Becoming Berenice - Voila! Festival 2018 at Applecart Art

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2. Becoming Berenice - Voila! Festival 2018

Part of Voila! Europe Theatre Festival 2018
By Theatre Forge

Two lovers strive to hold on to each other as political forces tear them apart. A multi-sensory, poetic tale of one woman’s painful journey to emancipation, this contemporary staging of one of France’s most iconic plays is underpinned by an original score of world- and electronic music and powerful physical elements.

In a new translation by Rosie Hilal, this verse drama is given a powerful, contemporary re-awakening. A French classic hardly known in Britain, Berenice was written by Jean Racine more than 300 years ago. This is the first time a Racine play has been translated by a woman, which given the subject matter and central character of the piece, makes for a uniquely feminist interpretation of his work.

Three central characters, from Palestine, Syria/Turkey (the occupied East) and Rome (the imperial, dominating West) revolve around the impossibility of love in an intimate, in-the-round setting, where music and movement bring to the fore the cultural and societal clashes inherent in the play.

The agonising opposition of public duty versus private love begs the question of how much we are ever in control of our freedom, and how far we can go for love without giving up our own identity. In some ways, Berenice and Titus recall a grown-up Romeo and Juliet, with an uncertain outcome.

In English
Tue 13th, Thu 15th + Sat 17th Nov (8.45pm)