Dood Paard - Eleonora, Or The Farce of Tragedy

Anna is a passionate historian who has spent twenty years studying the role of women during revolutionary times. She travels to Naples to research a book about Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel - court poet and private librarian to the Queen of Naples - who escaped a violent marriage and, inspired by the French Revolution, became a leader of the uprising that led to the short-lived Neapolitan Republic in 1799. Five months later, the king crushed the republic and Pimentel was hanged in the town square amid cheering crowds.

Eleonora's life becomes a mirror for Anna. She wants to get as close as possible to her subject: studying day and night, having intense conversations with her assistant, and becoming so entangled in her research through feverish nocturnal dreams that she believes she is Eleonora herself. This confrontation forces her to examine her own life. Her husband, who initially encouraged her, reveals himself as a jealous monarch afraid of losing his kingdom - and Anna must, like the rebellious Eleonora, fight for her life.

Text: Joachim Robbrecht. With Manja Topper, Jonathan Zeebregts, Artun Alaska Arasli, Ramses van den Hurk, Dúlio Duarte, Pablo Fontdevila and others. Photo: Sanne Peper.

Dood Paard is a collective that functions as an incubator for new Dutch theatre. De Volkskrant wrote about the company's earlier work: "The fluid acting and haunting scenography are of an impressive calibre."