One of the defining hits of this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe has been Hotel Medea, the six-hour all-night version of the Greek Medea myth that runs each weekend in August from midnight until dawn. Produced by Anglo-Brazilian theatre company Zecora Ura in association with London-based, Yemen-born director and performer Persis Jade Maravala, who plays Medea as well as co-directing with Zecora Ura's Jorge Lopes Ramos, Hotel Medea is a disorienting experiential whirlwind that puts the audience in the thick of the action, from the rave-like fiesta of love, death and colonialism that opens the first two hours, to the after-hours dream-state of a dormitory bunk-bed where you're stroked to sleep by nurse-maids as a very personal war rages close by.
As a piece of theatre Hotel Medea is all-consuming. This isn't just the case for the audience too, but also for Maravala and Ramos, who've spent the last six years creating what is clearly a labour of love. As with so much great art, however, Hotel Medea was born out of adversity when the company Maravala ran imploded, while a similarly disillusioned Ramos looked for different ways of working after scoring a commercial hit with Zecora Ura's Brazilian version of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Once these two very different directors eventually agreed to work together, the decision for Hotel Medea to be the sense-assaulting upside-down epic it has become was one of the earliest steps in the long journey to the show's eventual staging.
“We didn't know what manner we were going to do the show in when we decided to do it,” Maravala admits. “The manner grew with us in a way. The only thing Jorge had decided was that he wanted to tackle the myth of Medea, and what interested me in getting involved was that, at that time, there was the whole war on terror that had established itself firmly in our minds, and people from different countries were being talked about as being dangerous. That reminded me of Medea, who was perpetually in exile, and of how terrifying and dangerous women can be for men. So my main interest in Medea as a woman was as a terrorist. In terms of Greek mythology she's the most subversive of characters, and she gets away with it.”
Work began on the show in Brazil, where it grew into a smaller piece called Lament For Medea. It was then that the pair hit upon the idea to keep the audience up all night,” says Maravala. “The more I looked into Brazilian rhythms for the movement of the show, the more I discovered they were created to make you stay up all night. They work on the brain in a certain way to keep you going, which I thought was amazing, but I didn't take them lightly. I absorbed myself in these ritualistic movements to try and understand them.”
In this way, Maravala and Ramos' working methods are completely different. Where Maravala is rooted in physical creative processes derived from Jerzy Grotowsky, Ramos is much more lateral and open to outside influence. The tension between the two, however, is what makesHotel Medea so electric.
“I was at a crossroads after The Tempest,” Ramos explains, “and knew that we could either carry on making work in a way that fitted in with funding and production systems, or that I could do something that was the opposite extreme and try and make work that was almost impossibleto put on.”
Ramos founded Zecora Ura while studying European theatre at Rose Bruford College after leaving a then politically tumultuous Brazil on advice of his actor father after many of his peers disappeared. Since then, Ramos has kept company offices in both east London and Rio de Janeiro Given the sheer scale of the leap in the dark of Hotel Medea, bodies previously supportive of the company almost universally said no to the project. Eventually Salisbury International Festival took a risk at much the same time as Zecora Ura's host theatre in Rio took a similar chance.
“It was pretty fraught at the beginning,” says Maravala, “because we were both in crisis point at the same time, and I was even questioning what was the point of being an artist. But when I first went to Brazil I recognised there was something there, even though my axis is completely vertical and Jorge's is completely lateral.”
Early versions of Hotel Medea appeared at the Arcola Theatre in London's east end and in Brazil. Despite the show's current must-see status, however, it is far from finished.
“We still rehearse and train every day,” says Maravala, “and there are parts of it now that are completely different to how they were when we first arrived in Edinburgh.”
This intense desire by Maravala and Ramos to create work on their own terms has clearly paid off in spades, and beyond Hotel Medea, they are already plotting their next collaboration.
“Woyzeck,” says Maravala.
“On safari,” Ramos picks up.
While both parties are determined this latest project won't take six years to bear fruit, with a premiere already pencilled in for 2014, Maravala and Ramos' healthy creative friction looks set to continue.
As Maravala puts it, “We still have plenty to argue about.”
Hotel Medea, Summerhall, August 19-20 and August 26-28
The Herald, August 19th 2011
ends
As a piece of theatre Hotel Medea is all-consuming. This isn't just the case for the audience too, but also for Maravala and Ramos, who've spent the last six years creating what is clearly a labour of love. As with so much great art, however, Hotel Medea was born out of adversity when the company Maravala ran imploded, while a similarly disillusioned Ramos looked for different ways of working after scoring a commercial hit with Zecora Ura's Brazilian version of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Once these two very different directors eventually agreed to work together, the decision for Hotel Medea to be the sense-assaulting upside-down epic it has become was one of the earliest steps in the long journey to the show's eventual staging.
“We didn't know what manner we were going to do the show in when we decided to do it,” Maravala admits. “The manner grew with us in a way. The only thing Jorge had decided was that he wanted to tackle the myth of Medea, and what interested me in getting involved was that, at that time, there was the whole war on terror that had established itself firmly in our minds, and people from different countries were being talked about as being dangerous. That reminded me of Medea, who was perpetually in exile, and of how terrifying and dangerous women can be for men. So my main interest in Medea as a woman was as a terrorist. In terms of Greek mythology she's the most subversive of characters, and she gets away with it.”
Work began on the show in Brazil, where it grew into a smaller piece called Lament For Medea. It was then that the pair hit upon the idea to keep the audience up all night,” says Maravala. “The more I looked into Brazilian rhythms for the movement of the show, the more I discovered they were created to make you stay up all night. They work on the brain in a certain way to keep you going, which I thought was amazing, but I didn't take them lightly. I absorbed myself in these ritualistic movements to try and understand them.”
In this way, Maravala and Ramos' working methods are completely different. Where Maravala is rooted in physical creative processes derived from Jerzy Grotowsky, Ramos is much more lateral and open to outside influence. The tension between the two, however, is what makesHotel Medea so electric.
“I was at a crossroads after The Tempest,” Ramos explains, “and knew that we could either carry on making work in a way that fitted in with funding and production systems, or that I could do something that was the opposite extreme and try and make work that was almost impossibleto put on.”
Ramos founded Zecora Ura while studying European theatre at Rose Bruford College after leaving a then politically tumultuous Brazil on advice of his actor father after many of his peers disappeared. Since then, Ramos has kept company offices in both east London and Rio de Janeiro Given the sheer scale of the leap in the dark of Hotel Medea, bodies previously supportive of the company almost universally said no to the project. Eventually Salisbury International Festival took a risk at much the same time as Zecora Ura's host theatre in Rio took a similar chance.
“It was pretty fraught at the beginning,” says Maravala, “because we were both in crisis point at the same time, and I was even questioning what was the point of being an artist. But when I first went to Brazil I recognised there was something there, even though my axis is completely vertical and Jorge's is completely lateral.”
Early versions of Hotel Medea appeared at the Arcola Theatre in London's east end and in Brazil. Despite the show's current must-see status, however, it is far from finished.
“We still rehearse and train every day,” says Maravala, “and there are parts of it now that are completely different to how they were when we first arrived in Edinburgh.”
This intense desire by Maravala and Ramos to create work on their own terms has clearly paid off in spades, and beyond Hotel Medea, they are already plotting their next collaboration.
“Woyzeck,” says Maravala.
“On safari,” Ramos picks up.
While both parties are determined this latest project won't take six years to bear fruit, with a premiere already pencilled in for 2014, Maravala and Ramos' healthy creative friction looks set to continue.
As Maravala puts it, “We still have plenty to argue about.”
Hotel Medea, Summerhall, August 19-20 and August 26-28
The Herald, August 19th 2011
ends
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