Medea

Satoshi Miyagi, celebrated Artistic Director of Japan’s SPAC (Shizuoka Performing Arts Center), confronts the haunting legacy of empire with a contemporary reinterpretation of Euripides’ Medea, set in Japan’s late 19th-century Meiji era.

Through visual symbolism, traditional music and a form-defying performance, tradition and experimentation are fused in a postcolonial feminist retelling of Euripides’ classic. In Miyagi’s signature style, each character is played by two performers: a 'speaker', here played by men, and a 'mover', played by women, using movement rooted in kabuki technique.

Medea is the shocking story of a woman who, betrayed and cast aside by her treacherous lover, takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love.

During the male-dominated Meiji era, imperial ambition masked itself as modernisation. Male diners at a traditional restaurant summon female waitresses for entertainment, and the tragic tale of Medea unfolds as a play-within-a-play. Miyagi uses Euripides’ tragedy to create a searing critique of nationalism, gendered oppression and colonial violence.

In Japanese with English surtitles.