He is regarded as the bearer of the fire of knowledge, a fallen hero – Prometheus. While the Greek poet Aeschylus emphasises the fall of the Titan, who is chained to a high rock by Zeus as punishment for his deed and finally plunged into Tartarus, the centre of the earth, today the lesson of the ‘light-bringer’ popular with Beethoven and the Enlightenment seems more urgent.
However, according to the interpretation by the celebrated director Romeo Castellucci, a contemporary Prometheus, before passing us the torch, would question the act of seeing. He would make us aware of the political value of the gaze, show that looking is not an innocent act and that we must take responsibility over our gaze.
Today the theatre is the right place for this task, the place to dedicate a dance, a pavane, to the Titan. The work alludes to the Promethean ‘De Profundis’, for it is only when we reach the deepest place of the fall that everything can be rethought. Castellucci’s Prometheus is Silvio Jagarinec, who after a serious motorbike accident experienced what it is like to fall and has since known about the value of being on this earth.