The premiere held on 2011. 11. 29

Artistic director of the Theatre Rimas Tuminas on the threshold of the jubilee season appealed to the troupe: “I want to awaken in you the need for new plays and new directing methods, the need to attempt, risk, venture, create, fall and rise and win”. This appeal was heard by the troupe. “The Farewell Tour” by Juliu Edlis was born and the rehearsals of “Medea” (director – Mikhail Tsitrinyak, major part by Yulia Rutberg) started.

What motivated Jean Anouilh to turn to the tragedy by Euripides? On one hand – our time, when the impending threat of social fall is destroying the personality, the culture, the politics, on the other hand – an attempt to stay in denial craving for entertainment, show and feckless gaiety. The fact that society has no intention to examine its medical history scares, as xenophobia, racism and violence raise their heads. Against the backdrop of the disastrous fall of morality, cynicism, striving for wealth and the increasing power of money the man is gradually destructing. Only the strongest ones will manage to be unlike the others, to defend one’s independence and not to adjoin the stream of the philosophy of wealth, to reject the tempting postulate of “I am like all the others” and to realize that the faceless ruck is ruinous.

Anouilh’s “Medea” descended from the Euripides’s buskin and became closer to us, the vocabulary of the play is modern. Dialogues of the heroes corkscrew from past to present and back to the past. The creators of the show tried to distinguish the meaning of the flows of words and actions.

Yuliya Rutberg’s Medea lives in yesterday and has no tomorrow. Her memory inevitably gets back to basics where she, the daughter of the King of Colchis, stole the Golden Fleece for the sake of a man she loves. For Medea the betrayal of Jason is not only the trample of love, but the collapse of the world she lives in.

There can be no losers and no winners in this battle. Two different worlds match one against the other. Death stands on the edge of their feud and the one who faces it shows the highest manifestation of the individual freedom. Medea leaves this world together with her children as she can’t let them stay with Jason in the world of philistine insensibility and trite philosophy of gorged stock. Death is no loss of Medea but her moral victory.The final scene is a metaphor. The figure of Medea resembles mythological goddess of victory Nike.

Running time: 1.35

The play is recommended for audience older than 16 years (16 +).