April 5 - 7, 2017
at MCA Stage, 220 E. Chicago Ave
A World’s Stage Production
from France
based on the Mahabharata and
the play by Jean-Claude Carrière
adapted and directed by Peter Brook
and Marie-Hélène Estienne
The unfolding of a great war of extermination tears apart a family. Five brothers are on one side, the Pandavas, and on the other side their cousins, the Kauravas, the hundred sons of the blind King Dritarashtra. Both sides use terrible weapons of destruction. At the end the Pandavas win. Millions of dead bodies lie on the ground. And now the eldest of the Pandavas—Yudishtira—is compelled to become King. The victory has the bitter taste of defeat. Both Yudishtira and Dritarashtra, the old King, are in deep distress and remorse, questioning their past actions, trying to unravel their own responsibility for the disaster.
How, having to live with this terrible massacre, having lost their sons, their families, their allies, will the new King and the old one find an inner peace?
The richness of the language of this timeless epic, and its always astonishing stories, allow us to bring to the stage this situation, which, belonging to the past, reflects at the same time the harsh conflicts of today.
