Living at the end of the 20th century, the end of the millennium, our society seems to be overwhelmed by the burdens of both the past and the future; we are torn between our memories and our dreams, between "spleen and ideal". There is, in the humanity of our days a feeling of fear of the unknown, of the future where the mystery of our destiny lies. Dominated by this feeling of insecurity, we turn once again to what might be called the Dawn of Humanity, the place where our western civilisation has its origins - Ancient Greece, searching for an answer to all the contradictory questions of our existence.



Everything began there. Through their myths, the ancient Greeks have built up the world, in a search for the explanation to all things. From myths, tragedy was born and it became a translation of myths, of religion into people's lives. Greek tragedy thus became the first attempt of people in this part of the world to translate into life the questions that trouble us, as they troubled Greeks more than 2000 years ago: Why do we exist? Why do we have to suffer? Why do we always have to be torn between the seeming irreconciliables of good and evil, freedom and necessity, truth and deceit? Its purpose is therefore that of maintaining a balance " between the higher optimism of religion or philosophy, or any other beliefs that tend to explain away the enigmas and afflictions of existence, on the one hand, and the pessimism that would reject the whole human experience as valueless and futile on the other." (Encyclopaedia Britannica). In ancient times, tragedy was not merely a form of literary art, but a true expression of human restlessness, of the painfully inquisitive nature of man. This role is still present today in our contemporary drama, which is ultimately a development of that primitive form of theatre.