It is with great pleasure that I welcome you tonight to the opening of the International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama 2022, one of the most successful cultural institutions of our country.
This year, the event completes its 25th anniversary. The Festival was first organized in 1997 with the tireless efforts of Nikos Siafkalis, then Director of the Cyprus Centre for International Theatre and a great theatre enthusiast of Cyprus.
Since then, the Festival has managed to evolve and develop in such a way that it is now considered a main pillar and an integral part of the cultural life of Cyprus. It has been generously embraced by our society, which is present in large numbers every year at the performances, demonstrating that it values the Festival as an essential means of culture, education, entertainment and cohesion.
Today, the Festival is the fruit of synergy between the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Tourism and the Cyprus Centre of the International Theatre Institute.
It is the realization of an important objective of the Ministry of Culture, which is to provide as many of our country's citizens as possible, both in large urban centres and in the periphery, with access to modern, upgraded and quality cultural products.
This year's programme includes five theatrical productions of high aesthetic and quality. Each has a different artistic approach to the theme of the tragedy it deals with. The common denominator of the productions remains the successful blend of the innovative and the timeless, which makes this year's programme even more attractive and interesting for the audience.
The plurality of performances is also a wonderful opportunity for a creative intercultural dialogue, for mutual understanding, for the communication that humanity so desperately needs at the present juncture.
The performances we will enjoy this year have travelled to our country from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain and Greece. From the deeply political Oedipus Tyrannus, the Sophoclean hero who changed the course of the science of psychoanalysis from Bosnia and Herzegovina, we will move on to the extreme alternation of emotions of passion, suffering and redemption of Electra from Spain, to the theatrical productions from Greece.
First up is Prometheus Desmotes, this masterpiece that takes us into the theological and moral atmosphere of Aeschylus' time, with hubris playing the decisive role. This is followed by Helen, an eternal model of beauty but also the cause of the suffering and absurdity of war, which Euripides condemns, and finally, in Sophocles' play Ajax we see the eternal question of the individual and society, the ego and the whole.[THIS UNIQUE SYNTHESIS OF IDEAS, THE CONTRADICTIONS OF MAN, THE INDISTINCT BOUNDARIES BETWEEN MYTH AND OBJECTIVITY, THE MORAL DILEMMAS THAT THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN DISCOURSE OF THESE WORKS CARRIES FROM THE DISTANT PAST TO THE PRESENT, UNDENIABLY MARKS THE TIMELESSNESS AND UNIVERSALITY OF CLASSICAL GREEK LITERATURE, WHICH STILL HAS THE POWER TO DEEPLY MOVE THE VIEWER OF THE 21ST CENTURY.
I would like to congratulate, but above all thank, all those who worked hard to make the Festival happen. I therefore proclaim the opening of the 2022 International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama and wish you success and good viewing!
(MGM/IK)
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