Casanova / Don Juan – Marina Tsvetaeva / Lord George Gordon Byron

Peiraios 260 (D)

June 14–16, 2023
June 17–18, 2023

A performance composed around the poetic parallel between Lord Byron and Marina Tsvetaeva, who were inspired—Byron by the mythical figure of Don Juan, and Tsvetaeva by the historical figure of Casanova—separated by a century. Byron began writing Don Juan while in self-imposed exile in Italy in 1818 and, after approaching this mythical Don Juan in an entirely new way, left the work unfinished in 1823, as he became increasingly involved first in the revolutionary movement of the Carbonari and later in the Greek War of Independence. Approximately one hundred years later, during the turbulent years following the October Revolution, Tsvetaeva composed The End of Casanova in Moscow, the final part of her play The Phoenix, shortly before leaving for Berlin in self-imposed exile.

In the new production by director Stathis Livathinos, the voices of the two great poets meet and illuminate one another—from erotic wandering and the constant reckoning with time as it passes and is lost, to the theme of exile, the other side of wandering. Both texts were born in troubled times, and the sense that something is coming to an end is inscribed at their core.

For this production, Stathis Livathinos collaborates with his regular ensemble of actor collaborators, with dramaturg and translator Elsa Andrianou for the translation of Tsvetaeva’s Casanova, and with poet and translator Giorgos Koropoulis, who translates Byron’s Don Juan. Both of these unique, classic works are presented for the first time in Greek in metrical, rhymed verse, promising a stage work of high creative inspiration.

Source: Athens Epidaurus Festival