Acropolis Remapped: on a Democratic Politics of Resistance

Philip Hager

doi:10.12681/syn.16226

Abstract

In 2010, forty-eight years after Jerzy Grotowski's iconic 1962 performance of Stanisław Wyspiański's Akropolis, Greek director Michael Marmarinos presented to the Athenian audience Acropolis: Reconstruction. In his homage to the Polish director, Marmarinos asked the question that Grotowski (and Wyspiański before him) had raised: what is the contemporary Acropolis? Marmarinos’s Acropolis observes the ruins of contemporary Athens; frustrations, tensions and other dramaturgies of the crisis that was beginning to transform the urban fabric of the Greek capital. In this article, I map the in-crisis restructuring of Athens in dialogue with Acropolis: Reconstruction. Employing Deleuze’s idea of a ‘minor or minimising treatment’ of the classics, I examine the becoming-ruins of monuments in a city in crisis, by searching for the contemporary acropolises not in the ruins upon the hill (the remains of classical Athens and the symbol of its democracy) but in the ruins in its shadow.

Highlights

In 2010, forty-eight years after Jerzy Grotowski's iconic 1962 performance of Stanisław Wyspiański's Akropolis, Greek director Michael Marmarinos presented to the Athenian audience Acropolis: Reconstruction
In his homage to the Polish director, Marmarinos asked the question that Grotowski had raised: what is the contemporary Acropolis? Marmarinos’s Acropolis observes the ruins of contemporary Athens; frustrations, tensions and other dramaturgies of the crisis that was beginning to transform the urban fabric of the Greek capital
Employing Deleuze’s idea of a ‘minor or minimising treatment’ of the classics, I examine the becoming-ruins of monuments in a city in crisis, by searching for the contemporary acropolises not in the ruins upon the hill but in the ruins in its shadow

Summary

Introduction

In 2010, forty-eight years after Jerzy Grotowski's iconic 1962 performance of Stanisław Wyspiański's Akropolis, Greek director Michael Marmarinos presented to the Athenian audience Acropolis: Reconstruction. Two years later Michail Marmarinos presented the Athenian audience with his Acropolis: Reconstruction (Athens 2010), a production that confronted engaged with a theatrical monument, Jerzy Grotowski’s 1962 iconic production of Stanisław Wyspiański’s play Akropolis (1904).

Results

Conclusion