The magic of the famous Greek author Alexandros Papadiamantis’ enduring body of work is highlighted by featuring three of his memorable short stories: “The Wife of the Church Commissioner”, “The Cholera-afflicted Woman”, and “The Voice of the Dragon”.These stories revolve around the role of women in society, the dominant patriarchal or societal views, and the many conflicts arising either from challenges in communicating a common language code or from women’s internal struggles. The themes range from the sacrifices a woman can make for her dowry to her social exclusion.
Telling the story both through vocal performance and sign language, dancing, and theatre, the director focuses on a polyphonic narrative that is conveyed through facial expressions, voices, and hand movements, shaping a unique universe. A place, which is dominated by the senses and emphasizes Papadiamantis’ language, rich in poetic descriptions and imagery. The performance features both deaf and hearing actors.
What is the relationship between Goebbels and Hadjiavatis? Cavafy and Cleopatra? Nionios and Churchill? And in what way is a monkey bite responsible for the Asia Minor expedition? Artifactory presents the shadow puppet performance for children and grown-ups Karagiozis in 31 B.C. in Alexandria, inspired by C.P. Cavafy’s poem “In 31 B.C. in Alexandria”.
The piece discusses the naval battle of Actium, a significant event in the Hellenistic antiquity era. It provides a unique perspective that raises contemporary issues related to misinformation, the peculiar nature of war, and the impact of fake news on shaping public opinion. The performance is part of the interdisciplinary, multi-faceted project Cavafy: 4 poems about Nikopolis, which aims to link Cavafy’s poetic universe and his connection to antiquity, as portrayed in these four poems, with the archaeological site of Nikopolis and its history.
In the performance A Brilliant Elegy for Anthoula Stathopoulou, a poetess walks the fine line between life and death. As her end is near, she strives to hold onto the words she has served throughout her life. Giannis Soldatos and Efi Venianakis’ direction focuses on the meticulous handling and special accentuation of every word. Words turn into “stage props” and are pronounced with special emphasis, without mannerisms. The themes of human existential agony, decay, and death remain boldly relevant in this work’s poetic universe, as our era is also confronted with the same enduring questions.
Anthoula Stathopoulou passed away at the age of 27, in spring 1935, leaving behind a significant poetic body of work. In the exhibition accompanying the performance, the present day is linked to the past, through photographs from abandoned sanatoria, not as a realistic account but as a visual historiography. Their special identity leads them into the complex paths revealed by memory in 20th-century mythography.
In the highly charged space of the Nekromanteion of Acheron in Preveza, we watch the final moments of a dying woman who, standing on the verge between life and death, struggles to understand and accept her imminent end. Solely relying on her voice and memories from the Greek tradition and literature, she becomes a conduit for the universal experience of death agony. She raves, sings, and tells stories, as if she wanted to console her own self, always having beside her a visible and at once invisible fellow traveller. The one who watches, accompanies her with his music, and eventually escorts her to her passing from the worldly to the otherworldly life. An effort to understand and purge the second part of the pair “Life and Death” – this so mundane and inextricable part of every being, that is yet so difficult to accept.
The production Why Did ‘Meliá’ Not Turn Into ‘Meléa’ based on a short story by Georgios Vizyinos, is a dance and theatre performance with a live music accompaniment. In the story, the author recounts an incident from his school years, addressing the Greek language dispute during a period when the whole of the Balkans was in turmoil. The Greek language question was a major point of conflict in the modern history of the Greek state, spanning from the start of the Greek War of Independence to the start of the post-dictatorship era, with significant political, social, and cultural implications.
The apple-tree (in Greek: meliá), which in Greek sounds like the word “speech” (miliá), takes on the role of Speech/Language in the narration. The language of theatre prose will clash with the non-verbal language of dancing, and together they will compose something new, using music as their common ground. They will become ‘Meliá’ and ‘Meléa’. They will portray the conflict of little Giorgis with his teacher, and will become the words that fight over which one will finally settle in the child’s mind and soul.
A theatrical piece that explores the “Odyssey” of the artist Renato Mordo and his wife Trude, set against the backdrop of his tragic imprisonment in Haidari during the German Occupation of Athens. An Austrian Jew of Greek and, for a short time, also of German, nationality, Mordo is an easy target in a time when the world has been divided into camps.
The main focus in this piece is on the Time that is running out, as the decision to transfer Mordo to Auschwitz is still pending. Through his correspondence with his wife Trude, her dreams and nightmares, her great love for Music and Theatre, and her inner conflicts are brought to life, as her descent, religion, nationality, and artistic identity sometimes serve as pathways to salvation, while at other times they lead to her condemnation.
The second protagonist on the stage is Music. Kalliopi Mitropoulou brings compositions in the style of the Inter-war era to life, taking us on a journey from the African coasts to the cabarets of Central Europe.
The creative company APARÄMILLON, consistently working on research-based original dramaturgies, now shifts its attention to the dramaturgy of Iakovos Kampanellis for the first time. In particular, it explores the legendary play The Courtyard of Miracles, offering a participatory performance that focuses on the conflict of interests surrounding overtourism in the Greek islands.
More specifically, the heroes and themes Kampanellis uses blend with real accounts and elements gathered through on-the-spot research, creating a symbolic way of addressing the impacts of unbridled touristic development. This is achieved by contrasting the different economic interests of individuals or groups involved, and by illuminating the ethical and deontological dilemmas that stem from them.
Stage indicators from Kampanellis’ The Courtyard of Miracles invite the creative team and the audience, whether they are local residents or visitors, to participate in a kaleidoscope of human characters and intricate relationships.
Three actors and two musicians collaborate on a freestyle performance inspired by the “Medea” phenomenon and Euripides’ play. The performance includes singing, speech, and movement, with a particular focus on sound. The actors Katerina Antoniadou, Gina Thliveri, and Othon Metaxas take turns playing different roles in the play, accompanied by the sounds of Giorgos Triantafyllou’s musical sculptures and Chrysanthi Gika’s Constantinopolitan lyre, the rhythms of Maro Panagi, and the visual creations and soundscapes of Stefanos Kosmidis. Right at the center of this sound cyclone that is being formed, the bustle of the battle, stands Medea.
Through the dynamic vibration of the sound, we hear Euripides’ speech, the representation of conflict, in a modern Greek translation, which also includes excerpts from the ancient text. The variety of rhythms in the performance, and especially in the Chorus, aims at responding to the diverse rhythms present in the text. The Company’s research on the spiral movement of the body and sound invites audiences to reconnect with the Myth on a collective consciousness level.
We are experiencing the repercussions of a civil war exhaustion. The people are ill; their wounds have brought the beast out of them, have turned them into creatures that walk a tightrope between life and death. Tired faces that have grown ugly, worn out by war, pain, destruction, wretchedness, and abysmal hatred; towards brothers, fellow travellers, those who were called upon to share both the fruitful and the barren land with, God himself. The only one who still carries the Light within her, innocence, hope for an untainted life, is the Bride; she wants to become the fertile soil where the young generation will stem from to love and co-exist in harmony. However, she becomes the sought-after loot; the precious diamond that everyone will defile. Since they cannot respond to its brilliance, they have to dip it in their mud. No matter how much they try to resist the momentum of destruction, the heroes have already surrendered to the absolute nature of causality.
* Our warm thanks go to Mr Nikos Karavasilis, the President of the Cultural Society of the Red Church, for his valuable assistance and support in bringing this performance to life.