A cocktail paid for by the tourism workers
For most children, summer is the most carefree time of the year. For adults, summer is a very serious matter that requires organization, planning, and money. For some professionals, summer is identified with their jobs. Those who work during the summer, even in exhausting conditions, must conceal their tiredness to avoid dampening the spirits of holiday-goers. Travelers, on the other hand, invest their money in their vacations, hoping to be compensated for the frustrations and fatigue accumulated throughout the year.
The focus is on what often goes unnoticed during the summer: the thoughts that tour guides do not share with the tourists, the conversations among the kitchen staff, and the cramped 20-square-meter rooms where four waiters have to stay, sharing the space with 23 cockroaches.
Are we all equal under the sun or do we bring the already existing inequalities with us into tourist resorts?
Extinction. Heartbreak. Grief. Faith. In you. Who left. And in you. Who came. In the paper that is torn. In the whole family. In Monday evening. And in Tuesday evening. In modern theatre (modern art). And in modern humans. In sweet summertime. In our Argos. In culture. And in the whole of Greece. Death to winter. Death to death. Inspired by Euripides’ The Bacchae and Margarita Liberaki’s Sparagmos (Heartbreak), the characters onstage will attempt to preserve a world made of paper. The performance will try to tell the story of the mythical king Pentheus, also known as “the man of many sorrows”.
How long is the journey from adoring football to succumbing to blind hooliganism, stubbing, and causing the loss of human lives? A murder fueled by hooliganism plays out in front of the eyes of a journalist, unveiling ideologies, behaviors, interests, and mechanisms that are not restricted to the rush of some hot-blooded fans, but go much deeper than that.
Through the tools of documentary theatre (interviews with the true protagonists of real-life events, fans, parents of victims, and perpetrators, referees, policemen, and sport group executives), the performance Which Team Are You On? is an ode to the global social phenomenon known as football, and a poetic recording of the sports fan culture and its negative manifestations. A performance that is raw yet comic, mundane yet surrealistic, aiming to raise the audience’s awareness and make them want to go play football with their friends.
An Iphigenia, a Pylades, an Orestes, and some Anton Chekhov cross paths in an atemporal setting. They will carve out concentric circles in an everlasting clash with themselves and the others. All of them are descendants of the historical figures whose names they share. Their name is their heritage… An unbearable burden on their shoulders… How can they shake off all the heavy loads that history has placed on them? People change over the years, they become unrecognizable to their own selves, and they clash with anything that they instinctively recognize as a carrier of this amnesia…. To change everything… To become who you long to be… To declare your own identity… And then what? How can the sound of your breath fit inside the bustle of a war?
The story unfolds in a troubled period, somewhere around Crimea, near the Azov sea, in the suffering city of Mariupol, at a port called Taganrog (known as Taiganio by the Greeks who lived there), the birthplace of the renowned Russian writer Anton Chekhov. The war is raging, filling people’s souls with terror. It is the circle with the longest diameter in a system of concentric circles of conflicts.
The En Dynami theatre company, after conducting extensive research on modern dramaturgy, is now treating a classical text for the first time: Sophocles’ Antigone. A social group that daily clashes with the state, society, laws, and the mentality of our fellow citizens regarding issues of acceptance, accessibility, and social inclusion, wonders whether they live in a world that is just and whether laws are designed to protect people or the opposite. They wonder how far they would be willing to go for their beliefs. “The impossible cannot be done”, says Ismene in the prologue. We, however, ought to go for it. Antigone’s story is written to inspire us. Everywhere and always.
Four actors and a musician travel to Arcadia, seeking fragments of the myth. Their goal is to found a utopian community in harmony with nature, following the tradition of the Arcadian Ideal.
From ancient to contemporary times, Arcadia has been the place onto which European thought has projected the idea of a lost paradise on earth. It is a place where myth and reality blend. At the same time, it reflects the issue of Greece’s heterodefinition, given that many of the thinkers who shaped the perception of Greece never actually visited the country.
How far is the Western European mythical tradition of Arcadia from the modern Greek experience? Can we imagine an ideal society today? Can we imagine a life in harmony with nature, or does something like that come in conflict with our modern lifestyle?
Ajax is not there. But Tecmessa is. And she will defend her own version of the story. Amidst the whirlwind of societal developments and twists, humans may lose their centre. How can someone redefine their centre? Are memories real? While the fight against patriarchy and all of its ensuing problems continues, a story about “male” honour and ethics will be told from the perspective of a woman who loved her man, stood by him, and saw her life changing due to literal or metaphorical wars.
Parts of the text come to life through performance and complete Tecmessa’s narration, in an atemporal setting where moments and images are constructed and deconstructed. The soundscape adds to Tecmessa’s mental fluctuations. Can someone describe something that is at once wild and tender? Did Ajax’ life deserve a better fate? What about one person’s feelings for another person? How is love connected to honour?
In New Zealand, a river was granted legal person status. The Ganges River in India heard about this and liked the idea, so it also obtained such a status. In Iceland, there is an ongoing campaign to present a glacier as an election candidate.
The environmental organization The Bee Camp presents a transformative performance experience, written and directed by Anthi Founta, inspired by the once unthinkable idea of granting legal rights to elements of nature. And this is how, after 160 years of dispute, the river Whanganui, becomes the first river on earth to belong to itself, all the way from the mountain to the sea. Can you imagine that? Nature belonging to itself?
Our life is a journey
into the Night, into the Winter,
we seek our path,
in the starless meadow.
The theatre and music performance This Is How It Began, directed by Victoria Fota and featuring music by Lefteris Veniadis, is based on the first part of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s novel Journey to the End of the Night [Voyage au bout de la nuit].
In a rush of enthusiasm, the young medical student Ferdinand Bardamu voluntarily joins the French Army, right after the outbreak of World War I. Soon, however, he regrets this action, as he sees from close up the murderous incapability of his superiors, the brutality of human nature, and the absurdity of war.
Bardamu is no role model; he is not a war hero. His unorthodox stance and rebellious views could be described as nihilistic. They do express, however, the innermost thoughts of every person who, realizing the horror of war and the futility of conflicts occurring in the name of nations, religions, and ideologies in general, prefers to survive and not be turned into yet another dead “hero”, who will forever remain unseen.
Photography exhibition / Audio walk / Theatre performance
Cross-disciplinary piece, based on Stratis Vogiatzis’ book of the same title
There is a life that silently unfolds underneath the ground; a life that has reconciled with the chaos and the co-existence of the diverse elements that compose the world. This life unfolds in a place that knows – without however being able to prove it – that the Individual is actually the Collective, that the Other complements the One, that the Imaginary is the Real waiting to be confirmed, and that the Real, in return, is the Imaginary experienced through the senses. What is this land, this open space, in which, when heterogeneous elements come together, the possibility of a world hitherto “patiently waiting for the right conditions to emerge” is fertilized? What is this land that can withstand to serve as both a background for a picture that will be revealed, and as the picture itself? What is this Camp?
Stratis Vogiatzis’s photography exhibition is made possible with the support of MOMus and Chios Music Festival.