King Lear
Peiraios 260, Athens 2015

Writer: William Shakespeare
Director: Tomaž Pandur
Scenography: Numen + Ivana Jonke

The play was staged in the cental space of a former derelict industrial hall on the outskirts of Athens.

Most of the first act happens on the coal-hued surface of an elongated wooden platform, sprawled directly in front of the auditorium and upholding only a set of strategically dispersed black chairs. 

The broad space behind the frontal platform is initially left empty, a vast moorland of aged concrete. The chairs are designed as an elegant breed - stark, black mantises with a streak of cruelty in the waistline.

In the culmination of the first act, a  large plastic foil  is extracted from underneath the platform and spread across the  back of the stage, filling with air from a set of inflating machines. 

Once inflated, the supersized object morphs, shifts and curls, towering above the water-soaked platform like a suspended tsunami. Throughout the second act it will serve as an acidic heathland where Lear wanders through the thunderstorm in existential agony - but also as a living, sentient ocean of his eroding consciousness, plagued by guilt and incipient madness.

The leviathanic body convulses and ripples under the heavy rhythm of acting, creating the spiritual landscape for king's inner breakdown and his final descent into insanity.

 

Photos by Aljoša Rebolj and Numen/ForUse

 

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