Emerging from the bleakness of history, rowing across the river of time, women of different ages and ethnic backgrounds meet here and now. Olympia! Summer 2022!
Dialogic “episodes” dramatise the horror of war, the Exchange of Populations, the collapse of the Great Idea. Monologues narrate little by little, with epic solemnity, the same, almost repetitive history. The performers, all of them anonymous members of a tragic chorus, will unite their voices in the interpolated songs, the festive odes and monodies, and will bring out the theatricality of the “testimonial” narration, arousing emotion in audiences, who will get to look the violence of History straight in the eye.
The refugee narrative is deconstructed and integrated into a historical chamber drama that sometimes seems like an ancient tragedy and sometimes like a musical Requiem.
The performance aims at capturing and presenting the osmosis of cultures that forever changed the city of Heraklion, focusing on the moment of arrival and reception for some, and on the moment of separation and abandonment for others, at an emblematic part of the port, a fortress that can be both a prison and a refuge.
Refugees of then and refugees of now, descendants of refugees and locals who received them, documents, press articles, literary excerpts, poems, personal testimonies and experiences come into light to tell audiences a story that connects peoples and cultures to this date.
A fourteen-member ensemble consisting of actors, musicians, and “specialists” will attempt to revisit historical events that shaped the city of Heraklion through the stories of its citizens.
“How people are alike! If we let them be free, they immediately come together and love each other.” Language. A bridge that reaches the heart of the interlocutor and creates at once a bond and a commitment… Eh, and there’s also food! Three generations. People from Asia Minor and Turks from Crete meet at a common ground, the table. They cook. They feel nostalgic.
“Nostalgia is an old thing you remember. History is an old thing you don’t remember. My parents named me Ozlem, which means “nostalgia”, for the sake of the motherland they are nostalgic for, and Pelagia for the sake of the sea that unites us…” What is a refugee? Identity? Motherland? What is common ground? Can such whispers be heard in the complexity of political decisions?
A work based on our memories and the narratives wrote down by Maria Tsirimonaki in her book Those Who Left, Those Who Came.
In September of 1922, an American citizen charters “Mimosa”, the ship that will transfer 2,000 Greeks from Smyrna to Piraeus. Three traveling players are among the passengers. A mysterious burlesque comes to life on the deck of “Mimosa”. The traveling players unfold their performance through storytelling, singing and dancing, challenging the boundaries of tragic and comic. In the middle of the sea, they take us on a journey through the depths of human soul, in its attempt to survive, to find its roots, to attest, to smile, to trust again.
Fiction braids with documentary, in this dark comedy, dedicated to the multiple adventures of the Catastrophe of Asia Minor. Drawing material from the dark impasses of the National Schism, the play reconstructs, in a fictive context, heroes of the period who fought for the uncertain future of integration.
On the occasion of the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Mneme theatre company revisits the atmosphere of those days through Kosmas Politis’ emblematic PARODOS, a chapter interpolated in the middle of his novel “Stou Hadjifragkou” that introduces us to the greatest tragedy ever experienced by the Greek people since the birth of the Greek State.
Its literary value is unprecedented as it manages to capture our imagination, both metaphorically – by calling our attention to the value and beauty of the place – and literally – by transporting us to the centre of the tragedy that unfolded during the last days of August 1922 on the coast of Smyrna.
The production is accompanied by the original music of composer-pianist Dimitris Droumboyannis, performed live onstage by three musicians.
On a stage that is also an archaeological site, five artists from Cephalonia who live and create in 2022, bring to life narratives from the days of 1922, hum melodies, and look for the thread connecting them to their ancestors, who were either born on Cephalonia or Ithaca or ended up there hunted down, orphaned, and frightened. Alongside them a British lighting designer, a Cephaloniot set designer who lives abroad, and a director with roots in Cappadocia.
The performance presents archival material revolving around the reception of 7,000 refugees and the integration of those who, in the end, remained on these two islands.
With no sadness, but with the intent to communicate the atmosphere of that era and collectively redefine the concept of “refugee”. Because refugeeism is not an instant occurrence in world history.
The production approaches the Asia Minor Catastrophe through poems written by poets from Asia Minor, whose verses are marked by a strong lamenting mood, proportional to the tragic nature of the 1922 events.
The collective trauma of the loss of “Paradise” echoes across the poems of the refugee-poets, becoming a link to respective contemporary situations and also to the lamentation over the loss of people, places, hearths, relationships and freedoms in a wider sense. The performance aims at creating a safe context for a different lamenting ceremony but also an open space for reflection on the questions of loss and refugeeism.
Focusing less on the detailed narration of the events revolving around the Asia Minor Catastrophe and more on their emotional perception and symbolic representation, Stage 22 presents a grief-lifting ceremonial event that praises peace and life.
Continuing its research on intergenerational participatory story-telling, the APARAMILLON creative team focuses on the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the story of two places directly linked to the ’22 refugees. Nikaia and the island of Chios, one of the main first stations of the uprooted.
The basic dramaturgical stepping-off point is the concept of the house, both as the material manifestation of relationships grounded in a specific space and as a mental construction. A house is placed on the stage as a scenic indicator of every lost house of the refugees and at the same time of their effort to acquire a new roof over their heads.
The dramaturgy draws upon testimonies and archival material from refugee associations, engaging in a conversation with melodies performed by the students of the Musical Schools of Chios, in a scenic fusion of theatre with music, which bridges two places and two eras.
The Black Journey is the real life testimony of a young Greek man who was recruited to take part in the Asia Minor Expedition.
The bijoux de kant company talks about the vital needs, the hunger, the thirst and the cruelty planted by war in the souls of all people, regardless of their nationality. It talks about the uprooting, the life of refugees, and the new cultural identity of Greece. In a field of memory, in a landscape of fragments, an unknown soldier of the Engineer Battalion vividly describes the wound of being uprooted and rewrites history.
The protagonist is accompanied by an Angel, his younger self, and eastern melodies of Asia Minor performed by a young girl from Athens, who sings to the Smyrnaean rhythms of a culturally new Greece.
Using the Asia Minor Catastrophe as a starting point we will work on the provocative and enigmatic story written by Giorgos Chimonas, Doctor Ineotis.
The wandering and the History of the masses, the history of humanity itself, its ending and the inevitable renaissance of something new are the essence of the Asia Minor Catastrophe and are also powerfully present in Chimonas’ text. Chimonas writes a story but its narrative is being constantly interrupted, in the same way that dreams work. And the dreamy element in the archaeological site of Deskati in Grevena is the Tarkovskian setting that perfectly matches with the poetic writing of the text.
The non-realistic speech delivery, the scenery, the music and the singing, are the elements that will compose our performance.