Isabel Ordaz: ‘War is a failure, not an opportunity for glory’

Theaters ArtcultureTop News Isabel Ordaz: ‘War is a failure, not an opportunity for glory’ The Trojan Women Spain Photo By Jero Morales (1) Relevant News Isabel Ordaz: ‘War is a failure, not an opportunity for glory’ 3 July 2026 New allowances and higher payments approved for people with disabilities 3 July 2026 Israeli media report gradual recovery in tourism to Cyprus 3 July 2026 Yiorgos Savvinidis 3 July 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber The leading lady of Spanish theatre goes head to head with Euripides, speaking with him as if he were our contemporary. Performance photos: © Hero Morales. Isabel Ordaz arrives in Cyprus as Hecuba in The Trojan Women, in the closely watched production by the International Festival of Classical Theatre of Merida that opens this year’s International Ancient Drama Festival. Her stage career spans more than four decades, taking in leading roles across the classical and contemporary repertoire alongside a strong presence in film and television. A single thread runs through her answers here: the duty of care against horror, community against individualism, empathy against violence. She talks about what she considers Greece’s great legacy, speaks of utopia as an act of resistance, of war turning language into a tool of dehumanisation, and of poetry that persists even after Auschwitz and Gaza, while revealing that she sees the mythical Trojan queen as “a teacher and a friend.” After a career spanning decades in the theatre, what made you feel there was still something new to discover in Hecuba? I have always been drawn to tragedy, both as the founding cultural legacy of the West and as a literary and theatrical form. I wanted to approach the deepest questions of the human condition and to seek out those elevated, almost transcendent gestures that only theatre can produce. Contemporary heroes tend to be more psychological. Tragic heroes are not defined in the same way by psychology. Psychology often pushes us towards individualism, whereas in tragedy the causes and consequences operate on a different plane altogether. To me, that is Greece’s great legacy: the idea of community as both purpose and duty. Carrying that idea into performance was something I found completely absorbing. What do you think Euripides understood about war that so often escapes the heroic narratives of history? From my own creative approach, I believe one of Euripides’ greatest achievements is that he overturns the traditional perspective: he does not turn his gaze to the hero, but to the victim. In doing so, he introduces an extraordinarily important dialectic, not only for his own era but for the centuries that followed. In a culture that still interpreted the world through mythology, Euripides shifts responsibility for catastrophe away from the gods and onto human beings. It is human actions, not the will of the gods, that shape human destiny. I find that deeply modern. This is where Euripides launches something very significant: he turns myth and the gods into a space for reflection, into a narrative with clear political dimensions. Hecuba no longer has power, an army or a kingdom. But she has her voice. What is the power of that voice on stage today? Hecuba’s voice remains just as relevant and necessary today. And that isn’t only about the position of women. It’s the possibility of seeing the world from a different vantage point and, at the same time, a woman’s right to shape the narrative of the world herself. Through Hecuba, a different set of values takes shape: motherhood, life, care, the power of dialogue and human encounter. Above all, war emerges as a failure, not an opportunity for glory. What has Hecuba’s archetypal character taught you personally about human resilience and dignity? Hecuba is indeed an archetypal figure, and that’s exactly why the questions one can put to her are endless. When it comes to dignity, what moves me is that by the end of the play she has lost almost every reason to hope. All her certainties and expectations have collapsed. And yet she keeps her dignity, because she fought and resisted until the end, remaining part of a community, existing alongside others. Hecuba does not grieve only for herself, or only for her children and her husband. She grieves for the whole people of Troy. She grieves for others. “My tears bear every name of abandonment,” she says, looking at her devastated homeland. Perhaps that is exactly where her dignity lies: in weeping for the pain of others. What do The Trojan Women ask of us as citizens, and not merely as spectators? Theatre always asks us to surrender to the experience, to dare to live it here and now, to become part of it, to recognise ourselves in the mirror it holds up to us. It’s an experience radically different from the one technology offers. I imagine that is exactly what The Trojan Women, through Euripides’ voice, was also seeking. At that time, theatre still carried a strong ritual, religious and communal dimension, and it helped people endure and process their own grief. That is theatre’s original purpose. Where do you find light in such a dark story? The light lies in poetry itself: in the beauty of the theatrical act, in the dramaturgy, in the language of the stage, in the way art challenges us either to be moved or to think more deeply. Perhaps that, in the end, is catharsis: a process of purification that happens collectively, together with others. War, as a machine for producing suffering, is unmanageable; it resists being translated into poetry. It seems impossible to turn it into poetry. How can one go on writing poetry after Auschwitz? How can one continue after Gaza? And yet I have the sense that it is precisely then that the need for poetry becomes even more urgent. Where do you find reasons to hold on to hope? Hecuba speaks very little about hope, at least in the way we understand that word today. She speaks more about taking on duty, about active participation, about the need to search for solutions. She names things, condemns, asks questions. There’s a line I find especially moving, when she addresses Andromache, the widow of her son Hector: “Andromache, it is for us to bear this suffering…” Hecuba does not turn away from the ordeal, from the weight of it. She takes on the responsibility. That endurance, that refusal to bend, is one of the most admirable things about this character. At the same time, tragedy hides something deeply dark and bottomless. I would call it “the tragedy of tragedy itself”: it offers no redemption. It may give form to vengeance, but it never arrives at forgiveness. Do you believe that searching for meaning in a world that is falling apart is itself a form of resistance? The search for meaning is never static. It shifts, it opens new paths of understanding, and that is exactly why it remains necessary. That, after all, is the core of storytelling, poetry and literature: the search for a meaning that speaks to each of us individually as much as to all of us together. What moves me most in Euripides is that he turns myth into an act of political responsibility. He asks us to strip the heroes, Odysseus, Achilles and the rest, of their heroic aura, and to judge them on their actions. I believe utopia is an act of resistance. How do you see this production meeting audiences in Cyprus, a country that carries its own historical wounds and has, relatively recently, experienced loss, displacement and division? All of that is so painful. We live in an age where globalisation is now an undeniable reality. But it is a reality that generates profit, and we shouldn’t forget that. What saddens me is that we fail to move beyond economic interest as the sole meaning we give to the word “global,” and that we so often struggle to give that word an ethical, genuinely human meaning instead. The fact that we still have to defend fundamental rights that were supposedly secured decades ago, the Geneva Conventions being just one example, is deeply troubling. Do prisoners of war have rights? Are there even prisoners of war anymore? And what kind of wars are we facing now? Today, public discourse about war talks more about investment and costs than about human lives. The degradation of language is staggering. No society is safe. Every country, even the ones we call “democracies,” can find itself in the position of the victim at any moment. That is why I believe both citizens and politicians need to think seriously about these questions. And it’s striking that The Trojan Women already raises all of this. After such a rich theatrical journey, some roles leave a deeper mark than others. What place does this Hecuba occupy in your artistic and personal journey? Some characters are so rich and multi-layered that you never really say goodbye to them. I would say Hecuba, Euripides’ Hecuba, which I see as a deeply poetic, aesthetic, human and political presence, belongs to that category. She will stay with me as a great friend. She already feels like a teacher to me. She has helped me grow as an actress, moved me deeply, and pushed me into extreme emotional territory. She is a fighting figure but also deeply tender, and her thinking has an extraordinary intellectual force. This has happened to me before with a few rare roles. I think, for example, of Saint Teresa of Jesus. Yes, Hecuba will remain, for me, a teacher and a friend. A precious companion. INFOEuripides’ The Trojan Women, a co-production of Producciones Come y Calla and the International Festival of Classical Theatre of Merida, directed by Carlota Ferrer, with Isabel Ordaz as Hecuba, at the Ancient Theatre of Curium, July 3 and 4, nine pm (doors at eight pm). Tickets: SoldOut Tickets, Stephanis Stores, 7000 2414. Running time: 110 minutes. Buses available from Nicosia. Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News New allowances and higher payments approved for people with disabilities Israeli media report gradual recovery in tourism to Cyprus What to do if you lost TV channels after the DVB-T2 switch Monaco blast suspect is a woman, was spotted in Germany – source At least 3,700 excess deaths reported during heatwave in France, Belgium and Netherlands Cyprus AI platform in talks with universities to bridge graduate-employment gap Why Europe wants to break up with Big Tech? Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.