costume design for Iveta Pole's solo perfomance
premiere on 1st February in Von Krahl theatre
2020
Clytemnestra was as a starting point for the research on the darkest, demonic manifestation of a woman’s nature. She can do both: give life and take it away. She is a violent beauty. A woman, driven to extreme situations, where beneath the conventionally attractive facade something much more primal lives, dark. The death of Clytemnestra’s child sets the stage for the retaliation and extreme anxiety attached to sexuality: subtle, relentless and unforgiving. The interest of Pole was to explore issues of trauma, loss and mad- ness set against the wild backdrop of emotional and sexual excess. Also, to investigate situations, where the familiar and known turns into the strange and uncanny; where the pious prayer becomes a witches Sabbath. The subject itself has an exact reference to Lars Von Trier’s movie “Antichrist”.
The performance was also questioning historically set traditional social constructions of gender. Male characters primarily represent the brutality of the world: reason, authority and domination, while the women are often the embodiment of sacrifice, suffering and abnegation. The patriarchal power is what Clytemnestra rebels against. It is visceral, a vicious battle of the sexes, in which she holds the mark of the supernatural: Mother Earth, Mother Night.
More information about the performance: https://eamt.ee/en/projects/iveta-pole-clytemnestra/
