Écuba

With ÉCUBA, Companhia de Teatro de Braga continues to develop a strategic line of work based on our repertoire from the last 10 years: a dramaturgical approach to texts from Greco-Roman classical culture as a means of reflecting on Europe and its peoples, as well as on Braga’s foundational identity, drawing on the ruins of its Roman Theatre. Following The Bacchae, from the Oresteia trilogy, The Trojan Women, The Birds and Helen by Yannis Ritsos, and even The Tinned People by Edward Bond, the Company turns now to ECUBA to explore war through the lens of its first victims: women and children. At a time when, following the invasion and conquest of the city, the generals – intoxicated by success and their disproportionate excesses – become entangled in their own delusions, regard themselves as gods, lose their ethical sense of justice and become instruments of death.

In ECUBA, the women – prisoners of war, led by their queen, the first victim of the madness and atrocities – set out to exact vengeance against barbarism, despotism, greed, the law and justice. The aim is to create a performance/document that highlights, for the audience, the miseries of war and the suffering not only of the vanquished but also of the victors, emphasising the moral degradation to which power games and the euphoria of unbridled domination lead, dragging humankind to the very limits of its own humanity. And where the actors/citizens take on a role of ‘non-representation’ and narrate the reality of the moment to us.