Medea

Medea is the most startling character in the history of literature. Like no other female figure, she leaves an unprecedented trail of blood behind her: betraying her father, murdering her brother, murdering the King of Iolcus – and that is not enough. As a suppliant she flees with her family to the royal court of Corinth. Though her intellect, rhetorical skill and ferocious determination are superior to those around her, she is ostracised and humiliated as a foreigner. Ultimately Medea takes the most extreme measures to harm her opponents and extract her revenge: she kills her own children and destroys the ruling house of Corinth. The complexity and ambivalence of Medea as a character are due to the fact that her actions and her motives defy simple explanation. She is not a victim or a perpetrator, but perhaps both simultaneously. Euripides, the youngest and most modern of the three great tragic dramatists of ancient Greece, freed his central character from a distant myth and in his Medea exposed disturbing human qualities.  

Using Euripides as her starting point, Karin Henkel, one of the most prestigious directors in the German-speaking theatre who has been invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen on no fewer than seven occasions, examines the monstrousness of the deliberate destruction of oneself and others. «Medea» is Karin Henkel’s first production as director for the Residenztheater.