The Archaeologist

The performance The Archaeologist is a fresh, satirical, and profoundly humorous adaptation of a bold and controversial novel of the same title by Andreas Karkavitsas. In a Greece that is constantly searching for its place between the past and the future, a group of actors presents a performance about an “excavation” that takes place not only in the ground but also in our national consciousness. The work’s theme revolves around Andreas Embiricos’ quote, “Today as tomorrow and as yesterday.”

Karkavitsas’ novel was written in 1903, in a Greece humiliated by the 1897 defeat, financially suffering from consecutive bankruptcies, and seeking its identity between the glorious past of classical antiquity and the urgent need to catch up with the contemporary civilized world. His work was considered blasphemous because it spoke in a demeaning way about classical Greek art. Nonetheless, it remains relevant as it explores the relationship between contemporary art, the past, and the future.