La Fura dels Baus, as a company, has always been drawn to myths and stories with a universal dimension. With George Enescu’s Œdipe its director, Alex Ollé, has the unique opportunity to ask questions about one of the key figures of Greek antiquity, a man singled out by destiny from his birth and who, in his mature years, sets out on a a journey of self-discovery, a search for the truth. He only realises this after going through dreadful trials that take him to the threshold of death. After his enormous success here directing György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, the Catalan artist is busy preparing a new visual world, both striking and unusual, for this Œdipe.

La Fura dels Baus is a company that nowadays, almost exclusively, performs opera. Doesn’t this seem to you a huge leap away from your origins?
Yes, but on the other hand it also seems to me to be a perfectly normal development. When it started, La Fura dels Baus was a street theatre group in Catalonia. We tried out lots of things in order to find our own theatrical voice, but gradually the main artistic principles became clear: interaction with the audience, the use of spaces, music, unconventional movement, the use of industrial and organic materials, the integration of new technologies… With this new formula for theatre we managed to connect to an audience that was not your typical theatre-going one. We took our first steps into the world of musical theatre with La Atlántida, a theatrical cantata by Manuel de Falla based on the Herculean myth. That was followed rapidly by Claude Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien. Following that Gerard Mortier invited us to the Salzburg Festival...

What is it about staging opera that so appeals to you?
To tell the truth, with La Fura dels Baus, we have gradually evolved intuitively towards opera. The music has always been a constant in our productions, often to the point of determining the perspective. Moreover we have always looked for a total entertainment and we find that to perfection in opera – think of Richard Wagner and his Gesamtkunstwerk… At La Fura we all bring different disciplines: some come from the world of plastic arts, some from the theatre, from music and dance… I think that this multidisciplinary approach has become the trademark of our group. Today this kind of approach and working with a large cast no longer exists in the theatre but solely in opera where we can work with a choir, mime artists, singers, musicians… We are currently working with the choir in the same way that we used to work with the audience. We perform in the middle of the audience which allows us to constantly change the grouping. This gives us a whole new range of possibilities. That is why we are now more involved in opera than in theatre.

How will you tackle Enescu’s Œdipe?
Everything to do with the music I’ll leave to the conductor. What interests me, above all, is the myth! The myth of Œdipus is, for me, one of the great classics. I see it as a battle for the truth. You could also argue that it is about power in Œdipus Rex; but basically it is about the search for truth with all that that implies. This really excites me! In Œdipe I want to try and explain the myth in the context of time. The concept of time is a complex one… I was very inspired by La Machine Infernale, Jean Cocteau’s modern take on the Œdipus myth, but what pleased me above all else was the idea that this diabolical machine could also be a kind of time machine. Thus the myth travels through time, from Antiquity to the present time, right now in the theatre.

It’s an ambitious project! How do you intend to stage it?
I want a timeless set, yet one with allusions to different periods. I’ll give you a few examples. It begins with the 70 choir members, 20 actors and 15 soloists under a baroque arch. They will be positioned vertically, one on top of each other, like a gothic arch decorated with statues at the entrance of a cathedral. This set will give way to the couch in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis consulting room, where I will set the scene between Œdipus and Merope. This will be followed by the symbols of fascism, because they reflect, for me, the confrontation between Œdipus and the Sphinx. The Sphinx, a fearsome, winged woman with lion’s feet, will be represented by a World War II plane… I want to continually work with these kinds of images. They can’t do all the work, we have to add to them a logic and a chronological progress, but they will convey references to many, well-known symbols from different periods. They continuously remind us of certain aspects of our world, our existence. What do I want to convey with this? The strength of the myth through the ages right up to this very day!

You have already mentioned Freud. Is his psychoanalysis the key to understanding your vision for this work?
No, absolutely not! I want to provide keys that open doors, not close them! There are, of course, Freudian references. But the psychoanalytical approach is, for me, just one possibility. There are other aspects that are far more fundamental...

Which are, according to you?
Destiny! Time and destiny are, for me, the two basic ideas. In our production, destiny is represented by an enveloping river of clay from which one can’t escape. As soon as one person touches another they too get bogged down. It was the ecological disaster in Hungary in October 2010 which gave us the idea: everyone remembers the red tide flowing out of the aluminium plant, which respected nothing and threatened everything. All the costumes and the scenery will be covered in a layer of clay. Destiny that ravages all!

So is Œdipus just destiny’s plaything?
Œdipus exists inside each and every one of us. We share his battle to find the truth in life! His life is dominated by uncertainty, he lives under constant stress. He searches for the truth but always in an atmosphere of uncertainty. He’s like a policeman who discovers that the killer is in fact himself, or a victim who discovers that the criminal is, in fact, himself. The tragedy resides in the fact that his destiny is inescapable because it is already within him. The myth of Œdipus, in spite of being thousands of years old, remains topical. It is a typical classic: it continues to exist, it outlives us all!

Interview by Reinder Pols