in Elefsina. In this work you refer to the ancient frieze in the Pantheon. A building that symbolises the ideal balance of classical architecture, but which is held together by a frieze of images depicting the cruelty of an archaic struggle. You confronted the audience with this images we don’t want to see. Suffering. Pain. Groups of spectators formed around these scenes in an empty space, shocked and involved at the same time.
Exactly. It is often like that. Something of the sacred image is a thing that is forbidden to see. Something that is too much. Because something flickers. In a historical frame, it is a point of expectation and non-expectation. A good image escapes any meaning. You have a suspicious in front of it: »Where is the mistake?”. Surely there are some meanings, there is an exact plan, but you cannot reach it. It’s beyond the plan. That’s the lesson of the image. It’s not the visible things on the stage. But the real image is something between the observer and the thing itself. It’s the »third object”. It doesn’t exist in a sensitive way, no, but it really exists between you, your body, your memory, your heart, your scars. You, the spectator, give blood to this picture. Then it certainly becomes something else. That is why the images on stage are different from me, they become different from the men sitting next to me. That’s our responsibility. That is our lesson from Eleusis.
Talking about what happened during the Great Mystery was forbidden on pain of death. And this exclusive secret was kept for more than 1100 years, an incredibly long time. At the same time, this ancient Athenian ritual was very inclusive - men, women, slaves, strangers could participate. With the exception that matricides and barbarians, i.e. people who did not speak Greek, were excluded from the ritual. The main character in your project is a man who served twenty years in prison for matricide and who is not Greek.
Exactly.
How did this decision come about?
If you want, the two figures in the history of the western culture: the mother in Eleusis, and Orestes the eponymous of the trilogy of Aeschylus. Orestes made the first matricide that became mentioned in literature and he was the man - despite himself - that started another order of culture. He accomplished the destiny of the western culture. By this act of matricide, he turned the mother’s right into the father’s right, definitively enshrined in the Aeropago scene - the first court of the west -, in which he is tried and judged innocent with a trick in the judges’ votes. Western culture was completely reversed by this act of matricide. In 1861 J.J. Bachofen wrote a wonderful and fundamental book - «Das Mutterrecht» - on the transition from maternal to patriarchal law. It’s a book that I studied thoroughly when I was a young man. From there I learned the radicality and the hard core of the creative act. It’s important for me to go - to come back to Eleusis, you always «return» to Eleusis, not «you go”- and bring back »another Orestes” from the real world and history. This act is certainly a sacrilege. And in doing so, you can reactivate the sacred. This man - who happened to kill his own mother - can give all the meaning back to the place, all the sacred things, the beauty. It is necessary to rebuild, because to have a matricide in such a place is a blasphemy. But the blasphemy in this case will certainly become an act of reconciliation. Finally, there is forgiveness for this man, who in our case is a real matricide. It’s not here for a morbid appearance, to want to impress or to want to profane a biography. His name is Filippo Addamo. He allowed me to use his name, but I don’t want to tell his painful story. That’s a private matter. I can only say that he killed his mother in Catania, Sicily, 23 years ago. He is there, in our production, because he represents us. He is a symbol, a metaphor, perhaps for our relationship with our mother. It could be Mother Earth or any mother, any female body. And that is why this blasphemy is an act of mercy.
The relationship with the mother plays a big role in this project. What does the title of the piece «Ma» mean? Is he related to the word »mother”?
For sure. «Ma» is the first word humans learn to speak. It’s even not «mother» or «mummy», we say «ma». It’s the minimal version. We go back the language line, á rebours, against the line, and look for the root of the mother tongue, the «grain» of the word. We speak at the original, fundamental level of words, that of the seed, which is «ma», something that every human being on this planet can understand: «Ma». Moreover, in the Italian grammar «ma» is an adversative conjunction, it means «but». In German it is the word «aber». It is an interrogation, a doubt, a relaunch of thought. I like this ambiguity. And in ancient greek there is also this root of »my» of Mysteria, that leads to the meaning: «shut up”. And look, and learn.
In all the spiritual practices I know, speaking was forbidden after a certain point. There are phases of complete silence in which a kind of contact is established, and this connection, if it is there, can be modulated by music, but not by language.
What we do is not a ceremony, also if »Eleusis” stands for the mysteries. But »Ma” will be without any language. Because language is another domain. The image, however, is a body. And the body belongs to a woman. The dromena, the ritual behaviour, and the legomena, the accompanying texts of the rite, have historically split. In our work we are closer to the «dromena», the act instead of the word. Because the act is closer to the experience - and to the surprising discover - to have a body. It’s the feminine side. The language with its rules and laws is related to masculinity; but I don’t speak of patriarchy, here, because it’s another matter. The language is a beautiful tool. But on every level language is never enough. Even in the most beautiful literature it is never enough, never clear. In every language is a hidden intention, in every phrase there is a bunch of hidden intentions. The image is mute. Every true image makes you alone. You are alone with yourself facing an enigma: The sphinx of the life. But the image is a hole, that knows your own name. And this is a wonderful conflict between words and things and images. There is a gap. A fundamental gap. A wonderful one.
In your approach, the theme of the relationship with the mother is also updated on another level - in terms of the violence we do to the earth, the destruction of Demeter’s fertility by our late modern civilization. In «Ma» you work only with the materials that are available on site - the sun, the stones, the historical site. No technical installations, no use of non-renewable energy. Is this project leading you towards a sustainable theatre practice?
No. Yes. It seems so from that perspective. But that is not the first reason. The first reason is an aesthetic one. Certainly, it makes sense to make any attempt to pay attention to Mother Earth. But to be honest, it’s not a political reason, it’s an aesthetic reason, and it’s much more profound. Every true policy must be born of an aesthetic problem. The opposite direction is necessarily false and corrupt.
For me it was important to create this production only as a passage, as a walking tour. «Ma» is a strategy, a long maneuver to prepare the arrival of Fillipo. Filippo Addamo will enter only at the end. He’ll just walk few steps inside the Sanctuary, he’ll caress the stones of the sacred place, kneel down. It’s all. No word.
Where did you find Filippo?
I found him maybe two years ago, reading an article. Thinking about a piece to do at Eleusis, the two things have obviously been associated. I can even say that it was not my choice. Things happen and pass through us. It is important to pay attention, to listen to the forms that pass by us every moment of the day. Collecting, not inventing, this is important.
So, both sides matched together as a negative that requires the form that awaits and presupposes. For me, as I said, it wasn’t a choice I made. Things chose me. I just have to accept them. And it was the same with Filippo, «Ma» and Eleusis. For me, Orestes is one of the most beautiful figures in Western culture. One thing is the killing of his mother, but - there is a cruciale »but» - there is also a doubt that interrupts the straight line of the crime. He came to Klytaimestra’s place. He hesitated. But his friend, what was his name, Pylades - the alter-ego of Apollon-, urged him to kill his mother. In this very trembling moment, in Orestes’ hesitation, we escape from ancient mythology and arrive in modern time. We can also say that, in this little moment of doubt, the entire institute of the sacrifiche collapses. There is the mythology, caught at the pivot of its epochal transformation, but also the story of a man who - lost - loses his mother. The end is a love story, as far as overturned… Even for Filippo.
In a way, you are creating a play in Elefsina about Orestes’ return. And he is only welcomed by women. The female actors, dancers and musicians who were cast in advance should all live in Greece, why?
It was an arrangement with the festival and came from their side. Only Filippo Addamo is not from Greece. It is always important for me to be rooted in the community; this place belong to them, I request their permission.
One of the eleven performances is dedicated to the «People of Elefsina», i.e. the present-day inhabitants of the city. Why?
It’s not my idea. But I like it very much. The idea came from the festival: By Greek and for Greek. It’s an homage to the fellow citizens of Aeschylus, the greatest writer of all time.
I like the idea, the Greek gesture, of giving something back to a place that has given you so much and opening up the festival to people who might not be able to afford the tickets.
We have to give them a meaning. Elefsina as a place belongs to them as a community. It is a wonderful idea.