Nicola Arrigoni on Medea Material, “Sipario.it”, May 18 2026
POLIS Theater Festival. A showcase between the Baltic and Scandinavia
Nicola Arrigoni, “Sipario.it”, May 18 2026
“«Between city and city / after the wall the abyss / wind on the shoulders the hand / alien on the solitary flesh / the angel I still feel him / but he has no other face than / yours which I do not know».” This is how Heiner Müller wrote in The Luckless Angel 2, from the collection The Invention of Silence: Poems and Material Texts after ’89.
Why start with Müller? Not only because ErosAntEros, as part of the Polis Teatro Festival, brought the German author’s Medeamaterial to the stage—transformed into a melologue for voice and body by an unsettling Agata Tomšič—but above all because the thought of Walter Benjamin and his Angelus Novus weaves through the geopolitical and aesthetic reflections of the festival’s ninth edition. This Angelus Novus is the angel of history who, propelled by the wind of progress, turns his back on the future to contemplate the ruins left in his wake. Theme: Nordic Focus, a monograph dedicated to the dramaturgy of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries.
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And while the actress in the bear costume goes searching for herself, embodying a state of existential and identity-related neutrality, Müller’s Medea is the outsider. She is the woman who sacrificed everything for her man, only to find herself abandoned—an alien to the world she chose, and no longer a part of the world that generated and nurtured her. It is the condition of the migrant, of displaced peoples left without a homeland. Supported by the music of Matevž Kolenc, the actress builds a relentless physical and vocal score that screams out the condemnation of marginalization, exclusion, and betrayal. Agata Tomšič turns all of this into a fierce song, a glimpse into a distant, magical East—both golden and mysterious—that walks hand in hand with the abyss”.