Memories from a Theatre of War

Abstract

Where is the site of the “Persians”? Can we (re-)locate Aeschylus’ play, earliest remaining tragedy of Western Civilization, literally, in front of the palace of Susa, at the tomb of king Dareios (who reappears as ghost)? Or do we have to locate it rather historically in the theatre of Dionysos in Athens, the place where the tragedy was performed first, in order to let Greek spectators imagine the despair of their defeated enemies? Since this play, like all tragedies, may be performed at any theatre in the world today, what could be its relation to a particular site? In August 2011, Mike Pearson, former co-director of Brith Gof, has staged a new version of the “Persians” in an extraordinary setting: In the Welsh national park Brecon Beacons, there is a military training ground with a “German Village”. The scene was the so-called “Social Skills House”, an open, half-cut concrete building designed for the presentation of in-house military action, in front of a grand stand for army audiences. This unique theatre of war was at the same time a theatre of memory (constructed during the Cold War, anticipating a battlefield in the “Fulda-Gap”; later on transformed into a “Balkan”-village), and a theatre of site specific experience (in a landscape almost untouched for many decades, inhabited only by sheep). A brief analysis of the performance examines how Mike Pearson and his collaborators developed paradigmatic relations between site and play, memory and simulation, technology and experience.