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Author: Klaas Tindemans

Published: October 2004

Abstract (E): This essay comments, from an insider's point of view, the theatre production Metamorphosen by the Antwerp based group De Roovers. This production, based upon Ovid's epic of the same name, tries to find a way of telling ancient mythological 'fairytailes' in a contemporary context. Through a radical adaptation of Ovid's text and by making strict visual and auditive choices - simple slides, simple music by Bach - this Metamorphosen invents a new theatrical speechmode.

Abstract (F): Rйdigй par quelqu'un qui a accompagnй le processus de crйation de la piиce, cet essai propose un commentaire de la piиce « Metamorphosen » du groupe anversois De Roovers. Cette production qui s'est basйe sur l'йpopйe d'Ovide du mкme nom, s'efforce de mettre en place une nouvelle faÐ*on de raconter les contes mythologiques pour un public contemporain. Tant par son adaptation radicale du texte d'Ovide que par les choix visuels et sonores trиs stricts qui sont les siens (usage de transparents, la musique sobre de Bach), cette piиce invente un nouveau mode discursif thйвtral.

keywords: Ovid, Metamorphoses, theatre, De Roovers, narration

"Echo is a nymph who can only repeat someone else's words"

In October 2002 Metamorphosen, a theatre production by De Roovers, a theatre company from Antwerp, knew its premiere. Actor Benjamin Verdonck adapted some stories from this unusual epic written by Ovid en he turned it, together with actors Sara De Bosschere en Luc Nuyens, designer Bert Vermeulen and the present writer as dramaturge, into a narration which was both physical and visual. The present text is by no means a reconstruction of the production process, nor an attempt to fit this quest for a theatrical narration into an adequate theoretical framework. Rather, I would like to describe some observations and intellectual experiences which took place before, during and after the working process and which caused the seeming naivety with regard to Ovid's material to be embedded in an almost evident way into a broader, more complex context. A context that takes into account both the problematic history of a work of literature - as the origin of a genre on its own - and the death of theatrical narration as it is both announced and postponed over and over again. A context in which authors such as Christoph Ransmayr and Franz Kafka appear, but also painters such as Rubens, Titian and Velazquez. The fragmentary character of the present essay shows, albeit quite superficially, the chaos caused and the order forced by any assimilation/adaptation of the Metamorphoses.

1.

The bookshop in the small Romanian town only has a few English language books, scientific publications. One of them is written by the director of the historical and archaeological museum of Konstanta, the present name of the Dacian and Roman town Tomis, the harbor at the coast of the Black Sea where Ovid is said to have spent his last days in exile. The book is called Ovid in exile and the back flap sketches the common romantic image of a cast off poet who writes his last great work, the Tristia, on this sad spot at the Black Sea shore. The statue of Ovid, erected in the 19 th century, decorates the plaza in front of the museum in Konstanta. The city cannot afford to open the discussion about the exile. Many questions are raised about the historical fact of his exile in Tomis itself, since this vanishing trick of the poet of the Metamorphoses fits perfectly well into Ovid's typical 'mythomania'. In Die letzte Welt, Christoph Ransmayr's novel, the narrator - a young student of rhetorics who escaped history - only finds some shreds of paper hanging from the bushes on the hills. He also meets some characters in Tomis who are suspiciously close to their namesakes in the Metamorphoses. The poet has disappeared, maybe he was never there. I like to believe the story about Ovid inventing and staging his own exile. It wouldn't be surprising after deconstructing, in his Metamorphoses, traditional mythology and confronting the political authority with a kind of post-modern irony. Of course, these narrative strategies were absent in the city of Rome of the first emperors, but after 20 centuries his attitude towards a ruling mythological and political discourse sounds remarkably 'contemporary'. That is the reason why I prefer to cherish Ransmayr's imagery - Battus petrified, Actaeon painted on a mobile cinema - than to read a book of a doubtlessly intelligent Romanian who - I am fantasizing - sees in Ovid the precursor of Laszlo Tцkes, the minister who started the revolution against Ceaucescu. A Romanian who, as the director of a 'national' museum, shows a seamless continuity between Decebalus, the Dacian king and challenger of emperor Trajanus, and the heroes of the revolution, December 1989. I prefer a voice that goes lost in the rocks. Cotta, the narrator in Die letzte Welt, has said that Echo, the nymph, has taken refuge there.

2.

Ovid's Metamorphosen form an atypical history of the creation. The beginning leans very strongly on the Theogony of the Greek poet Hesiod (8 th century B.C.) but the narration quickly goes off the rails. The first book looks like a systematic exposition, perhaps somewhat embellished, about the genesis of the gods and the world, but the epic transforms quickly into a catalogue of metamorphoses, by gods and men. The great changes are barely justified or explained by the narrator - most of the time Ovid itself, but sometimes he lends the word to the singer Orpheus, or another hero - which makes that any idea of a divine justification or explanation quickly disappears. The cosmos is not a place where people are rewarded for their efforts, based upon some kind of equity, or where they are justly punished for there misdemeanors. Gods and men change their figure for the simple reason that, apparently, metamorphosis is the arbitrary principle which rules the cosmos. Without any theological or metaphysical foundation, without the possibility to qualify these changes as improvements or deteriorations. Love and hate - often the occasion for a metamorphosis - are a-moral, maybe victims of desire's