Chantal Boiron on Medea Material, “UBU Scènes d’Europe / European Stages”, October 6 2025
ErosAntEros ErosAntEros celebrates its 15 years…
Chantal Boiron, “UBU Scènes d’Europe / European Stages”, October 6th 2025
https://ubu-apite.org/erosanteros-fete-ses-quinze-ans/
“[…] With Agata Tomšič, director and performer, we have the perspective of a female artist on one of the most obscure figures in Greek mythology. Lover and murderer, sorceress and infanticide, barbarian priestess and emigrant prostitute, Medea will carry out her revenge against Jason. In her staging, it is the audience, seated in a circle, that constitutes the stage set. This intimacy is very well suited to Heiner Müller’s triptych. The circle is the space of fairy tales, of storytelling. But here it is also the place from which one watches, the space of the voyeur. Jason is not the only visitor to the peep show he himself mentioned in his text. Every spectator becomes a voyeur. In the center of the circle, a tiny stage has been installed, a sort of lectern, with room only for a microphone and two golden balloons, one larger and one smaller, representing the two children she had with Jason. It is from there that Medea will speak. But first, in complete darkness, we hear the voice of Agata Tomšič, who walks around the circle, around us spectators. We cannot see her, but we can hear her breathing, right behind us. Her voice is amplified by microphones. It is the cry of anger and pain of a woman cowardly abandoned by the man she loves. The work done on the music, composed by Matevž Kolenc, is remarkable.
It is a veritable soundscape from which certain musical notes stand out. When a flash of light finally illuminates her furtively, we see Agata Tomšič emerge from the darkness like a gothic figure, wrapped in an immense hooded cloak, under which her nakedness can be sensed. On her feet, turning to face each of the spectators, she squeaks the rubber of the balloons with her fingernails, announcing her terrible revenge with this simple gesture. The actress creates the show with her performance. In this way, she intervenes in Gianni Gamberini’s lighting design, as well as participating in the music. With a simple flashlight, she illuminates each spectator in turns as she spins around, offering herself in her nakedness to their gaze, and thus becoming, like Jason, for a second or two, the only “visitor to the peep show.”
The actress is also her own costume designer, transforming herself before the audience’s eyes by tying a golden thermal blanket around her waist which, under the diffused light, becomes a splendid golden skirt, her magical wedding dress that she will offer as a death gift to Creon’s daughter, her rival. Black and gold are the two colors of this minimalist and intense show. She stands bare-breasted, provocative and sublime. A dangerous, troubling creature, but one who is so free. Agata Tomšič embodies a rebellious and combative Medea, who presents Jason with the exact price of everything she has offered him: the betrayal of a father, the death of a brother, her absolute love, the birth of two children. All this to be abandoned by him in a hostile country where she is a foreigner, an emigrant refugee. Without any scruples, she bursts the two balloons, thus killing their two children. Agata Tomšič is a magnificent tragediographer. In her Medea, so modern, there is a feminist struggle. And from this theatrical monologue, she creates a true one-woman opera. ”