Socrates

Provocative questions

Forty years after Julien Schoenaerts, the actor Bruno Vanden Broecke brings the ‘father of Western philosophy’ back to life. Socrates – Plato's teacher and inventor of the Socratic method – got the people in Athens thinking by ironically asking them provocative questions that undermined their prejudices and beliefs. 2.400 years later, the ideas of the ‘Hornet of Athens’ have lost none of their value. In this play – written and directed by Stefaan Van Brabandt – Socrates looks back on his life and ideas in the last hours before his death.

Socrates is the first in a series of philosopher’s monologues by Van Brabandt. Each monologue is written as if the philosopher himself were speaking and in a tone and style that matches the attitude and temperament of the philosopher concerned. In the spirit of Socrates, Socrates is therefore an ironic, poignant, tragicomic performance that encourages one to think.