Being in love as a philosophical state, Eros as an anthropological code within but also beyond the gender divide: this is what the myth of Phaedra, the heroine of love, adulteress, murderess and suicide, is about. Born in ancient Greece, this Dark Lady is at home in the theater of the world. Neither a languishing mature woman, addicted to the beauty of her stepson, nor sublime sinner, but a dangerously speaking character. Agnese Grieco decolonizes this classic, which combines misogyny and patriarchy, but also desire, longing for commonality and a sense of justice. The philosopher and playwright reads the ancient Greek text by Euripides, the father of Phaedra, as a testimony and provocative manifesto against the omnipresent fetish of identity. On stage, Phaedra breaks silence; as a female/male voice, she debates proudly and woundedly with Plato, Socrates, and the Sophists. This paradoxical champion of logos looks us straight in the eye and asks: where are we, what have we learned from the experience of love? What have we done with Eros?
Agnese Grieco, born in Milan, studied philosophy in Milan, received her PhD from the Free University of Berlin and lives in Berlin as a freelance writer, director and translator. She was awarded the 2022 German-Italian Translator Prize for her translation of Annette, an epic by Anne Weber.
"Should knowledge of the good really be enough for action to follow it? Agnese Grieco presents a small and extremely thoughtful study of the tragic figure of Phaedra, in which the role of the Eros and the rule of men in Greek society are put under the spot light." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
