Sophocles (born 497 BC) is one of the great tragedians of ancient Greece, having written about 120 works, of which seven survive, including Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Philoctetes. His plays are renowned for their profound exploration of the human soul, morality, and destiny.

Theatre director Cezaris Graužinis, who has been living and working in Greece for the past two decades, is now staging Sophocles’ tragedy “Philoctetes” on the Main stage of the Youth Theatre, where he debuted in 1989 with his first play “Hunger” (based on Knut Hamsun) and began his creative path.

The essence of Sophocles’ tragedy “Philoctetes” is a fierce moral and political conflict between the strict code of values ​​​​of the older generation of heroes (Achilles, Heracles, Philoctetes) and Odysseus, symbolizing the ideology of the new generation, agile pragmatism and ambitions unfettered by ethical scruples. This is a cyclical conflict between the “old world”, where there is still a strong belief in the possibility of utopia, and the “more advanced” world of realpolitik, which values ​​only what is “really possible”. In the name of progress, Sophocles ironically and provocatively argues, we should reject the categories of honor, justice, compassion as having no practical significance, so that we can claim that we are seeking the benefit of the community to which we belong and for whose well-being we are all equally responsible. This tragedy gives us the opportunity to rediscover the beauty of human critical thinking and the power of compassion. Sophocles invites us to realize that the greatest art we are doomed to learn is the art of overcoming the conflict between the individual and the community, – says Cezaris Graužinis, the director of “Philoctetes”.