“The Trojan Women”. The quest for original theatricality in the direction of Andrei Serban (1974)

Abstract

The article presents the performance The Trojan Women, directed by Andrei Serban and produced at La MaMa in New York in 1974. Through the consultation of archival materials and thanks to the interviews held with the artists, it was possible to reconstruct the path of the artistic research that led to the staging and the work on voice, sound and the archaic languages shared by the musician Elizabeth Swados with the actors of the Great Jones Repertory Company. It was in fact the collective creation that gave rise to the spoken, sung and moving choruses that make up the opera and on which this in-depth study focuses. This essay traces the company’s collective work and reconstructs the staging of the play, highlighting the effectiveness of the directorial choice of alternating spoken and sung choruses with the voices of the protagonists. The choice to use texts in ancient Greek and Latin, with the adoption of words belonging to other archaic languages (Maya, Nahuatl), together with the distribution of the action throughout the theater space and among the audience, contributed to the evocation of the rituality of the ancient Greek theater, made possible also by the active participation of the audience, spectators but at the same time witnesses of the tragedy, who form a real moving chorus throughout the performance.