Ever since Antiquity, the curse of the Atreidae has haunted western theatre. Racine and Euripides alike took an interest in Agamemnon, the father who, in order to summon the winds needed to reach Troy and win the war, sends his own daughter to death. But then came Tiago Rodrigues, who likes nothing more than to twist canonical masterpieces to reveal their unknown dimensions. In this interpretation of the myth, the Lisbon playwright wonders what destiny would have awaited the last of the Atreidae if men—who preside over her fate—weren’t subject to the gods’ authority. An approach of the pleasures of free will which immediately spoke to Anne Théron, whose work often explores the inner screams of women she stages in exceptional shows, tapestries of aural, visual, plastic, and dramatic sensations. “Clytemnestra is an extraordinary character. She asks the men to give up. (…) She’s an angry woman, determined to see Agamemnon answer for his crime before history. In that way, she also constructs another memory of the tragedy, for us watching today. It’s dizzying!”
Whether he’s combining true story and fiction, revisiting the classics or adapting novels, Tiago Rodrigues is deeply invested in the idea of writing with and for the actors. In 2003, he founded his own company for which he writes plays, then was named director of the Lisbon National Theatre in 2014. In September 2023 he will become the next director of the Festival d’Avignon. Tiago Rodrigues is the author of many plays, including By Heart and Bovary, but also Antony and Cleopatra and Sopro, which the spectators of the Festival d’Avignon discovered in 2015 and 2017.