Cayo is a dancer who offends Nero in one of his famous bacchanalia, for which the emperor sentences him to death. Luckily he manages to escape and plans to hide in a dance school while pursuing his dream of being a great saltator. But he knocks at the wrong door and ends up at the gladiator school of Senator Piso.

Because of this, Cayo unintentionally and unknowingly becomes part of a conspiracy against Nero which causes the decline of gladiator games, and revolutionizes theatre, music and dance. It is extremely funny!

Duration: 150 minutes with break.

Recommended age: For all audiences.

TEATRO BELLAS ARTES

“Antigone, in truth, did not commit suicide at her grave, according to Sophocles, making an inevitable mistake, he tells us.” With these words, María Zambrano begins her work La tumba de Antígona (1967), a theatrical piece that combines philosophy and literature. In those initial words Zambranian feeling unfolds in all its splendor: hope, time, delirium, love.

Hope as the last sustenance of life that allows to germinate in knowledge; time for consciousness to awaken; delirium to find links with reality when reality prevents existence from being rooted in it; love as dream and sacrifice and promise.

These ingredients radically question the canon, since Antigone not only does not take her own life, but finds spaces of time in his delirium with which to be reborn. Are we not eager to be born at all? To find reasons from the heart for the unreason of tyrants? Have we not each of us buried alive an Antigone?

Duration: 1 hour 40 minutes.

Recommended age: over 18 years old.

Special Notices: Partial Nudity.

Cayo Caesar. The Sanest of Fools is a one-act drama by writer Agustín Muñoz Sanz, directed by Jesús Manchón, and produced by Atakama Creatividad Cultural for the 66th edition of the Mérida Classic Theater Festival.

The play delves into the best-known public stage of the third Roman emperor and heir to Tiberius. Cayo Caesar is better known as Caligula, a childhood nickname given by the legionary troops under his father’s command. Muñoz Sanz presents a peculiar character: thoughtless, capricious, histrionic, extravagant, cruel, vengeful, amoral and immoral. Crazy for many. Cayo Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (12-41 AD) ruled for almost five years (March 37 to January 41 AD) but didn’t partake in any political, military or cultural actions of historical significance. He did however terrify Rome’s elite (patricians and senators) as well as the people with his serious and unrestrained decisions.

The model of a ruler that the author suggests makes us ponder. It also clearly conveys his concerns about evil and the consequences of power exercised without scruples or ethical and legal limits. An old affair from the imperial times, before and after, which is still valid in the 21st century.

Duration: 90 minutes.

Recommended age: over 13 years old.

“The movement of the past touches the contemporary and the mind continues madly creating images and flows towards the future. Perhaps all of this constitutes the crossroads of existing while feeling the heart beat that breathes the surprise of the unknown and the sweetness of the known with a complicit smile.”

Maria Rovira

Odyssey delves into the journey that the world has experienced in recent times and reflects on what has happened and where we are going. A journey which starts with intimacy and celebration and in which different cultures adapt their roots to a global world. 

The large and diverse group of performers in this Odyssey is made up of different styles and bodies. They all idiosyncratically represent various cultures that fill the same space through 9 scenes that symbolize the journey of life. The dance speaks of beauty, adversity, fear, love, purity, etc, elements through which we constantly transit.

The play seeks to delight the viewer along a path loaded with sensory charm, thus shedding light on the joy of existence and human difficulties.

No matter how many times we fail, there is always another opportunity. If we dream of reaching our Ithaca, we have no choice but to get up and keep going.

Duration: 60 minutes.

Recommended age: over 12 years old.

Desire, war, desertion, power, violence, homeland… Alberto Conejero shares with the public the beauty, mystery and darkness of an epic poem through which he elaborates on the human condition and links different eras. He combines voices from the past and present based on the character of Patroclus, Achilles’ companion-in-arms. A montage that brings us closer to a fundamental work of classical Greek literature, the Iliad.

Interpreter, playwright and director: Three great talents bring to the Mérida Festival a show that is both a war song and a eulogy for the victims. It is a dark poem that speaks of the violence of the battlefield, but also of the violence of desire. The Iliad begins with the desertions of two men who love each other and who leave the battlefield ten years after the war began. We are still talking about the Iliad because that war is not over yet.

Duration: 1h 15 min.

Recommended age: over 16 years old.

Clitemnestra is a redo of the classic myth deviating from historically macho tradition. We rescue a woman who is the victim of a society established by and for men, a woman who rebels against the system, is ahead of her time and therefore branded as cruel and perverse by men.

The play gives voice to this woman who will tell us in first person about her world, her passions, her failures and her triumphs. The journey through the life of Clytemnestra takes us through the most relevant moments of her history. It discusses her marriage to Agamemnon, the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia, the romance with Aegisthus, the Trojan War and the relationship with her daughter Electra.

Through dance and music, and special importance given to flamenco, the interpretation will give life to this fascinating woman. The play is backed by a modified classical choir structure and multidisciplinary staging to help reach modern audiences. The figure of women in history… how much has it changed and where does her way of life leave us?

Duration: 1h 25min.

Age: Over 12 years old.

Oedipus is the ruler of a city ravaged by an epidemic. The augurs of the place predict that the disease will not pass until the murder of the previous president is solved. Oedipus takes charge of the investigation of an unsolved crime and the witnesses and clues bring out the truth. It seems Oedipus unknowingly killed Laius, who turns out to be his father. He also discovers that his current wife Jocasta is actually his mother. This terrible news leads Jocasta to commit suicide and Oedipus to blind himself, unable to bear the vision of his destiny and accepting exile as his sentence.

Duration: 75 minutes.

Recommended age: over 12 years old.

Inspired by his childhood with his family in Valladolid and his father’s love of painting and mythological literature, Fernando Cayo makes a hilarious, critical and lysergic journey through Greek mythology, life and our current world. He creates an experience full of parallels between ancient mythology, our daily behaviors and our “contemporary gods,” turning grandmother Lupe, Zeus, Aphrodite, her parents, Delfina, Ricardo and her brothers along with Dionysus into members of the same family and the wild Maenads…

Duration: 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Recommended age: over 12 years old.

1st century BC. Rome is a city undergoing unstoppable growth that needs to expand to supply its huge population. Many of whom are in  extremely needy situations and involved in conflicts which reach the political sphere.

In this convulsive and unpredictable context, the Senate brings together the most famous speakers of Latine culture, who face each other to guarantee the survival of the Republic or achieve power, at any cost. On camera they do it verbally, leaving the most surprising speeches for history; riots take place in the streets, and murders are perpetrated in the shadows. Cicero and Catilina are at the center of this intersection of interests, and are the protagonists of a vital episode for the evolution of the city and its future.

The Romans, fed up with so much military uprising,  conspiracy, and violence in their neighborhoods begin to question the political system, mainly Greek Democracy, that manages the affairs of the city. Unaware of what their bitter confrontation will end up provoking, not without mutual admiration, the city is on its way to rebuilding its foundations. They are the last actors of the Republic, already in ruins. It is presumed that a new era will rise from the shadows.

Duration: 80 minutes.

Recommended age: For all audiences.

Deucalion dreams of going to Mars, speculating on that distant planet and returning as a hero. Pirra, like her mother Pandora, is an explorer and dreams of digging up and resurrecting the history that sustains us and then live peacefully on the hump of our mother Earth. He knows he has to keep conquering. She knows that, in the depths of time and on distant Olympus, a vessel keeps the philosopher’s stone of Hope and she is sure that by rescuing it, she will relax Zeus and his vengeful lightning. Thus we will rest from all the punishments that beset us today.

Talia, the Muse of comedy, feels inspired by this couple and sees a way to take revenge on her sister Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, who terrifies humanity and also always reaps success. Talía goes down to the arena to breathe her version of events into the young people, she manages to get them in a car and take them to Olympus. Here they come across magic, the most difficult game yet, entertainment, tension and everything necessary to change history; always with the help of her mother, the Muse of Memory, and her father, the mighty Zeus.

The story is always the same, because it is written about the deeds of a hero from the eyes of a poet, from the soul and bowels of the artist, and inspired by the Muses of Olympus. Here Zeus, the immortal cloud-gatherer, still rules and has sent men the best of gifts, woman.

Every explanation, with its prejudice or veneration, is part of the imagination, the subconscious, the legend. Everything is fiction and true at the same time. Put disbelief aside and enjoy a comedy integrated with dance, circus and a magical universe.

Duration: to be confirmed.

Recommended age: For all audiences.