Anatoli Vassiliev . Moscow Theatre 'School of Dramatic Art'

In conjunction with Europalia Russia, we are organising a ten-day festival featuring three very different productions by the great Russian theatre-maker Anatoly Vassiliev. In 'The Iliad, book XXIII', the stage is filled by forty players who perform an excerpt from the myth of the Trojan War. Vassiliev took many years to prepare this large-scale theatre project in the course of many workshops all over the world, as far as Japan. The production has a strongly oriental slant and is influenced by Japanese martial arts and No theatre. The emphasis is on spatiality, rhythm, movement and the expression of events by the specific use of the voice. The battle scenes are conveyed by pure motion, using both abstract and natural props such as sticks and banners. Vassiliev chose to stage the twenty-third book of Homer's epic poem, in which the fearless Greek hero Achilles avenges the death of his friend Patrocles and brings down the Trojan leader Hector.