‘Prometheus chained’[1] at Siracusa.

Gods are going on a blind track, in the foreground of the very special staging by Federica Parolini for ‘Prometheus chained’, by Aeschylous, 2023 Theater Season – Siracusa, ‘Greek Theater’.

 

 

Maybe also Prometheus the Titan thought – the solid and very capable Alessandro Albertin[2] on the stage - that gods lack sense of humour.

“It was all a hustle and bustle without light of mind”, Prometheus loudly reproaches to the audience from the top of the rocky and desolate Scythia, here a menacing but secluded silo-tower to which he has been chained.

When the humans were allowed, as a matter of facts, to to be in the presence of the gods Prometheus liked to challenge the intelligence of the greatest among gods : let Zeus first choose which part he preferred keeping for himself of the just sacrificed ox! And Zeus at once took the one that looked best packaged, but that instead had been filled with waste… So humans kept the best part.

Men too shrewd for the gods Prometheus demiurge was forging indeed, and Zeus took from humans their memory of the spark that can repeat the fire, spread evil in the world through the weak Pandora and condemned Prometheus to chains, prey to an insatiable rapacious bird.

“I will tell, not to humiliate human beings, but to fully reveal the affection that dictated those gifts to me. Even before me they looked[3], and it was blind watching; they heard sounds, and it was not hearing… Mine was, for the good of humans – open throats the hero goes on from the distant tower - the idea of the calculus, first fruit of wit, and mine was the signs system, Memory of the world, fertile mother of Muses.”[4]

The entrance of the insane Iò, de-mented virgin who allowed to be transformed into a ‘cow’ from Hera Zeus’ worthy wife, only confirms the imputability of delegating one’s memory to others, which immediately passes into a dead-end enslavement : but Prometheus[5] already knows about the following vicissitudes of the troubled Iò, as by only chance she will become progenitor of those Ionic people who, with their uprising, will get help from Athens until they break free from Persian rule, and of Heracles who, finally grateful to Prometheus will set free him, by just shooting a single arrow on the insatiable vulture.

That only human question of ‘time’, to which Prometheus refers in the exceptional monologue which is fulcrum of the text, it’s actually the question of ‘work’ that the thousands gifts from the Titan sterilized and emptied of energy, because everyone’s memory cannot do its part.

Surprisingly co-attributable with Zeus for naiveness of gods and to their own detriment, Prometheus introduced laziness among humans, as a very serious factor of unpredictable costs, and in many forms indeed.

Was this perhaps the long-awaited secret from Zeus which Prometheus hadn’t time to reveal ?

 

 

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – July 27, 2023

 

 

[1] ‘Prometheus chained’ 2023 Theater Season ‘Greek Theater’ Siracusa www.indafondazione.org Direction : Leo Muscato; Translation : Roberto Vecchioni; Scenes : Federica Parolini; Costumes: Silvia Aymonimo; Coreographies : Nicole Kehrberger; Music: Ernani Maletta; Choir leader : Francesca Della Monica; Responsabile del coro : Elena Polic Greco; Main interpreters : Alessandro Albertin, Deniz Ozdogan, Michele Cipriani, Alfonso Veneroso, Pasquale di Filippo, Silvia Valenti, Davide Paganini; with the participation of the Students girls of the ‘Accademia d’Arte del Dramma Antico’ of Siracusa.

[2] Alessandro Albertin is a professional actor and a very trained cyclist : born at Padua in 1972, he graduated in 1999 at the Scuola d’Arte Drammatica ‘Paolo Grassi’ of Milan. He worked with Virginio Gazzolo, Gianrico Tedeschi, Ugo Pagliai, Paola Gassmann, Gigi Proietti (‘Romeo and Giulietta’, 2003), Franco Branciaroli (‘Endgame’ 2005), Alessandro Gassmann, Damiano Michieletto (‘The fan’, 2012). He is author of some dramatic texts that he is bringing successfully on the stage for ‘Spazio Mio Teatro’ of Milan : ‘Lo Sbarco in Normandia, i segreti di una vittoria’; ‘Marco Pantani, il campione fuori norma’; ‘Perlasca. Il coraggio di dire no’.

[3] ‘L’acquisizione del fuoco’, S.Freud (1931), Translation by Giacomo B. Contri (1985), pro-manuscripto.

[4] ‘Prometeo incatenato’, Eschilo / Garzanti Editore SpA 2022, Translation by Ezio Savino with parallel text; pp. : 38-39

[5] Prometheus is ‘the one who thinks first’ and maybe too soon, as well as Epimetheus his brother is ‘the one who thinks later’, that is too late.