by Sivan Ben Yishai
translated into German by Maren Kames
DIRECTED & CHOREOGRAPHED BY: Pınar Karabulut
PFAUEN
SWISS PREMIERE: 20.09.2025
1 hour 30 minutes (no interval)
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.
CONTENT NOTE: The text contains many descriptions of sexualised acts of violence which could have a debilitating and re-traumatising effect.
© Vanessa Blättler
‘It makes you angry, it gives you courage – and an indescribable desire to see more of Karabulut's work.’
‘A strong female performance body hurls the entire patriarchal system onto the compost heap of history.’
'Pınar Karabulut brings Sivan Ben Yishai's furious reckoning with patriarchy to the stage. Loud, vulgar, proud, combative and clever.'
'Traditionalist tendencies à la Tradwives, euphemistic self-deception (...) and the necessity of an unrelenting feminist show of strength (...) are made palpable and electrify the entire auditorium. The overwhelming applause is only to be expected.'
