There is no record to date of Euripides engaging in any public activity for his city. We also do not know whether he was friends with any influential politicians. This may have been the reason why he mostly lost in the tragedy competitions that were held every year in Athens in honour of Dionysus…
Euripides, who remained on the sidelines of his community's life, was nevertheless characterised by a sharp critical mind of a journalist. This enfant terrible of the drama of the time had the courage to speak in his own, often isolated voice. He shed light on well-known myths from a new, unobvious angle. He used them to pose difficult, often very uncomfortable questions and did not suggest easy, consolidative answers. Unlike his contemporaries, he broke with existing tragedy-writing conventions and presented his female characters in a completely new way, often as protagonists of his works. Many times they were significantly superior in intelligence to their onstage partners - if we remember that the outcome of the tragedy contests was decided by men, we should not be surprised by Euripides' successive failures.
He did not provide his fellow citizens with a nice and easy entertainment. In THE TROJAN WOMEN, he showed us what Homer did not tell us in THE ILIAD. What was the morning after the fall of Troy like. How women, until then representatives of the Royal lineage, have been pushed to the very bottom of human existence. What is their relationship with the conquerors, representatives of high Hellenistic culture, who by murdering the innocent and defenceless cross the boundaries of barbarism. While working on this production, the authors attempted to look at the process of maturing into vengeance - the victims against the perpetrators. Writing THE TROJAN WOMEN in the context of the ongoing Peloponnesian War, Euripides openly criticised the Athenians' imperial ambitions. He strove to make them understand that in any armed conflict there are no winners or losers. The Greeks in Homer's epic, like Euripides' Athenian contemporaries, believed they were invincible and this brought doom upon them.
Creative
Direction: Jan Klata