A soul returns on planet earth and observes and influences people. Three people not knowing each other through the interaction of the soul begun to experience situations, recall memories and mistakes from the past and slowly start transform to the better of themselves. Images, sounds, songs and voices emerge as memories but also as what they will be on the future. Through this experience, each of them ultimately redefines the “real” person that owes to be, and they understand that each of them is unique, authentic and have to embrace themselves in order being able to embrace their fellow human beings. Through the interaction of the real with the imaginary, they evolve and through the past and the present, they find hope for a bright human future.
The performance is based on “The Professor’s Will”, a short story from Dimitris Hatzis’ collection The End of Our Small Town (1963). With sharp insight, the story reveals how those in positions of power behave within a provincial Greek town. Through a melancholically comic lens, it vividly exposes conflicting interests, passions, malice, and the distortion of the social institutions that are meant to serve the community. The action begins with the death of Professor Rallidis, a man who sought to fulfill his duties with integrity and to serve as a source of inspiration for his students. In the performance, two women critically observe and document the events that unfold. Engaging in a continuous game of role-playing, they give voice to the characters of the story while parodying the pettiness and narrow-mindedness of some of them. At the same time, they seek to find their own place within a society governed by male authority. Rejecting the models imposed upon them, they attempt to imagine and construct new ones—models that might contribute to the moral and social renewal of the community. A theatrical exploration of power, hypocrisy, and social responsibility, the production revisits Hatzis’ enduring critique of provincial life while foregrounding questions of gender, agency, and collective transformation.
A documentary theatre performance with elements of fiction and an ongoing documentary film come together in a performative piece exploring the lives of exiled women on the island of Trikeri from 1948 to 1952, during the final years of the Civil War and the period that followed. An original dramaturgy and musical composition based on historical research, testimonies, letters, interviews with close relatives, songs and poems of the exiled women — as well as on our own attempt to enter into dialogue with them, approaching these women not as heroic monuments but as human beings. The prison camp on Trikeri island was a non-place where the bare lives of exiled women had been rendered killable. In such conditions, can collective life and the idea of community become a vital source of strength and a form of resistance? And arriving at the present day: how can historical memory and an encounter with the past become tools for the present? How can people confront collective, intergenerational trauma and imagine a radically different future?
A play about humans, who are still searching for an existential meaning, while entering into a posthumanist era. Three people enter a museum, with an implied, undeclared intention of imminent violation. Their presence carries the weight of a forbidden act, threatening the sanctity of the museum and what is considered appropriate behavior towards Art and History. As the play unfolds, the characters’ different attitudes towards life begin to emerge and clash. MAN A approaches meaning as something that can and must be constructed, MAN B constantly deconstructs it, refusing any form of existential consolation and WOMAN C is oscillating between the need to believe there is meaning in existence and her inability to do so. The scenes of the play lead the characters to the realization that meaning may not pre-exist, but may be produced by man himself and may cease to exist without him. This is not presented as redemption, but as a double experience of liberation and responsibility, raising the question of what is lost and what is at stake in a world that tends to transcend humans, making the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds increasingly unclear.
The performance “Golden Record” is inspired by the true story of the Golden Record, which NASA sent into space in 1977 on the Voyager missions. The Golden Record contained photographs, drawings, and audio recordings from Earth, as part of a scientific team’s effort to communicate with a potential extraterrestrial civilization and convey an image of human life. Fifty years later, the performance revisits this historic event to pose the question anew: what does “human” mean today? The performance moves between documentary theater, fiction, and music theater, using historical narratives, personal stories, and live music. Starting from the archives of the Golden Record, the work explores how we can speak today about the history of humanity. The Golden Record returns – half a century after its launch into space – at a time when war and destruction overwhelm our daily lives.
At the threshold between day and night, an empty archaeological site is transformed into a space of existential ritual. Two women, unseen cleaning staff, enter the site to begin their shift. As they sweep away the dust, their mechanical labor gradually transforms—echoing Gaston Bachelard’s notion that “the hand that cares begins to dream”—into an act of creation. Drawing inspiration from Kostis Palamas’ iconic poem “The Palm Tree”, the performance weaves a dialogue between the Monumental and the Ephemeral. Accompanied by live music, the poem’s iambic thirteen-syllable verse becomes the rhythmic force that shapes the action, transforming labor into choreography. The two women, like “blue flowers” growing in the shadow of History, reflect on mortality and on humanity’s enduring need to give voice to its existence in the face of the Eternal. Through their presence, the performance explores the fragile yet persistent relationship between human life and historical memory. A poetic stage composition about the sacredness of care and the human spirit that continues to bloom amid the silence of monuments and the erosion of time.
Drawing inspiration from The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov—where the end of an era meets the fear of an unknown future—Stafidokampos (The Currant Fields) relocates the story to a place where memory seems deeply rooted in the soil itself. The Poulopoulos family returns to their ancestral estate after a long absence abroad, only to confront financial dead ends, family secrets and silences, and the looming threat of selling a land that carries their history and identity. The conflict is not merely about the loss of property, but about the painful transition from a disappearing world to one that is forcefully emerging. Using the symbol of Stafidokampos (The Currant Fields) as its point of departure, the performance explores the meaning of roots, home, and homeland today, shedding light on both the economic and emotional dimensions of exploitation, the clash between generations and eras, and the human need to hold on to something that seems destined to vanish forever.
Beside the Archaeological Site of Lerna, in Argolis, lies Lake Alcyonia. In myth, it is bottomless: a passage to the Underworld and the lair of the Lernaean Hydra. It is the starting point of our walking performance. Spectators follow journeys of water: from the lake, along the Pontinos River, to the sea: Water-cycle journeys of beauty and endurance. They follow human paths of anguish, resilience, and daring, ultimately arriving at harmony. Paths of mortals led to immortality, as mythological figures or even deities. They follow the Danaids, Ariadne, and Semele: female figures from the myths of a place known for Heracles and Dionysus. Hera, goddess of women, order, and Argos, guides the spectators along these routes, singing and conversing over electronic music. In a present marked by water scarcity and the need for endurance and courage, the performance sows mythological figures in the land of Lerna, revealing its contemporary significance.
“[…] and no one sees them anymore, except those who were pure in the old days, and the ones who are touched by the unseen in our own time.” Two women—one mature and the other very young (or perhaps they are the same person?)—find themselves on a high, almost inaccessible place, or somewhere at the edge of the sea. Among a number of handmade small lanterns, they tend their flames and tell a story until dawn arrives. It is Akrivoula, nine years old, and the story of her small death, there at the crossing. Around her, other figures emerge: humble little lights, stories of a lost innocence, forms like the sea flowers and sand dunes that shone for a moment and then disappeared, carried away by the waves. And among them stands the comforting presence of Alexandros Papadiamantis.
Philoctetes (1965), by Heiner Müller—the most important German playwright of the second half of the twentieth century—marks the author’s first engagement with ancient drama, which would become a constant source of inspiration throughout his work. Drawing on Sophocles while freely reinterpreting him, Müller creates a play that, although clearly rooted in the political impasses of its time—and especially in the legacy of Stalinism—can still be read today as a political work with strong contemporary resonances, but above all as a meditation on the relationship between body and politics. The body of the abandoned Philoctetes, a victim of his commitment to the common cause, is reclaimed by those who ruthlessly condemned him to suffering on Lemnos. Thus, in Müller’s world, where no deus ex machina is expected to appear, Philoctetes becomes useful as a corpse, once he is no longer of use alive. The human body and its fate, humanism and its limits, and a politics that reshapes the law according to its own needs are themes that speak directly to contemporary society and enter into close dialogue with this year’s theme for the program “All of Greece, One Culture.” The rights are granted by henschel SCHAUS .