The present paper examines the back-and-forth exchange between Greek tragedy and contemporary theatre regarding the theme of violence, catastrophe, and existence at the challenge of the impossible. To put into words this impossible, I prefer to use the French version of the term, hors-sens, in order to describe what is opposed to the search of sense (hors-sens is also different from the nonsense), to describe what lies beyond any significance or meaning: the unbearable, the unendurable, the insufferable, the unimaginable, the insurmountable and so on. Contemporary theatre represents the art and the act of re-telling and not-leaving-behind; through its identificatory or repulsive side, contemporary theatre also requires a therapeutic and a psychoanalytic effect: not only for the audience, but also for the actresses/ actors or victims involved in the drama. My personal and psychoanalytic approach is that nowadays theatre transmits a symbolic pound of flesh, as a Shakespearian heritage and metaphor from his play, The Merchant of Venice. Finally, a substantial aim of this paper is to review how contemporary European stage directors deal with the nude condition of violence and hors-sens, therefore I will discuss three significant case studies – Milo Rau, Tiago Rodrigues and Pippo Delbono – with constant reference to some Lacanian major concepts from his clinical teaching: anxiety, pound of flesh, object (a), social bond, the triad the real, the symbolic, the imaginary and others.