MIT 2026: ÉCUBA

With ÉCUBA, we continue to develop a strategic line of work within our repertoire from the past 10 years: a dramaturgical approach to texts from Greco-Roman classical culture, as a tool for reflection on Europe and its peoples, as well as on Braga’s foundational identity, drawing from the ruins of its Roman Theater.

After The Bacchae, from the Oresteia trilogy; The Trojan Women; The Birds; Helen by Yannis Ritsos; and even The Canned Food People by Edward Bond, we now turn to ÉCUBA to address 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, deem themselves gods, lose their ethical sense of justice, and become instruments of death.

In ÉCUBA, the women—prisoners of war, led by their queen, the first victim of the madness and atrocities—begin their revenge against barbarism, despotism, greed, the law, and justice. A play that highlights for audiences the miseries of war, the suffering of the vanquished, but also of the victors, highlighting the moral degradation to which power games and the euphoria of unbridled domination lead—dragging humanity to the limits of its own humanity—and where the actors/citizens assume a role of “non-representation” and narrate the reality of the moment to us.