Event Category: Theater

This play is performed in Greek.

“This load of logistics that mom has on her head is huge! To take a break from what I live, I go to the greengrocer, my friend…”

A new mother finds that raising children under conditions of social pressure and incessant “well-intentioned” instructions ends up being an arduous and intensely lonely job. Is she the only one who feels this way? Is she a bad mother?

Aphrodite Mitsopoulou’s play Agoromana continues for a 2nd theatrical season in Athens and returns in January 2024 to the PLYFA stage. The work explores, chronicles and deconstructs the experiences of motherhood and fatherhood, gradually illuminates gender roles that continue to exist today, and boldly unravels the thread of violence against women*.

Between stand-up comedy, documentary and musical performance, Agoromana is an honest opening into the world of motherhood and parenthood in general. Aphrodite Mitsopoulou and Iakovos Molymbakis manage to exonerate the negative emotions that can torment a new parent and embrace the embarrassment and insecurity he experiences. In a world of superficial perfection, mistakes and confusion serve as a reminder that we are human.

Each show features different guests on stage, who share their own parenting story.

“Motherhood is like a sacred thing that everyone respects — until you get the trolley that everyone curses you for having a stroller to get into at 15.”

“You basically fall into the sea and swim. And it’s a storm.”

“Anyway, I’m not having a child with a man again.”

*During the show there are clear references and descriptions around the issue of obstetric violence. If you are a victim of obstetric violence, do not hesitate to seek help and support from certified professionals and agencies.

“The Descendants”, a story about two brothers who never met. A devised musical performance in dramatic composition and interpretation by Iros Bezos and Christos Thanos, at PLYFA from January 11, 2024.

This play is performed in Greek.

Two brothers meet for a once-in-a-lifetime moment, just to fulfill the prescribed debt, which the deeds of their ancestors determined. An eternal story about the unbearable burden that is carried from generation to generation and comes to settle, unshaken, on the backs of the last descendants.
There are no more ideal figures in the world theater to express the consequences of this burden than Electra and Orestes.

The performance consists of texts by Yiannis Ritsos, of ancient tragedies as well as originals, placed in a musical universe.
The music is performed live with the participation of Panagiotis Gikas and Teos Foinidis

How ephemeral can a love be – close to the waves?
A half-baked love, a two-way love, a love in the imagination or not.

HATE!
Shakespeare does not care so much for the aesthetic effect, he is a master of reasoning and adventure of feeling. He seems to be overseeing the whole world but never forgetting death.

If we went on a trip to the sea?

You have sand in your towel,
Watermelon on your lips,
November in your summers.

The students of the 3rd year of the Theater School “delos” – Dimitra Hatoupi present the performance
“WHY DID YOU ORDER ME SUCH A NICE DAY?”

Based on Shakespeare’s 154 Sonnets realized through forty days of research using improvisations of voice, rhythm and the function of the choral condition.

Let’s swim together.

There will be a financial assistance box for the expenses of the 3rd Year degree exams.

“This is not Medea”
(excerpt from the Medea Material,
by H. Miller, mtf. E. Varopoulou).

INVITATION TO TEA

As a modern female being, Medea invites us to a tea ceremony to tell us her own story of grief and liberation.

If Medea were a place, what place would it be? What does Jason carry with him? What do Medea’s children drink? Where does Medea dwell within us? Does love pass? How is the past exorcised? And after all, what shoes are suitable for a climb in the sun?

Please be open to revising what you take for granted about the mythical figure of Medea. It is a cry for survival, an ode to motherhood, an appeal to tenderness, an ecstatic dance of liberation, where Medea, light in a crumbling world, calls for rebellion against the socio-political dictates of her gender.

Dresscode: Wear something in shades of croc or something that evokes natural or primitive materials, or whatever makes you feel your deepest self.

The solo show is made possible thanks to the financial contribution of many unique people and thanks to the undivided research and dedication of the team members.

Trailer

EDIT. arvan (girl, daughter)

directed by Christina Matthaiou

Play performed in Greek

Extension of performances thanks to the warm response of the audience! “vaiza” will return to PLYFA for 3 more performances on January 18, 24 & 25.

The show that thrilled the audience and critics and stood out at last year’s Epi Colonos Off-Off Festival, returns for the second year, from December 4 and for only 10 performances, at the “PLYFA” theater in Votanikos.

Christina Matthaiou, in her first directorial venture, brings on stage the original work “vaiza” {ETYM. arvan “My speechless apple” and “Christ in the snow” and inspired by the myth of La Loba, as he is captured in Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s book “Women Who Run With the Wolves”, he composes a performance that speaks of the power of femininity. The power to break, to expose, to be imperfect, to differ, to define yourself, to feel, to express, to live!

Mani, mid 19th century.

A young woman, Milia, is murdered by her father and brothers to wash away the shame of the family, after she was found “broken” on the first night of her wedding. She is buried alive in a stone pit at the entrance of the village. Only her head remains out of the soil until she dies. Now Milia has a voice. Now La Loba is giving her the chance to tell her story. To be reborn.

Without limiting itself to describing yet another femicide, the play explores the perspective of each of those involved. Six persons who have never spoken, captive to social dictates and formality, now speak.

Drawing material from the Greek tradition and the overall European and Balkan history, the show speaks about today.

Director’s Note

Remember that sound you hear when you’re under the surface of the sea? And as your oxygen runs out, and the force of the water pulls you out, you struggle to hold on. There. Inside her. Listen for a little while longer, this primitive sound that brings you back. In the womb of life.
They say that tears are made of sea water, so that when people cry, they can bring the sea closer to them. And let her, the great mother, come like this to accompany them when they need her.
When they are in pain, when they mourn but also when their happiness is so great that it causes the water in their body to rise, so much so that they are in danger of drowning. And they cry. To get the excess sea out of them.

“Don’t let sorrow become a tear, Don’t let pain become a cry…”

Have you ever noticed the cheeks of women who have lost children? It’s as if the sea cursed them to never dry up. To keep her there to keep them company.

“Not a drop will escape you for the dishonorable! He embarrassed us and he will pay. She should go unscathed.”

And the sweat? What is sweat?
Water too. Seafood. Because when the sea and the fire of love meet, they become sweat. Which comes out of the bodies in love, so that one of the other can know the sea. The sea that swells inside them.
But man is not only made of water.
It is also soil. Earth. Who expects you to return her children to her, when the sea dries up in them. And when she closes them in her bowels, again, by watering them with sea, she gives birth to them again.

“You have to listen to the soil. Smell it. Taste it.”

And the ashes? What is ash?
She is also a lover’s dust. Burned bodies, before the sea touched them to cool them. Voices. Where they don’t run out of air. And they are silent.
Losses. And presences that “exist in absence”.
“Have you ever seen the fire forbid the coals?”
And the ending? Death;
“The end does not recognize death”
Why “are you killed, lost, if you are thought of by a myriad of names?”
Water, earth and fire meet on stage. In a ritual of mourning and rebirth. A performance made with materials of land and tradition. A project entangled in roots that pull it to the past. And four voices. Air. Which carries the dusty memories of all our bloody history to the water. Which will wash them away and lead them to purification. Water will make them again.
“Because time is water. Water that sculpts the stone like the sea the rocks
(…)
And richer water than tears, none.”
Christina Matthaiou

a work for voice, viola, and guitar

with Cleopatra Markou, Michalis Katachanas and Vassilis Tzavara.

is repeated for only 6 performances, from November 1 to 16 at PLYFA.

The performance “Venebra”, a piece for voice, viola and guitar, is inspired by the short story “Women who sing farewells” by Chrysostomos Tsapraῒlis, which can be found in the collection of his short stories and the engravings of Fotis Varthi “Women who return” ( Antipodes publications, 2020). The common starting point of both creators are nine absurdities of the folk tradition, nine faces of women who are in painful, threatening and eerie situations creating “a new narrative of the pain of women who have been, are and will be”. Venebra is a woman who spreads with her voice paradoxical melodies and purposes that are sweet, but at the same time deadly. Born in the midst of a war, she managed to survive from
him, but scarred by the breath of death, whose shadow remained her only real companion and family. A woman doomed to find no real peace among the living, being a discordant but charming dissonance to their existence. The idea for the original short story came from Propontida’s absurdity “Korasin etragoudage” and from the mythological mist of women whose song is deadly (Sirens, Banshees). “Venebra” comes to give the original short story sound and breath through three instruments (voice, guitar, viola) and musical improvisations that sometimes accompany and sometimes collide with the words, sometimes abandoning them, sometimes allowing them to recover and sometimes
they transform into songs – either more clearly and distinctly, or like dim memories and faded echoes. A landscape of sounds from strings, human and non-human, that pulsate seeking to shake off the identity of the omen revealing the inner and unspeakable, exorcise the prescribed fate.

Teaser

Play performed in Greek

Extra performances beyond Mondays and Tuesdays:
Wednesday 25/10/2023, Friday 27/10/2023 at 21:00 and Saturday 28/10/2023 at 20:00.

This play is performed in Greek
The show is suitable for people over 16

Genesis No. 2 by Ivan Viripaev is a “tragedy of meaning” that manages to combine humor and realism, with deep questions about meaning and existence. It talks about freedom and imposition, loneliness and connection between people. He talks about God and with God, who is one of the characters of the work.

“If you believe in God, this does not mean that God also believes in you”

But it is about a humanized, revolutionary God, who defiantly declares that he does not exist, forcing man to look for what might exist beyond him. Is there anything else?

“In everything that exists around us, there is something else, something other than what we see”

Through the text worlds and characters are born, current and eternal that have the flexibility to transform through the eyes of the viewers. This brings to the surface thoughts and feelings that we all have, but perhaps don’t know how to put into words.

The polyphonic nature of the text is also reflected in the direction, which tries an innovative approach to the work. Five actors alternate in the roles of the play, changing characters in each performance, spontaneously, without any prior agreement as to which role each one will take on in each scene. Thus, through this game of self-determination, each performance will be different, unpredictable and truly “alive”.

The ETÚTI Theater Group, directed by Kali Voikli and with the original musical composition of Viki Kapetanopoulou, create an alternative performance, where Viripaev’s text emerges as the “main face of the work”.

The performance is held under the auspices and with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture.