FOREIGN SUN: EPISODE IV

About the show

iv. Medea in Colchis: A Reconstruction Four people are sitting together. There are many indications that they are in some kind of therapy session or a psychiatric facility. Yet it could just as easily be the afterlife—an underworld like that of Hades. Among the four is someone who has long been dead—Absyrtus, Medea’s brother—while the others—Jason, Medea, and Aeëtes—are still alive. It is an encounter between the living, the undead, and the dead—a meeting that could never have actually taken place. Roland Schimmelpfennig devises a kind of space of memory in which the four laboriously attempt to "reconstruct" a shared version of the story. We follow them to Colchis to discover exactly what happened there. Medea helped Jason secure the Golden Fleece; that much is certain. But for what reason? Was it love or calculation? And who was it that dismembered her brother Absyrtus to prevent their father, Aeëtes, from pursuing them? The text takes as its starting point a retrospective view and the question of the power of narrative—its apparent ability to retroactively correct reality.