An experiential event for children, with elements of dramatised documentary and narrative performance and with original music, revolving around the games in the neighbourhoods of Asia Minor, which “tell” in their own way the everyday life of the communities prior to the 1922 Catastrophe. Games that seem forgotten, played without ever being told, left to perish along with the hope for the return to the motherland.
The thread of collective memory unfolds through a story that travels in time, through playing with children games that were passed down by those who saw pain in refugee yards, along with the smile of a carefree childhood.
Stories of integration and rebirth in a new land as well as ways used to express resourcefulness, the grace and imagination of a people, will be presented with the help of contemporary audiovisual means and restored old toys.
Catch-22 – the title of Joseph Heller’s novel – means “vicious circle” and has become established as an expression denoting the irrational of human existence, the irrational of war, where success and disaster are inextricably linked.
For what else is war but one more Sisyphus rolling his rock up the mountain and then repeating the process all over again? Catch (19)22 explores the Asia Minor Catastrophe, through the irrationality of war and dares to contrast it with the peak and decline of the Macedonian civilization. There, over the tombs of the great kings, where grandeur and death are the two sides of the same coin.
The site-specific performance Catch (19)22 unfolds in the archaeological site of the Royal Burial Clusters of Aigai, based on a collection of oral and written testimonies about life in Asia Minor and with the artistic contribution of students of the 1st Junior High School of Veria.
On the occasion of the centenary of the Asian Minor Catastrophe, we commemorate the uprooting of innocent civilians through a project that aims at making children from Kos historically aware about the events that occurred during the Asia Minor Catastrophe.
The children will participate in a two-week seminar (29/8/22 – 9/9/22), where they will construct “hero”-puppets depicting refugees from 1922 and onwards, while also learning how to animate them. Through theatrical improvisations, children will express the pain, violence, and cruel treatment experienced by immigrants. The workshops will come complete with a performance that will be held at the Roman Conservatory in Kos (10 and 11/9/22).
The purpose of these performances is to raise awareness and invite people to reflect on peace and show solidarity towards refugees of wars of the past and of the present.
Galatia Grigoriadou-Soureli’s awarded novel The Great Farewell is presented in its first staging for children aged 10 years and over and teenagers.
The 4PLAY theatre company tells the adventure of the novel’s heroes, who take part in the Asia Minor Expedition in the beginning of their adult life, through a theatre performance that combines contemporary dance techniques with contact improvisation and an original music score.
A journey from Athens to Smyrna, from youth to maturity, and from peace and love to war and loss. A story binding the old world today with today’s world, using Ionia as a connective link. A story of coming of age and humaneness.
The Girls in the Sailor Suits unfolds the thread of the true story of an urban family in Smyrna. It presents the drama and the greatness of Hellenism in Asia Minor through the eyes of two children born where “everything was soft and warm like a hug, where people enjoyed the blessings and the wealth of the East and the love of each other and were happy.”
As the events unfold, pushed forward by time, everything that marked the smiling and kind people of Ionia passes in front of the eyes of the central heroines, the twin girls Katinaki and Maritsa: from the happy days, the culture, and the beauty of life in Asia Minor to the obligatory settling down in refugee settlements and the contribution of refugees to modern Greece.
A theatrical performance about History that time fights to cover with its ashes. For a country that insists on declaring its presence in people’s eyes because, in the end, homeland is people themselves and everything that dwells in our soul. Like the wish the little girls in the sailor suits make: “Let tomorrow be a day of happiness…”
What a sweet summer evening… Everything you need for a soirée, a reception, a garden party at least. This is how paradise must be like, don’t you agree? A place of recreation perhaps. A heavenly city. And then nothing.
At the Eretria Museum refreshment room, four visitors drink soft drinks, eat chips, and through the museum’s audio tour of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, they become connected to history, memory, the meaning of the city, cosmopolitanism, extermination and destruction. As time goes by, the questions from the loudspeaker, the songs and the dances alternate with the historical information, the meaning of Hellenism, History, the mythical cities, the conditions that changed the world, the literary narratives and the image of Smyrna.
Finally, what should one remember from the world memory? And what should one erase?
A land of rebirth, a place of co-formation, an old café with contemporary music. Spectators, habitués, refugees, residents, leaving back their memories, keeping personal narratives as a legacy.
The performance crosses the historical paths with theatrical tools, but also with the use of our mobile phones, our smartphones, our modern technological need, which can finally allow us to create our own personal narrative with new media, to find our place in this world.
The story can be shaped, if we are a part of history.
Based on oral history and experiential-biographical material, The Memory of Water foregrounds the value of memory and the importance of its preservation for reasons of historical and cultural cohesion and continuity, bringing out traces of the refugee identity of the island of Lesvos through the eyes of the young generation.
The project consists of two creative parts. The first part is the planning and implementation of an experiential documentary-theatre workshop with the participation of adolescent students of Lesvos, in collaboration with the Model General High School of Mytilene of the University of the Aegean.
The second part includes the creation of a documentary-theatre performance, with the participation of the same teenagers as “experiential performers”, handing over the baton to them so that they can explore, own, and bring to life the stories of their ancestors through experiential research and performance art.
The work is a theatrical adaptation based on Stratis Doukas’ novel of the same title that incorporates participatory activities of an educational nature. The story of the original text is about the adventures of a Greek man who was arrested by the Turks during the Smyrna Catastrophe in 1922. It vividly describes his escape and his struggle to survive until he is rescued.
The novel is dedicated to “the common sufferings of nations” and has an internationalist character. The references and comparisons to the refugee waves shaking today’s world are obvious. The work’s main focus is human resourcefulness and the preservation of human dignity amidst the horrors of war and the bitterness of being uprooted.
The performance is enriched with interactive parts, which – using Educational Drama as a vehicle – aim at the further exploration of the work’s thematic core.
Camp 22 is a performance that focuses on the “Hi-story”: the Hi-story of our nation, the Hi-story of a show, our personal hi-story, a Hi-story from the human perspective.
Whether we actively participate in them or we are just a spectator, we, ourselves, create our Hi-stories. And in order to keep them in our memory we photograph every moment, to recall where we were, whom we were with, and how we were.
That’s why Camp 22 asks the right questions to start a dialogue. There where time does not exist, where everything is possible, where there are no borders. At Camp 22 they play “breaking” music. At Camp 22, the world, the stories and our lives belong to its people. At Camp 22 history is written by its protagonists.