A theatre performance based on the adaptation of Stella Michailidou’s fairy tale Stories from Gatouhan: We Have the Same Mom published by Kaleidoscope Publishing (2021).
The performance illuminates through the eyes of children, in a very meaningful, tender and at the same time playful way aspects of the refugee issue. There where adult cats see only problems, younger ones see riches and unique gifts. A story that unites yesterday with today, focusing on the issues of refugee reception, the real problems, the existing prejudices, but also on the value and preciousness of the unique Other.
Heroes from fairy tales of the East and the West run through the whole work like a luminous web, bringing everyone together, regardless of national, cultural, racial, religious or any other kind of differences.
A search for the paths of events, images, and ideas, through time: Die Wolke art group presents Ichne (“traces”), a contemporary dance performance that sources its materials from interviews, focusing on the workings of memory and oral communication towards the development of imagery originating from the Asia Minor cultural identity.
Movement, along with musical and sonic compositions, approaches the inherent subjectivity of descriptions, low fidelity, gaps, and negative space that reveals the dimension of time in poetic imagery, thus focusing on the intersubjectivity of narrative refractions.
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.
In his tree-cutting fury, Erysichthon did not even respect Demeter’s sacred poplar tree. As a result, the goddess condemned him to suffer from insatiable hunger, which eventually led him to his horrible death: he ate his own flesh. The musical performance with live sculpting The Chainsaws of Erysichthon treats the issue of nature’s exploitation by man. On stage there are two sculptors/loggers and four musicians. The sculptors sculpt poplar tree trunks while the instruments converse with the sound of the woodworking and tune their music to it. Their interaction is infiltrated by an altered version of the tsamiko dance tune “Why don’t you cry, trees and branches?”. The synergy of TETTTIX with the loggers produces eye-opening and unprecedented music that gets transformed from sound pollution and a bad omen into the myths’ dramaturgical vehicle. The tools in the hands of the loggers do not lead to the destruction of nature but to the creation of 3D sculptures through a dialogue with it.
What are the prospects for Western Macedonia after the lignite phase-out? How will lignite be replaced to restore the environment? Historical documents, archival material and interviews with locals are all blended with fictional elements, illuminating the multi-aspected dimensions of the issue while bringing out the tragicality of the lack of an actual way out. At the heart of the dilemma is the attempted reversal of climate change, in face of the economic withering and decrease in population in the area. The people of Western Macedonia, if not given any productive alternative for growth, will have to balance between the slow death of economic withering and an equally slow death due to an environmental destruction with visible effects on their health. A performance blending theatre and music, with actors, a live band, and 15 supporting actors from local residents and representatives of civil society, who serve as a modern chorus, a witness and a judge.
2071 is a “dramatised lecture” by climate scientist Chris Rapley and acclaimed British writer Duncan Macmillan (Lungs, Every Brilliant Thing) that was first presented at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2014, and this year, approximately ten years later, will be staged for the first time in Greece.
It is a theatrical soliloquy based on Rapley’s scientific course and his findings. Analyzing possible solutions, he seems rather cautious about how the problem of overpopulation could be solved and places his hopes upon renewable energy sources, while pondering on what kind of future we want to create.
Manos Karatzogiannis, after a series of successful soliloquies (including Guardian of a Revolution, He, the Other and His Pants, Fleury’s Song) directs Antonis Myriagos with the help of musician Tilemachos Moussas, who performs live – and symbolically – theremin on stage.
A traveller along with her aids arrive at an unknown, destroyed land, which is however full of hidden traces from its previous “inhabitants”. The numerous accounts and testimonies found in this place (some are read, others are sung, and others are reproduced by machines) reveal the causes that have shaped today’s reality. The performance Night on Earth directed by Alexandros Koen is a suspenseful thriller, during which the travellers (with the help of audience members) must gather as much evidence as possible.
From the Bible to the Romantics, for two whole millennia, the relationship of Man with Nature has been at the heart of poetic creation. Man is a child of Nature: he cannot exist but on Nature’s terms. Excerpts from the Bible and works of William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, Goethe, Novalis, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Solomos, and Sikelianos – revolving around Byron’s great apocalyptic poem “Darkness” – are all selectively bound together and complete each other.
An experiential theatrical tour across the visual art installation The Museum of Unnatural History by Dulcinea Compania. Bringing to life Salman Rushdie’s novel Luka and the Fire of Life, Luka and his two favourite animals, the dog and the bear, introduce us to the memories of their adventurous journey into a nature that has become unnatural due to human intervention. Our hero discovers his supernatural agony for animals, insects and sea creatures, as he wanders across a world, where everything is altered, industrialised, degenerated. The reason for his trip: his father has fallen into an eternal sleep and Luka will be able to wake him up only if he solves the metaphysical mystery of the history of Man and Nature.
A spatial performance based on Das Lied von der Erde by Gustav Mahler
A freestyle artistic venture about the existential connection between humans and nature. A healing promenade, almost like an afternoon walk. An almost primeval, inner, psychotherapeutic conflict that makes peace with the determinism of co-existence.
In the spatial performance The Song of the Earth, the ensemble musicians are positioned at key locations along the main walking path on the island of Agios Achilleios in Small Prespa Lake, performing solo pieces by Billone, Xenakis, Murail, Saariaho, Yun, Hosokawa and other composers. The walk will end at the location of the reconciliation ritual, the partially demolished niche of the Agios Achilleios basilica, with the performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde [The Song of the Earth], in Schoenberg’s arrangement.
The audience’s unconfined wandering across the natural landscape and their almost random encounters with solo musical snippets from modern music of the past few decades, places them in the spotlight, almost at the centre of a contrast. The more, however, they move forward, the more they realize that all that is made with empathy and respect can co-exist in harmony. The conflict is increasingly weakening. At the end of the path, as the sun sets and Mahler’s music echoes in the 10th-century basilica, the audience not only loves each other, but also themselves.
Within the Greek-speaking villages of the Salento plain in Southern Italy lies a captivating tradition that intertwines myth with reality and still echoes to this day. It has to do with the cure of women affected by the bite of a poisonous spider. It is the phenomenon of tarantism.
The performance La tarantata by Encardia is inspired by the faces of women in the remote areas of Southern Italy and, by extension, by women on a global scale who bear the “conflicts” imposed on them by their immediate surroundings or society. The women as lovers, mothers, wives, refugees, or victims of war, objects of desire, or abandonment, the “tarantata” women…! And as the conflict transforms into a mental poison, these women “cast the evil away” and are led to redemption through an ecstatic dance, to the beat of healer-musicians. The performance comes complete by inviting the audience to participate in a redemptive dance with clear references to the tarantism phenomenon.