Region: Crete

About the Nature of Things

The combination of Epimenidis, a figure between legend and history, and Lucretius’ philosophical poetic work About the Nature of Things has been the inspiration for this year’s artistic meeting at the timeless cultural magnet of Ideon Andron. This year’s cultural meeting revolves around a composition of multidimensional art forms inspired by the philosophy of reapproaching Nature and man’s relationship with the environment. Using as tools different art forms and techniques or handcrafts that have been historically developed in the Cretan Culture, such as weaving, pottery and woodworking, along with visual arts, theatre and the dominant musical production, Epimenidis II treats the concept of man’s offering to the environment in which he lives, creates and evolves.

The event About the Nature of Things will be structured in three thematic units starting in the afternoon (18:30-19:00) and ending in the evening by 22:00. More specifically:

Presenter: Mirka Skoula (Cultural administrator, UCL)

• Part Α: The beginning of creation, from Nature to Use (18:00-19:30)

Open exhibition of craftworks: pottery, woodcarving and weaving

Featuring: Giorgos Dalambelas (pottery, Keramion, Margarites, Rethymnon), Manolis Xylouris, Aristea Xylouri (weaving, Traditional looms, Anogia), Stefanos Plousis (woodcarving, Anogia)

• Part B: Theatrical and Visual Design (19:35-20:00)

PandemonCracy – The Panic of the Days at Nature’s Pan-daemonium

Visual art event by artist Georgios Bounias and actor Giannis Athitakis, inspired by the Homeric hymn to god Pan. A visual art and theatre composition.

• Part C: Music event (20:10-22:00)

An original musical tribute inspired by nature and the environment in its many manifestations.

With the participation of: Kostas Fasoulas (lyricist), Giannis Kalomiris (musical creator, lute), Ioanna Kalogeraki-Kalomiri (mezzo soprano), Erini Tornesaki (musician, performer, assistant professor at Boston’s Berklee College of Music,), Ilias Zoutsos (classical violin soloist, lyrist, Doctor of Music Studies of the Faculty of

Philosophy), Bernardo Isola (musical creator, lute, Phd candidate in environmental protection issues)

The Cherry Orchard or At the Museum’s Garden

A performance that serves as an architectural reconstruction of memory using experiences and scattered pieces of the habitat as structural materials. A story of return, to the childhood home, to the garden of an inner beauty and innocence, as the only way to draw hope and make “new cherry trees”. The last heirs will attempt to reconstruct a lost heaven on earth through the topography of memory. When the house will no longer be here. And when the garden will no longer be here… they will be forced to bloom themselves, the one for the other. A little ode to the lost paradise. The nostalgia of happiness. Life as a possibility, that – if it is sung, danced or confessed – can lead us to redemption. An anecdote, a funny story, a farce for God’s failure to give us a life that will last forever.

Breathing In Three Strings

Georgia Dakaki, a master of the Cretan lyre and a performer with a great knowledge of Greek music, converses on stage with Takis Chrysikakos in the music theatre performance titled Breathing in Three Strings, where music and singing engage in a dialogue with poetry and prose literature. The two artists join their forces to produce one single voice of awakening to everything that is at stake at the threshold of climate change and its non-reversible effects: along with the sea, the forests and the sky, we also run the risk of losing that great part of our national heritage that is inspired by all these elements, since references to nature, both in music and literature, will become increasingly more unfamiliar to each subsequent generation. We take a stand against this threat with a celebration dedicated to nature and its representation in Greek music and literature.

The Secret of the Tree

Behold theatre company presents The Secret of the Tree, a production targeted at youth audiences in an effort to make them explore and take a stand on issues like climate crisis and the co-existence of man with the environment. It turns an industrial monument at Panormos, Rethymnon into a space for playing and experiential learning, by blending different art forms and theatre-pedagogical techniques. The goal is to motivate young audience members to ask questions about the present and the future in a constantly changing world, but also to grasp the relationship developed by man with the other – human and non-human – entities with whom he lives together on the planet.

Starting off on our adventure at an old carob mill that has been turned into a cultural centre, we get to know the history of the monument that is inescapably related to that of the carob tree and its fruit, the island of Crete and the entire Mediterranean region. The carob tree, despite having been discredited by people for a certain period of time, continues to stand and grow even in places where it has not been deliberately planted; it continues to bloom in conditions that are absolutely hostile, selflessly offer its fruits, and look into the future while remaining firmly rooted in the deep past.

We Know How to Swim

An interactive music theatre show, the new work We Know How to Swim is coming to take younger and older audiences by storm. The story goes like this: In 2053 the Earth’s ice sheets have melt and the whole planet has sunk under the water. Only small parts of the land’s surface are spared and one of them is the Minoan Palace of Zakros. A polar bear arrives there looking for food. Artemis, a little girl, runs away from home to find the bear and rescue him. With the help of a bee, the adventure begins!

In this story the bear accuses people for the ecological disaster, the bee is mad at the bears for eating the honey, and Artemis at her parents for not letting her go after the bear. Will our heroes manage to get over their anger and animosity? If we were friends with each other but also with the animals and all of the planet’s living creatures, perhaps the future would be better.

BESTIARIO

Two performers introduce the audience to an archaeological site, not seen as a field of human activity but as a field of action of non-human beings, the animals that have inhabited it over time. From the animals of the past, those we recognise today on the geological fossils and archaeological material, to the animals that live there today, as well as to their future prospects. A renegotiation of man’s relationship with the world, towards a more wholistic understanding of the past and the present.

The production BESTIARIO is a continuation of the company’s ten-year-long effort to achieve a combination of theatre and archaeology, which they love so much to explore: how can theatrical means be used to approach the archaeological material from a fresh perspective, while strengthening the ties with the local community, and how can archaeological tools (like excavations, the study of findings etc.) contribute to the creation of a site-specific play?

Touching Faultlines

The two-day Τouching Faultlines event is a conversation between modern artistic practices and the Roman Odeon of Gortyna. It explores geological time and movement, with a special focus on ruptures and tensions as points of contact. The relationship between geological and historical past emerges in the present through performance acts, dancing, sculptural and audiovisual installations, texts, and sound interventions. Performers react to the converging and diverging movements of tectonic plates, volcanic eruptions, and seismic vibrations, along with their political and cultural connotations.

Τouching Faultlines aims to provide space for narratives that explore the concepts of perpetual movement, release, rupture, freedom, and reconstruction. Whether regarding language, gender, or their geopolitical implications, friction and confrontation require the existence of a performative zone of contact. Within this zone, tensions are expressed where there is movement. If the points of conflict are seen as surfaces that come into contact with each other, then what can we learn by studying the geological formations and their movements in the Mediterranean Basin?

Programme

23 August 2024 | Opening 17.30 – 21.00

Performances:
18.00 Anna Papathanasiou & Inga Galinytė, Empathetic Bodies
19.00 Ermira Goro, Faultlines
Screening:
20.30 Huniti Goldox, The Dido Problem

24 August 2024 | 08.00 – 20.30

Performances:
19.00 Ermira Goro, Faultlines
Screening:
20.30 Huniti Goldox, The Dido Problem

Erotokritos in the Labyrinth

Vincenzo Cornaro’s romance Erotokritos takes on a fresh, more liberated form in a musical performance that incorporates story-telling and visual elements, allowing the audience to fully grasp its plot. More specifically, the music of the performance emphasizes modern, original musical compositions and a diverse arrangement. These are the outcomes of collaboration, teamwork, and intercultural interaction among the artists – a lasting feature of the Labyrinth Musical Workshop’s work.

Lucrece, A Music Theatre Narrative

Lucrece, the most virtuous wife in the whole of Rome, ignites an illicit passion in Tarquin, the king’s son. After being raped, entrapped in the contradictory ethical demands of her time, she kills herself. Her suicide triggers the expulsion of the kings and the establishment of the Roman Republic. This is the version of the story, as told in one of the most well-known European legends.

William Shakespeare’s narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece highlights the clash between modernity and the earlier, compact, medieval world that is falling apart: it portrays the struggle of the new, independent thinker against the outdated arbitrariness of the lords. The male world of the countryside, wars, and unbridled power is contrasted with the female world of innerness, negotiation, and ethical boundaries. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Lucrece, six musicians, two actors, and a choreographer collaborate to create a music theatre narrative, blending speech and movement with musical improvisations and scores from the late Renaissance, early Baroque, and the 20th century.

Mórtissa ki Alánis

The musical performance Mórtissa ki Alánis explores the theme of conflict by portraying the clash between two archetypal characters from rebetikο (Greek urban folk song) mythology: the “mórtissa” and the “alánis”. In an effort to evade stereotypes, the aim is to investigate a profound inner existential conflict, the failure of establishing an “ego” capable of accepting “another” as an equal.

Intercultural influences, the introduction of new morals and behavioural styles in the closed Greek society of the inter-war period, along with the struggle against one’s gender and the self-definition of sexuality that are subtly present in many compositions of the time, inevitably lead to a conflict of interests, which actually originates from a profound, internal, non-dialectic conflict. The solution does not arise by bringing together the antitheses, but by exceeding them, through the acceptance of an authentic “Ego” and the self-defined “other”.