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THE ANCIENT TRAGEDY NOWADAYS In 480 BCthe Persians lost the Battle of Salamis to the Greeks, whom they had previously oppressed. Eight years later a Greek wrote about this major event from the defeated enemy's point of view. The Persians is now the world's oldest surviving play. In it, a nation recognises its glory days are over. The tragedy is an "organised nervous breakdown" (as translator Durs Grünbein describes it), a neverending cry for help translated into words. Aeschylus lets those responsible for the fiasco have their say, from the Chorus of Elders to the defeated military commander. King Xerxes. The playwright examines contemporary history, but from a viewpoint that incorporates both past and future. He shows that the winners of today are the losers of tomorrow. Even when the dead are quickly buried and forgotten, they remain present. In his theatrical works, Dimiter Gotscheff has always strived for the cathartic effects - both spiritual and physical - of classical Greek tragedy. Aeschylus'The Persians was the second in a series of productions of ancient Greek tragedies put on by the Deutsches Theater during the 2006/2007 season. Other plays in the series included Michael Thalheimer's staging of Aeschylus'The Oresteia and Barbara Frey's version of Euripedes'Medea. Ail three productions were smash hits, both with audiences and the critics. The Süddeutsche Zeitung called the series a »benchmark-setting treatment« of ancient Greek tragedy, »something virtually no other ensemble has accomplished since Peter Stein and Klaus Michael Grüber's productions of ancient Greek plays at Berlin's old Schaubühne«. As part of its focus on ancient Greek drama, the Deutsches Theater - in conjunction with the German Research Foundation (DFG) - organised a conference on »Ancient Greek Tragedy Today« from March 2nd to 4th 2007. A publication documenting the conference, which contains lectures by Oliver Taplin [Oxford], Susanne Gödde [Berlin], Bernd Stegemann [Berlin], Anton Bierl [Basel], Michael Jaeger [Berlin], Erika Fischer-Lichte [Berlin], Platon Mavromoustakos [Athens], Matthias Dreyer [Berlin] and Edith Hall [London], will appear as the fifth volume in the »Blätter des Deutschen Theaters« series. Published in May 2007, it is available in bookstores and at the Deutsches Theater. The sixth volume in the series is to be dedicated to director Dimiter Gotscheff.

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