Anthropos, Tyrant (Oedipus)

There is a drought in the countryside surrounding Thebes and, at the same time, the sea level is rising. The fields are eroding, famine is looming. The seers have long promised the people prosperity through progress – now they are supposed to show them the way out of the crisis. A few sacrifices, a little symbolic renunciation: Surely that should be enough to be able to go on living as before?
The climate catastrophe as a long-predicted doom, which we are inexorably heading towards despite or because of all attempts to escape it, becomes a tragedy of ancient proportions in Anthropos, Tyrant (Oedipus). In Thebes, ruled by Oedipus, the riddle-solver and patricide, man’s attempt to understand himself as no longer a part but the shaper of fate and nature begins – with terrible consequences. While the people and rulers face the approaching apocalypse sometimes hedonistically, sometimes fatalistically, sometimes with a determined faith in progress, the calls of the oracle Pythia – and with them the urgent warnings of science – for an immediate change of system to place not man but the earth at the centre, remain unheard. 

«It’s about the false blindness of the one who actually sees and the claimed powerlessness of the one who is actually powerful … and in an intensive dialogue the ensemble develops a search for a solution that will be a way out for everyone.» (Berliner Zeitung)

«A great success … this evening comes dauntingly close.» (Nachtkritik)