Théâtre du Soleil – Ariane Mnouchkine

Here dwell the dragons / Hic sunt Dracones

A popular play inspired by real events, in several episodes

First episode

1917: Victory was in our hands

Ariane Mnouchkine, one of the most beloved theatre creators of the Greek audience, needs no further introduction. Théâtre du Soleil—the legendary stage ensemble she founded in 1964 and persists tirelessly to this very day—has proven one of the most profiled and unwavering pillars of contemporary French culture, having visited the Festival numerous times with a series of collective theatrical sagas that were met with widespread acclaim. Notable examples are Le Dernier Caravansérail (2006), Les Éphémères (2007), The Castaways of the Fol Espoir (Sunrises) (2011), and Kanata – Episode I – La Controverse (2019), the sole time she has entrusted the legendary Théâtre du Soleil troupe to a guest director, the internationally celebrated Canadian Robert Lepage.

Modelled around the ideals of “a theatre for the people” (as articulated by Jean Vilar), “a political theatre” (as envisioned by Brecht), and a “celebratory theatre” as imagined during the May ’68 uprisings, Mnouchkine foremost believes in the educational merits of the theatrical deed—both for the artists and an audience that she seeks to nourish but also conceptually challenge. According to her school of thought, theatre ought to remain alert to the grand challenges of our times and reclaim a position at the forefront of social discourse. This ethos is crystalised by the choice of themes each time, as well as the modus operandi of the company that functions in a commune-like manner already from the 1960s, both on stage and away from the limelight. The Troupe and the Community are indeed here paramount: there are no leading actors, and the only true protagonist is the Chorus itself, hence the profound influences in the company’s work by Ancient Drama, Commedia dell'arte, and Street Theatre, as well as the traditions of Ritual Theatre of the East.

Elevating theatricality to a higher plateau through a unique multicultural idiom encompassing utterly diverse aesthetic references in visual presentation, chorus, and music, the company’s performances always revolve around the backbones of Myth and History, crafting narratives that illuminate the broader historical momentum. They address the local and the specific to speak of the global and the universal, harnessing to the utmost degree the entire gamut of expressive means offered by theatre: improvisation, theatre as a game, rhythm, masks and costumes, and chorality.

This admired balance is once again accomplished in their latest production, Here dwell the dragons, an epic and historical mural of a work that marks Théâtre du Soleil’s sixtieth anniversary. Beginning with the war in Ukraine, it unfolds backwards in distinct acts/seasons, with its first episode, titled 1917: Victory was in our hands, presented this year at the Festival. Featuring a cast of around forty actors who actively participate in all facets of this theatrical production, the performance signifies the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of the Troupe and stands as a milestone event for European theatre, earning its place within the Festival’s seventieth-anniversary programme.

But who are these “Dragons”? Looking at mediaeval cartography, unnamed lands—still unconquered at the time and thought to be uninhabited and dangerous—begin to emerge. To discourage trespassers, the maps warned those eager to enter with the phrase “Hic sunt dracones” (“Here dwell the dragons”). In the Western imaginary, Dragons signify a “terra incognita”, and Mnouchkine–ever a treasurer of metaphors– sees them as still very much alive and dangerously so in our contemporary world.

How is it even possible, she asks, that in the 21st century, in the heart of Europe, we have become witnesses of a nation’s campaign to invade, subordinate, and destroy another independent nation? This is the principal question that sets the show on track and the one she tries to answer. “Perhaps, with this spectacle,” Mnouchkine notes, “we are, very naively, seeking to set up a sort of theatrical barricade against the various despotisms, totalitarianisms, and ideological stubbornness that today threaten us on multiple fronts.” Guided by a carefully curated “subjective” bibliography (as she calls it), developed in collaboration with esteemed philosopher and feminist Hélène Cixous—a longtime collaborator of the Troupe from the 1980s onwards—Mnouchkine dives headlong into the year 1917 to theatrically portray “the birth of a system that changed the world.” By reintroducing the historical events as they happened in real time and through a grand theatrical embodiment on the part of its protagonists, Mnouchkine seeks to trace the roots of today’s war in Ukraine—and to lay bare the mechanisms of totalitarianism that have shaped the world we now inhabit.

Dimitra Kondylaki

Created collectively by Théâtre du Soleil in harmony with Hélène Cixous