by Sivan Ben Yishai
translated into German by Maren Kames
DIRECTED & CHOREOGRAPHED BY: Pınar Karabulut
PFAUEN
SWISS PREMIERE: 20.09.2025
Medusa is abducted and raped by the sea god Poseidon. Athena is enraged and transforms Medusa into a winged figure with snake-like hair, whose gaze turns all who behold her to stone. Many men embark on a journey to cut off her head and appropriate her power. Perseus succeeds – the anti-heroine is tricked and beheaded.
So goes the myth, and so is the frame of reference for the author Sivan Ben Yishai, who, in her poetic and powerful text, holds a mirror up to the patriarchal gender model. Ben Yishai has succeeded in a modern survey of the cross-cultural and cross-epochal system of violence that reproduces itself through tolerance and support. The narrative energy of the text makes us part of a powerful chase – on the asphalt highways of history, backwards and forwards.
In Pınar Karabulut's brilliant staging, five strong actors form a communal narrative body that translates the text into a choreographic score of almost painful directness. The work, awarded by the Theatertreffen of the Berliner Festspiele, now finds a new home at the Schauspielhaus Zürich, at the start of the new directorship.
TRIGGER WARNING: The text contains many descriptions of sexualised acts of violence which could have a debilitating and re-traumatising effect.
Dayen Tuskan
