My daughter comes wearing her wedding dress and I’m going to kill her…

Iphigenia is the first violent death of a woman in Western literature. Agamemnon, her father and head of the Greek army, sentences and nails like a flag the root of violence against girls and women at the origin of our civilization. Following the trail of Iphigenia’s blood we reach the sacrifice of Polyxena, a Trojan princess, and the discovery burns rage in our throats: The Trojan War ended as it began, flooding the sea with virgin blood…

Ifigenia drew a map from kilometer zero of violence against women to the return home of the victorious perpetrator army. A newly created work, woven from three classic tragedies, through which the epic of the Greek victory in the Trojan War passes: Iphigenia in Aúlis, Hecuba and Agamemnon. A work about the very high cost that women had to pay for men to achieve glory.

Hecuba and Clytemnestra, queens of victors and vanquished, mothers of the murdered, harbor in their wombs a savage wound that opens. Rage mutates into slow fury. Here is the transformation of mothers into beasts… The steel gate of revenge opens… The silence is torn by the voracious instinct of a tormented beast and a thunderous scream thirsty for murderous blood. This is the story of the forgotten ones and their condemned mothers. It is a rose of blood between bloody hands.

Iphigenia is a crack of light in the dark cave into which women’s pain and guilt have been thrown. A beam of light to illuminate everything, so that their names are not erased from history. Because silence is not innocent.

Her tormented screams stabbed into my belly like sharp glass. And I was no longer afraid of burning.

The Light is Ours.

Not recommended for children under 12 years of age.
May contain detailed cruel scenes.
Duration: approximately 90 minutes.

(The Untold Tragedy of the Greek Fortune Teller)

What do you prefer: know the truth and no one believes you or know nothing, tell lies and everyone believes them?

This show is a journey through the long life of the myth of Tiresias, which tells us in first person about his life, the war and family conflicts that he had to face trying to maintain order in the cities.

The violation of laws, disobedience to the prohibitions of Gods and kings build the identity of people, challenging the already written destiny of mortals with tragic consequences. In it we find the great classical characters who requested his services as a fortune-teller advisor: Zeus, Hera, Narcissus, Echo, Ágave, Creon, Oedipus, Ulysses, Antigone, Jocasta… The Gods punished and rewarded him in equal parts, sometimes being , the reward was a fierce punishment, like that of living eternally even in death, and the punishment was the reward of living in a woman’s body that endowed him with the knowledge and total sensitivity of a human being. A mortal with powers who, in opposition to the Hero, saw everything from the sidelines, incapacitated for action.

In this mythical journey, we travel through her long and intense life and witness for the first time in history her personal tragedy never before told. The tragedy of living knowing a future that sadly repeats itself over and over again, because we mortals are destined to stumble twice or more over the same stone: the blind arrogance of the seer in eternal conflict with the clairvoyance of the blind.

Carlota Ferrer and José Manuel Mora

Medusa, the feared monster of antiquity with snake hair and a petrifying gaze for anyone who dared to look at her, is beheaded by the hero Perseus, who gives the gorgon’s head to the goddess Athena as a symbol of Victory. This is how we have always been told the story, but… what if the events were told to us by Medusa herself?

We reformulate the classic myth of Medusa to delve into induced social thinking, appearances, the fear of what is different and the value of integrity in a society that has not changed much despite the passage of centuries. Through humor and tragedy, music, voice, movement and the plasticity of a multidisciplinary staging we will tell the myth from the place of the defeated, the antihero, thus revealing the other side of every coin, which maintains its value, no matter which way you look.

Biting, ironic, tragic, sometimes funny, forceful and revealing staging to turn the established order around. The value of what should be silenced, but that screams a truth that wants to be heard. The truth of Medusa, The Gorgon.

Recommended age: from 12 years.
Duration: 90 minutes.

Rome, beginnings of the Republic. In a context of great social conflict, the ruling class (the patricians) and the people (the plebs) confront each other: The people are hungry, they ask for wheat. At that moment war is declared against the Volsci. The figure of Cayo Marcio emerges, a noble warrior admired for his extreme valor and courage. His great victory will earn him the name Coriolanus.

After the victory the nobles want to appoint Coriolanus Consul, the tribunes of the plebs refuse. The game of politics, lies, impostures, and strategies begins. Coriolanus, an extremist man, decides not to betray himself, or his principles. His virulent reaction against the rights of the people will earn him condemnation as a traitor and exile.

Coriolanus joins Aufidius, leader of the Volsci, to destroy Rome. With Rome besieged and close to disaster, Coriolanus’s mother, in a memorable scene, makes her beloved son give up, because as Iban Martin says in his podcasts and books about Rome: “The love for a mother is sometimes stronger than the “I hate that it can be felt against an entire city.” Aufidius executes Coriolanus and in Rome a temple stands to female fortune and wisdom for having saved the city.

Recommended age: from 12 years.

Athens is at war. Trigeus, a vinedresser from Attica, undertakes the heroic act of bringing Peace to his city. One morning he wakes up with the quixotic, irrepressible desire to climb Olympus to ask the gods for explanations. Like a knight-errant who will not stop until he undoes the wrong, he will do so riding on the back of his giant beetle (an animal highly valued in the mythological universe of Aristophanes).

The fable of this comedy, the irreverent fruit of the union between the theater of Nieva and that of Aristophanes (original author), is an invocation to the goddess Peace, with all the difficulties that this noble will entails…

The Athenian slaves knead excrement that they will use to feed the giant dung beetle that Trigeus will use to fly to a private meeting with the gods. “At this precise point, the performance will begin with the clear voice of SHIT! “, announces Corypheus. When Trigeus arrives at the house of the gods, only Hermes is there; The other gods have gone to a remote refuge in the hope that they will never be disturbed by battle again, but The War lurks, victorious like a hurricane…

They tell Trigeo that Peace is imprisoned, mistreated, cadaverous, in a nearby cave. Corypheus, chorus and anyone who prides themselves on being human on the path to civilization will carry out the rescue to establish pacifism.

In Peace the mixed and the incoherent prevail, the allegory and the symbol, there is utopia and escapism, if you will, from society. Master the fantasy. Spectacle and audience know that they belong to the unreal plane of the theater and the Dionysian festival, to their freedom restricted in space and time…

Let us take care of Peace and, if necessary,

Let’s pretend to be a paradise on earth.

Recommended age: all audiences.

This show could be considered the third part of a trilogy consisting of Aeschylus, Birth and Death of Tragedy and The Gods and God. The three shows revolve around the oral tradition of mythological stories on which the great Greek tragedies are built. And at the same time, the three shows are humorous monologues, where the language and resources of comedy are confronted with the arguments of the best-known classic tragedies frequently performed at the Mérida Festival. This mixture of tragedy with humor is not strange to the origin and perennial essence of Greek theater. It is said of Silenus, the demigod who serves as the patron of tragedy, and subordinate of Dionysus, god of tragedy, that when Midas asked him “what was best for man,” Silenus replied: “what is best for man.” “It would be not having been born.” To Midas’ astonishment, Silenus added: “but don’t worry, since you were born, the best thing for you would be to die as soon as possible.” This cannot be understood except as a joke that suggests the “absurdity of existence”, which is the great leitmotif of all Greek tragedy. There were still 25 centuries left for Valle-Inclán to present that mixture again in his brilliant creation of the grotesque. The mixture of genres was always there, showing that the dividing lines are a conventional creation, a code, so that the public adjusts its attitude towards the show.

Icons or the exploration of destiny is a humorous monologue that reflects on destiny in Greek tragedy. The great iconic figures of Medea, Oedipus, Antigone and finally Hecuba parade through this show. The exploration of destiny comes hand in hand with a comparative exposition of this determining force (destiny) in the lives of tragic heroes and likewise in the stories of Hindu mythology, where the concept of karma includes in the dynamism of destiny, the concept of freedom.

All these ingredients are interspersed with autobiographical experiences of the author and actor himself, as humorous parodies, with didactic elements from the usual repertoire of the Mérida Classical Theater Festival.

Recommended age: from 16 years.
Duration: 100 minutes

Esperanza makes a hole in the wall of her bedroom to get into the niche of the goddess Hebe and have secret meetings with her lover, the young Candido. The slave Rustic, who is in love with the same man, discovers the deception and takes the opportunity to impersonate Esperanza.

Thus, a hole in the wall is the engine of this story. A hole through which love and humor, the two fundamental weapons to overthrow prejudices, are poured.

Recommended age: all public.

The immolation of Medea in the temple, burned by the avenging fury of the flames, constitutes one of the most overwhelming and visionary moments in the history of opera. This was recognized by Wagner – a self-confessed admirer of this work – when he replicated it at the close of his monumental Twilight of the Gods, and this was also recognized by Maria Callas, who with her unmatched dramatic talent turned this almost forgotten title into one of the most personal milestones of his career.

Cherubini’s genius reigned in republican France in the 1790s and made a deep impression on the young Beethoven, although, at the turn of the century, his name fell behind those of Spontini and Rossini, and he gained fame as a moody and conservative author. Noble and majestic like a sculpture by Canova or a fresco by David, but internally shaken by the overwhelming personality of its protagonist, the opera Medée offers unsuspected possibilities of scenic and dramatic development in accordance with “the harmonic ravings, the barbaric transitions and the exaggerated chromaticism.” » which – according to an early critic of the work – treasures its score.

Recommended age: from 12 years
Duration:
Act 1: 60 minutes
Intermission: 25 minutes
Acts 2 and 3: 65 minutes

Achilles, son of the goddess Thetis and the mortal Peleus, was one of the great heroes of Greek mythology. Of all those who fought in the Trojan War, he was the most recognized. His role in the war was decisive for the victory of the Greeks, but that did not mean that he could attend the fall of Troy. Despite his superhuman qualities, Achilles was mortal. His death was anticipated and, unlike other figures such as Heracles, he did not expect edification, but instead, a life of despair in the world of shadows. The extreme strength, cruelty, arrogance and beauty of Achilles became the prototype of all those who wanted to pay to live an illustrious, dangerous and accelerated life. After its success in the 67th edition of the Mérida Festival, La Fam Teatre returns, this time, in a new venue that joins the Festival’s programming: Plasencia.

In a mental health center, a group of patients is rehearsing a play about Aristophanes that will be shown in different centers around the country. Directed by a former professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, the leaders of the center observe the result of the show in astonishment. The professor/director believes he is embodying Aristophanes himself, and considers himself the creator of the satire and comedy genre. If that were not enough, the scenes that the patients enact in the show are not politically correct, the morality that prevails at the moment.

A debate begins here that will make us reflect on the limits of morality and freedom of expression. Who decides what is politically correct and what is not? We are exposed to an overprotective society capable of vetoing content due to the opinion of some. They are the new critics of society, who point to others, the “culprits” demonizing them through platforms that offer total anonymity like social networks, the bonfires of the present.

Duration: 80 minutes.

Age: Over 15 years.