This autumn UK audiences will have the first opportunity to witness the English language premiere of Jean René Lemoine’s reimagining of the classic story of passion and revenge Medea.
Previewing at the Marlborough Pub & Theatre in Brighton on the 28th September, the performance will premiere at The Place London presented as part of And What? Queer. Arts. Festival before going on tour to Cambridge Junction, Norwich Arts Centre, Pavilion Dance Bournemouth, Hull Truck Theatre, Unity Theatre Liverpool as part of Homotopia Festival, Lancaster Arts Centre at University of Lancaster, and Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
This startling reimagining sees Medea cast as the ultimate outsider, a stranger in a foreign land, a being filled with rage. Her monologue is half witness-statement, half incantation, taking us from ancient Greece to modern Europe and back again in a provocative, blood-soaked collage of performance, opera, and sexual confession.
Lemoine’s version of Medea, already performed in France to great acclaim, reimagines this archetypal figure from classical drama as a genderless, stateless, and violently transgressive contemporary figure. The playwright, an artist of Afro-French origin born in Haiti, makes Medea a stranger in her own country, who seeks to flee from the asphyxiation of family bonds through carnal union with her brother and then in the physical bedazzlement of her encounter with Jason, the ravisher and the violator. The work speaks about marginalisation, isolation, and exile.
The performer, dancer and vocalist, François Testory fuses his extraordinary physicality, and androgynous and unique stage presence with a radical mixing of classical and contemporary vocal technique to bring the murderous figure of Medea to life in this evocative lament featuring live music by Phil Von. Testory has performed with some of Europe’s most innovative companies, including Lindsay Kemp, DV8, Rambert Dance Company, Punch Drunk, and Gecko.
The production will tour in smaller-scale venues across the UK in order to ensure the work is experienced by young diverse audiences in a bid to present highly charged theatre on an accessible platform. Through the performance itself and an accompanying programme of audience engagement and participation, audiences will be encouraged to explore the issues with which the work deals.
