Lebanese-Canadian author, director, and actor Wajdi Mouawad—Artistic Director of La Colline – national theatre in recent years—became known to the Greek audience primarily for his screenplay for the Oscar-nominated foreign-language film Incendies (directed by Dennis Villeneuve in 2010), based on his titular theatrical play. This ominous travelogue of Lebanon, which unfolds through a traumatic family story amid a country caught up in the maelstrom of civil war, shares a profound affinity with ancient tragedy, Mouawad’s principal source of inspiration: the schism at the heart of family, the struggle between genders, uprooting, the dire reality bequeathed from the previous generation to the next, and the search for catharsis are themes that resurface in his plays, many of which are directly informed by Ancient Drama heroes/heroines. Politically charged and in direct dialogue with contemporary history, Mouawad’s theatrical work touches upon Myth in the same breath, seeking to illuminate the archetypal dimensions of the human condition regardless of place and time. At the same time, it delves into the search for identity beyond racial, religious, and familial boundaries, while his bold lyrical language lends the characters a distinctly contemporary sensibility, as we witnessed in his most recent play, Birds of a Kind, presented last year at the National Theatre.

Mouawad first appeared at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 2011 with the international co-production Des Femmes, a modular adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, Electra, and Women of Trachis that featured a French-Canadian troupe.

As one of the most compelling dramaturgs worldwide, he returns to the Festival this year as a newcomer to Epidaurus with a new work inspired by the heroines of Ancient Drama. Commissioned as part of the Contemporary Ancients Cycle, the performance will be presented on the first weekend of August by a multinational cast in a multilingual format—an international co-production set to become a highlight of the summer.