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Aristophanes

Wealth

Comedy as political lesson

Aristophanes

Wealth

Ploutis

PREMIERE

10. januar 2013 SNG Nova Gorica

11. januar 2013 SNG Nova Gorica

Chremylos, a poor elderly man, asked advice on how to raise his son from the oracle in Delphi. If he wants to become a wealthy may, is turning to crime and amorality really the only way? Gods advised him to follow the first person he meets on the way back from the temple. He chances upon Plutus, the god of wealth, who – being blind – cannot tell whether he brings luck to good or evil people. Chremylos is convinced he'll be able to restore Plutus’s sight and thus make honourable people happy, but soon a horrendously ugly woman, Poverty, appears and claims that without her, the world would be left without goods, services, culture, arts … and above all, without moral people, because she's the one who makes a person good.

The great comediographer asked an intriguing question in his last preserved work, a question revived today in modified versions: how would a utopian society where wealth were equally distributed among all people work? Wealth is an allegory, but also a sharp political satire on the social order in antiquity and the prevailing values of the time. The text of the “raw theatre” was adapted by directors Luka Martin Škof and Jaka Andrej Vojevec (this time in the role of a dramaturg). The adaptation links directness, nonchalance and uncompromising criticism of the ancient Greek comedy to today's social and political situation in which these elements are sorely missed. Greece, of the old and of today, thus opens into the space of mixed reality – into time “x”, “the compressed future past which essentially means now”.

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