After Sarah Kane, Wajdi Mouawad and J. M. Coetzee
Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski
Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe
Confess or repress: those are the options available when you lust after your stepson. The volcanic Isabelle Huppert, as the mythic queen Phaedra, tries both on for size in this carnal triptych combining multiple versions of the salacious Greek legend. Drawing from playwright Sarah Kane’s graphic study Phaedra’s Love and texts by J.M. Coetzee and Wajdi Mouawad for the script, Phaedra(s) imagines its heroine as a brutalized victim—alternately bloodied, blond-wigged, and professorial—cast into a stark world of exotic dancers and glass-walled rooms. Krzysztof Warlikowski directs this postmodern plunge into forbidden love, where sexuality wears sunglasses en route to illicit ends.
Dramaturgy by Piotr Gruszczynski
Set and costume design by Malgorzata Szczesniak
Lighting design by Felice Ross
Music by Pawel Mykietyn
Lighting design by Felice Ross
Video design by Denis Guéguin
Choreography by Claude Bardouil and Rosalba Torres Guerrero
Makeup, and hair design by Sylvie Cailler and Jocelyne Milazzo
Additional music composed by Bruno Helstroffer
Sound design by Thierry Jousse
Produced by Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe
Co-produced by Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand – La Scène nationale, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Théâtre de Liège, Barbican – London & LIFT, and Onassis Cultural Centre – Athens
Isabelle Huppert speaks with philosopher Simon Critchley about the controversial heroine and the multiple interpretations—from Seneca to Kane to Mouawad—that make up this fall’s presentation of Phaedra(s).
A panel of scholars and artists examine how the myth of Phaedra has been reinterpreted to reflect contemporary society—and the timeless truths it continues to reveal.
Meet fellow BAM members over a glass of wine in the Natman Room before Phaedra(s).
Three Bardian power players enter the fluorescent-lit corridors of the present in Ivo van Hove’s clever merging of the plays Henry V, Henry VI Parts I, II & III, and Richard III.
Mikhail Baryshnikov steps inside the psyche of Vaslav Nijinsky in director Robert Wilson’s staging of the iconic Russian dancer’s onset of schizophrenia in 1919.
Director Peter Brook returns with this tale of reconciliation in the wake of war, a breathtaking distillation of the central story of The Mahabharata, the ancient Sanskrit poem Brook first staged at the BAM Harvey Theater in 1987.