PENTHESILEA

"To win you, or to perish."

One of the most powerful works of theater literature: Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons, and the Greek hero Achilles meet and fall in love in the most unfavorable of all places – the battlefield. Their personal emotional world literally puts the legal order of the societies they lead to the test.

In the midst of the Trojan War, an unfamiliar army appears out of nowhere, consisting solely of female warriors. The Greeks consider the women to be potential allies, but to their astonishment, the Amazons fight against both them and their Trojan enemies. When Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, lays eyes on the Greek hero Achilles, they become inseparable: Against all reason, they plunge into a duel that breaks all rules and endangers the order of politics and emotions alike.
In this storm of bloody desire and unbridled passion, Kleist tells one of the most outrageous love stories in the theater canon in a unique language that ruthlessly exposes every emotion and every abyss. Across camps and genders, he portrays a humanity that grapples with incomprehensible forces discovered within and around itself, beyond good and evil.

The Wortwiege presents the unconventional mythological drama by Heinrich von Kleist, which was brought to the stage only two generations after the author's death, in a version for three actors. Directed by Jérôme Junod, who is at home in classical texts and now also serves as the director in the Wortwiege.