Omada7 (Athens, Greece): Antigone, a Hubris

The Athens-based theatre company, Omada7, interprets Sophocles’ drama creating a multimedia performance, drawing from contemporary media and devised theatre. A classic, philosophical tragedy, exploring issues of morality, justice, the nature of power and the core of democracy. In a decayed centre of power, three female performers share all the roles of Sophocles’ Antigone, intervening with their own views and experiences and devising a multimedia performance. Only mediated through a video screen, can the fifteen members of the chorus have access to this restricted financial centre, in order to negotiate, to claim or to refuse their individual responsibility. Is resistance a moral duty? Is our judgment the only valid one? Can resistance turn into hubris? Do we have the ability to listen to others? Power, resistance, hubris. Then, Now and After. Sophocles\’s text and philosopher Cornelios Castoriades’ thoughts are vehicles for revisiting a classic, using the materials of devised theater. Omada7 engages in a dialogue with the perpetual tragic feeling of this “Deinoteron” (most terrible) of all creatures.

BIO: Omada7 is a performing arts group founded in 2003. It has produced twenty-two productions so far, involving at least 15 artists and volunteers each time. Omada7 aims at investigating the cultural particularities of Greece in dialogue with the forms and methods of post-modern /metadramatic theatre. Over the years the group has expanded with the collaboration of theatre researchers, visual artists, photographers and musicians aiming at the interaction between different kinds of art. The collective basis of the group focuses on the creation process which aims at setting a common space where different and sometimes opposing aesthetics match through the personal expression of each partner. What’s more, performers take an active part in the research process and non-performers very often use performative ways to communicate their ideas.