A performance that attempts to bring out the abrupt and violent process that turned Asia Minor refugees into infectious agents and a danger for the society. Asia Minor refugees were exiled, abandoned, or they died in quarantine hospitals that were set up in various regions of Greece.
The performance treats this historical phenomenon in a multifaceted way using contemporary scientific approaches: it explores – among other things – the power structures that cause it, its social and political considerations, and the concepts of morbidity/normality, “purge”, threshold, transition, and marginalisation as records of historical/social connotations…
The dramaturgical material is composed of real life testimonies and original fiction texts. The work is performed in an open space and at sea. It focuses on the body, its movement, the songs, sounds and voices of the actors, who blend with the audience from the beginning to create a community.
A group of people, a contemporary “chorus”, attempts to (re)compose a mind-blowing and at the same time ritualistic music-theatre performance about Smyrna, with strong images and narratives questioning fragments of the history of the Asia Minor Catastrophe and borrowing elements from ancient tragedy.
Pieces of history and historical documents are recited in chorus. Chorus, melismatic choral singing, use of phrases from ancient drama choral parts in translation or in the original, messengers’ narratives, laments.
These narratives and comments will be interrupted by real persons’ testimonies that weave the aching, blood-stained human web. Excerpts of testimonies from EXODUS, Koinos Logos, the narratives of Filio Haidemenou and Angela Papazoglou, and of soldiers on the front lines have been selected and pieced together in an original composition.
Four actors sitting around a table. The feast begins. Their food is newspapers, their laptops and mobile phones. They read and comment on the headlines of the Greek, Turkish and Cypriot press from 1922 to this date.
How does the Press work? As a propaganda mechanism or as an information medium? How is the event presented, as a defeat or as a victory? And what about refugees? Are they presented as people or as numbers? Is the national interest a Need? How do newspapers treat war, destruction, the uprooting, expulsion, and settlement of refugees?
What are the references to the Event throughout the years? How have the relationships among the three countries evolved? How have they been shaped?
The Semio theatre company, using the unique contribution of Islahane to the history of the Greek state and Thessaloniki as a connective tissue, suggests a double approach, with 1922 always at its center.
The work revolves around 10 short theatrical pieces that have “The Islahane’’ as their central theme. Created by very important writers and performed by acclaimed performers, actors, disabled dancers, dancers, opera singers, the works run through the history of adjacent peoples, religions, consciences, families, orphans, Muslims, Christians, metalworkers, people of labor etc.
The celebration of the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, last year, and of the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, this year, is an opportunity for evaluation and redefinition. The plays that will be presented in the exhibition, illuminate aspects of Greek social reality.
With small statements, we make a map of our soul. A list of memories, a list of the past. A collection of materials and images in a seemingly random order. A collage, an assembly of sentences that all begin with the phrase: I remember…
NOITI GRAMMI theatre group, with the promenade performance I Remember, proposes a dialogue between the Performing Arts and applied history, historical walks, the concept of a cultural promenade in the historical sites, and an experiential way of understanding the memory of every refugee in a world of turbulence and upheaval.
Two performers/guides attempt a tangible return to the past. They will lead a group of travellers on the routes of ancient topography, with the sound of voices being the supporter of collective memory. This tour will create sporadic and fleeting episodes of unexpected memories, in the form of a pre-recorded soundscape, which will be reproduced through the use of headphones.
After the Smyrna Catastrophe, around 12.000 refugees from Ionia, Thrace and Pontus arrived at the city of Volos. In 1923 the creation of a refugee settlement began, which was later called Nea Ionia (New Ionia) and evolved into a small community. Most of the refugees were working in tobacco factories, while they soon began establishing football clubs. One of them was Niki Sports Club, whose story begins in 1924.
Part a: Dressing-Room
In the in-between space of the team’s dressing-room, we follow the journey of the refugees and their arrival at Volos, their integration into the society and the creation of Niki Sports Club.
Through the use of complicated technological media, multiple sound sources, contemporary electronic music inspired by traditional Smyrna songs, speech and movement, we follow the journey through the sea until the first couple of years in the new land.
Part b: The Match
In the football field now, the struggle for survival, the competition with the native people, the promotion to the premier league and the integration into the new environment, is depicted through a choreographed football match along with usage of multiple cameras and site-specific projections as the court fills with fans, that is, the descendants that interact with the stage action.
Fotis Kontoglou’s book is a collection of stories published in 1962 and a nostalgic reference to the backdrop of the authors’ childhood, in early-20th-century Aivali, a small city hidden among the straits and coasts of the East.
After a careful consideration of these texts, we selected those parts that engage in a meaningful conversation with the mass flights of populations of the previous century and at the same time with the refugee and migrant crisis of today. We explore Kontoglou’s language and the path towards a deeper understanding and a more active participation in the “strange currents” created among people.
Aivali, My Homeland is a performance created by four performers who, through the stories of various protagonists of a wonderful collection of short stories, reveal these characters by placing them in a common time and place, while composing a strange, common story.
On 15/12/22 D. Gounaris, N. Stratos, P. Protopapadakis, N. Theotokis, G. Baltatzis and G. Hadjianestis were sentenced to death for high treason as the main culprits for the Asia Minor Catastrophe and were executed at Goudi. In the morning of that same day, the President of the Extraordinary Military Tribunal, Al. Othoneos, reads out the verdict and withdraws without saying “the trial is concluded”. The trial of the six was never concluded technically.
Freedom to Die is the trial and reenactment of those events that followed the verdict and those that were hurriedly kept secret “to convince public opinion that all lawful procedures were abided by”.
Nowadays, how many trials and what kind of trials are set up “to convince the public opinion”? How many real events are disguised as fictitious ones and vice versa? And how does each one of us perceive and interpret the world surrounding us?
A performance based on the novel of Giannis Makridakis and the journey of uprooting and moving to a new homeland accompanied by its sounds and images.
A shipwreck between Chios and Cesme sets in motion the unfolding of a multifaceted story inspired by family narrations. The story attempts a deep introspection to memory and perishability.
Anestis, the castaway, struggles to put his past in order and take decisions about his present. His homing pigeons, are trained to return to their “homeland” ignoring the borders and linking the past to the present. Images and sounds from the route Smyrna to Chios alternate and illuminate a multifaceted memory journey.
Generations of pigeons together with generations of people are moving in parallel. Their direction is constantly changing as it is determined by the History and many coincidences.
Philoxenia/Hospitality in ancient Greece was a sacred obligation and an unconditional right. Since then and until now, the phenomenon of forced mass displacement of populations is not unprecedented. However, in recent years the way we deal with this phenomenon is unprecedentedly harsh.
How things have changed over time in Greek society? What did the refugees experience on their way from Asia Minor to Greece and how did they cope? How were they received by the natives? How did the Greek government deal with them? And on the other hand, how are the refugees treated today by the Greek government and the Greek citizens?
A musical narrative theatrical performance inspired by the testimonies of refugees of then and now, in combination with ancient texts, literary texts, audio documents, physicality, poetry and live music.