By trendy requirements, the out of doors theatre within the city of Syracuse on the southern Italy island of Sicily is historic, placing on performs below the night time sky since 1914.
However the amphitheatre, with its gleaming stones carved into the hillside overlooking the port city, really dates again a lot additional — to some 500 years BC.
Sicily was then a part of the bigger Greek empire, Magna Graecia, and the theatre was one of many greatest on the planet. Upwards of 10,000 spectators sat spellbound as tragedies written by Sophocles and Euripides and comedies by Aristophanes performed out on the stage, the final rays of daylight giving strategy to the rising moon.
That very same magical expertise continues at present because of Italy’s Nationwide Institute of Historical Drama, whose productions draw sold-out crowds. And this summer season for the primary time, its repertoire has widened to incorporate recent takes on different historical works. Amongst them is a brand new model of Homer’s Odyssey referred to as Ulysses, The Final Odyssey, a spoken-word and dance present with a hauntingly highly effective soundtrack by Calgary folk-rock band Reuben and the Darkish.
“This yr was type of an experiment,” stated Valeria Informed, who took over the Institute as superintendent in Could, with bold plans to take productions on tour globally. “To make use of classical textual content and blend it up with dance, circus, trendy music and a folk-rock band.”
The Final Odyssey, which ran in June and early July, is their principal check run.
Set in an airport — a present-day reinterpretation of the Greek islands the place Odysseus (or Ulysses) arrives, departs from and infrequently will get caught in — it is a mash up of influences. These embrace Steven Speilberg’s The Terminal, Pina Bausch choreography and Italian TV selection reveals, with musical refrains from Reuben and the Darkish infusing all of it with craving and a way of foreboding.
“There is a sure sentiment throughout the entire songs that actually fits the storylines in The Odyssey and I used to be type of shocked by how I appeared to write down from that character,” stated band frontman Reuben Bullock.
Italian-Canadian creative collaboration
Within the historical poem, Odysseus sails triumphantly away from Troy after a 10-year siege, making his method house to Ithaca, a journey that takes one other decade. Alongside the best way, he and his fellow warriors encounter witches, one-eyed monsters and sirens who attempt to lure the boys to their demise — a scene Bullock wrote authentic music for.
“You realize magnificence and temptation and evil and all that,” he stated over the cellphone from Calgary, the place the group performed as a part of a Western Canada tour this summer season.
Bullock says the supply to collaborate on the traditional Greek stage manufacturing got here a couple of years after he’d tagged a submit of a TV dance routine by renowned Italian theatre director and choreographer Giuliano Peparini that had used his band’s track Hallelujah. The 2 exchanged a couple of messages. Then final yr, Peparini reached out to ask Bullock if he’d love to do the music for his mounting of The Odyssey.
“After I take heed to his music, I simply have pictures popping out of my thoughts,” stated Peparini.
Peparini is not the one director to be captivated by the cinematic high quality of the band’s music: Reuben and the Darkish songs might be heard on sequence, motion pictures and trailers for every thing from The Handmaid’s Story, Gray’s Anatomy, Resident Evil and Heartland to Breaking Unhealthy, Recreation of Thrones and the film Dolittle.
Peparini stated the band’s emotional vary and nuance had been capable of convey the darker, self-involved sides of hero Odysseus. “He needs to see issues and many his companions die only for his curiosity,” he stated.
For The Final Odyssey, Peparini and Bullock labored remotely, choosing and selecting from Reuben and the Darkish’s again catalogue. Bullock additionally wrote a couple of authentic songs and instrumental compositions.
Bullock had a duplicate of an English translation of Ulysses on his shelf for ages and eventually learn it. He was struck, he stated, by how trendy, complicated and in the end human the Greek hero is — and by how a lot he discovered of the traditional traveller in his personal track writing.
“It was very attention-grabbing how my writing fashion, and the character I write from which is myself as properly, has lots to do with this man misplaced at sea being tormented and examined by the world,” stated Bullock.
8:09Provincial Playlist – meet Reuben and the Darkish
Struggling performs a central function
Francesco Morosi, 32, the Greek scholar who translated and wrote the play, stated he stripped down the textual content to give attention to the person adventures the hero recounts within the airport to fellow stranded vacationers.
“It is stuffed with feelings and emotions,” Morosi of the poem’s lasting enchantment. “And struggling performs a central function. This can be a man who suffers for 20 years and he cannot even discover consolation in reminiscence. By having to recount his recollections, he is requested to undergo twice. So you may’t assist however empathize.”
Italian theatre critic Peppino Ortoleva agrees.
“You might be moved not simply by Odysseus’s trials, but additionally by his reliving his many tragedies, which is among the most trendy features of Greek tradition — that life is unpredictable,” he stated. “In contrast to in The Iliad and lots of different tragedies, our future will not be outlined. Odysseus goes via a sequence of unpredictable occasions and that is very trendy.”
The choice to convey the story with dance and a contemporary sound observe — to not point out the odd flash of selection present kitsch — has paid off, with the present promoting out and a few third of viewers members below age 25, greater than the 20 per cent common for the tragedies, say organizers.
“The tragedies are a simple promote,” stated Valeria Informed. “However we would like a wider program to attract a extra diversified viewers. Youthful folks and particularly folks from overseas.”
Productions with music and motion like The Final Odyssey do not depend on translations, which makes the reveals extra accessible.
The following step, says Informed, is tapping overseas administrators and searching for manufacturing companions to take these vibrant new interpretations of historical works to audiences in Europe, the USA and Canada.
Ulysses, the Final Odyssey opens once more in September in Sicily earlier than touring in Italy.