Premiered in Brussels, Belgium in 1998, Zooedipous assumes the challenge of the Greek tragedy. Having a widely known tragedy as a starting point enables us to manipulate the material without the urgency or the obligation to "tell" the audience the story. Oedipus seems to be the myth that covers this premise. Thus, combining Kafka’s nightmares with the original incest, the piece unravels. In addition to objects and actors, this performance includes another kind of organic presence: a live hen, insects, spiders and a chicken that comes to life, renovating El Periférico de Objetos’ object landscape. In Zooedipous the company needs to push itself further down the concept of manipulation. What would it bring to use not only crafted, modified or found objects, but also to manipulate live and dead organic matter? Affected by Kafka, Deleuze and the same tragedy of Oedipus, we deal with the concepts of deterritorialization, becoming-animal, of breaking the Law and Family order, the departure from the tribe, etc. In addition to objects specifically built and manipulated on stage, now some are magnified - for example a fly copulates with an actress - and the stage is also taken by small live insects and artemia, and chicken, dead and alive. Sometimes too close to the audience and seeming to die, these live animals onstage force spectators to face their numerous contradictions and prejudices. The company has previously experimented with the effect that life-turned-death produces on the spectator using inanimate objects. Here this is attempted through actual dead matter, once alive. We try to conceptualize deeper on the link between object and life and death.

With
ANA ALVARADO
EMILIO GARCÍA WEHBI
ROMÁN LAMAS
ALEJANDRO TANTANIAN

Production
KUNSTEN FESTIVAL DES ARTS
Assistant to the director
MAGDALENA VIGGIANI
Sound
CLAUDIO KOREMBLIT
Costumes
ROSANA BÁRCENA
Lighting
ALEJANDRO LE ROUX
Set
EL PERIFÉRICO DE OBJETOS
Directed by
EMILIO GARCÍA WEHBI
DANIEL VERONESE
ANA ALVARADO


Theatre Marni, Kunsten festival des Arts, Bruselas, Bélgica, 1998.

Fotos Magdalena Viggiani