L'Orestie

As a playwright, Olivier Py opened the Odeon season with a comedy. As director and leader of his troupe of actors, it is with a tragedy that he winds up the season. Or rather with three tragedies, because what Py loves most, is epic theater, stories that go on forever. A great admirer of the Greeks and of Claudel, he has dreamt of tackling the « mourning voices » of Aeschylus' monumental trilogy, for years now. His arrival at the Odeon theater offered him the perfect occasion. In this version of Orestie (in French but sprinkled with fragments in the original Greek), Olivier Py rediscovers certain elements that lie at the heart of his idea of what theater should be : the exuberance and energy of superhuman roles ; the majestic breath of a sovereign language, powerful enough to fill the voices of men and of gods, lending to slaves and triumphant victors alike, something noble ; the vastness of a vision where singing, music and dramaturgy, join their forces, above and beyond a simple civics lesson, in order to render service to a theodicy.