Surrender

Mount Olympus, a 24h performance, to glorify the cult of tragedy is the show-masterpiece by Jan Fabre. The rehearsals took place in his theatre-laboratorium, involving 27 performers for 12 months.  Director Phil Griffin, former dancer of Fabre (The dance sections, 1987) has personally followed the last 4 months of rehearsals, with his cameras: he filmed the performers, moving on stage with them, but also the artist’s feedbacks, the conversations with the cast, the collective doubts. The editing of this great mass of rushes lasted two years: in collaboration with Giulio Boato, Griffin reconstructed a new dramaturgy, different from that of the show and yet based on the same images. Thus was born a film that is not only a unique document of an unrepeatable creative process, but an artistic reworking of the collective energy which characterizes theatrical creation, when the result is not yet a certainty.