BITTER ORANGE TREE NEEDLES

“Bitter Orange Tree Needles” by Panayiotis Kalivitis
Direction Dimitra Dermitzaki

What does a person do when they suddenly come very close to death?
What do many people do at the same time when they suddenly come very close to death?
What does someone do when they struggle to form living, breathing relationships?
What happens in a city full of parallel monologues?
How do parallel monologues interact?
How is the social fabric held together?
How does one feel reassured that everything will be alright?
What happens when, in the midst of absolute disaster, everyone sees opportunities for professional, personal, or emotional advancement?

Micrographia is pleased to present the first staging of The Bitter Orange Tree Needles, the play by Panagiotis Kalyvitis, winner of the 2020 Best Play Award. It will be mounted at PLYFA, in hall 7A, directed by Dimitra Dermitzaki, starting January 26th, 2026, every Monday and Tuesday at 21:15, for a limited number of performances.

Wishing to speak about things slightly more complex — unprepared, peculiar, awkward, or clumsy — that take place within private spheres, within individualities, it seems we stand before an ideal condition. Because the temporality the play handles is the pandemic, the horrific year 2020, and the sounds, images, quirks, and habits that this year revealed or cultivated, and which remain with us to this day. What do we hear? What do we see, and how do we approach the flood of information?

Everything seems continuous. Without pause. Soaked in simplification. Simplification and proclamations. In the play, these proclamations lead the bodies of some characters all the way to the distant year 2039 — where the pandemic of evil, this time lodged even deeper within, strikes again.

By the time the performance we are preparing reaches its premiere,
six whole years will have already passed since the outbreak of the pandemic,
and since that first, unprecedented experience of lockdown and quarantine.

A young doctor in the play wears a suffocating mask.
He thinks: “Absolute isolation, therefore absolute protection.”
But how much protection is truly found in isolation — and how much danger?

The performance is presented with the Support of the Ministry of Culture and the generous sponsorship of the Stegi “Vitsentzos Kornaros.”

Duration: 80 minutes
Suitable age: 16+