Event Category: Theater

Performance dates and times: March 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30 and April 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12 at 21:15.
On March 25 and 26 and April 8, double show and at 18:30.

Based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel “The Passions of Young Werther”, translated by Stella Nikoloudi

Play is performed in Greek.

I have a lot in me. So many. But love? Love!
I can’t fit her. I can’t hold love inside me…

On October 29, 1772, Carl Wilhelm Jerusalem committed suicide in the provincial town of Wetzlar, Germany. The young Goethe at the time is surprised and upset by the death of the one whom he smilingly called “the one in love”, when he met him wandering in the moonlight. Goethe’s unexpected connection with Jerusalem in terms of society’s contemptuous attitude towards them, the bad relationship they both had with their superiors as well as the coincidence of falling in unrequited love lead one to suicide and the other to writing the epistolary novel “The Passions of Young Werther”.

Goethe’s (1749 – 1832) youthful epistolary novel, The Passions of Young Werther, from its very first publication, in 1774, was a huge success and strongly influenced the morals of the time. He was considered a symbol of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Rush) movement, a forerunner of the Romantic movement, and exerted a strong influence on art and philosophy. With this project he chooses to make his first public appearance, the newly formed group 400 lbs. Goethe’s hero, a young man characterized by the innocence but also the frivolity of his age, full of drive and passion, leaves the city to live in a provincial town. There he meets Lotte, who is engaged to another young man. His unrequited love for her will quickly push him away, to another city, to another life completely contrary to his nature. His conflict with the aristocracy of the city leads him to retreat back to the countryside and Lotte. With his return, the epilogue of the drama is written.

However, the performance does not focus on Werther’s suicide, which is one of the most well-known solutions in the history of literature, but on his existential anguish before this act. In his great effort to stay alive, at a time when he is on a prescribed path to death. Vertheros is a story of cruelty, a story of imposing the logic of the wider society on an infinitely sensitive man who is dying. In a confession-like narrative that faithfully follows the epistolary pattern of the novel itself, the group tries to tell this very story. Goethe writes in his memoirs: “I had lived, I had loved, I had suffered much. It would be bad if everyone didn’t go through a time in their life when it seemed to them that Vertheros was written exclusively for them.”

In today’s climate, the group 400 lbs, created by young actors – recent graduates of drama schools, is introduced to the public for the first time, with a performance that aims to have a moment of real emotional connection, an honest encounter with the viewer. The director Dimitris Charalambopoulos says about the choice of the project:

“I had already distinguished the play from my student years at the drama school. I graduated a few months before the outbreak of the pandemic. A personal experience, as well as the imprint of confinement in society and the arts, made me return to the text. Rereading Vertheros I felt I had to share this story, this emotion. What we attempt as a group comes from our deep belief that it is worth bending over the beauty and ferocity of human feeling, while everything around us says the opposite. Previous generations taught us everything but not how to feel (or at least that’s what happened to me). And on this thought I wonder: Is this struggle, with yourself, with the people around you, not a part of life? Like a baby! First you grope the world. Then you stand on your feet. Then you fall. And you get up. And again the same. And after you learn to stand, everything else comes. How else;”.

The politically sharp and highly topical work of Edouard Louis, “Who Killed My Father”, returns to PLYFA with a new cycle of performances, from March 9 to April 2. The performance of the Little Things Orchestra directed by Christos Theodoridis, which reminded us how personal politics is, comes back at a critical moment for the entire artistic world, the who continues to fight against a political decision, PD 85/2022, which is not a “matter of aesthetics” but a “matter of life and death”.

This play is performed in Greek.

The theater group b.p.m. theater group presents for the first time the play by Danai Liodaki “Those you didn’t catch”

“Those you didn’t catch”, a feminist comedy about female friendship is presented for the first time by the group b.p.m. (beats per minute) in PLYFA. The project approaches issues such as gender violence, female oppression, sexual harassment, through the prism of female empowerment and the bond of female friendship.

The project “The ones you didn’t catch” follows four childhood friends who unexpectedly meet again. Without knowing what brought them together again and why, they decide to take action “so that our bosses don’t fall for us, we don’t get spat on in the street, we don’t have to be afraid to come home at night and in general you know, for all that” . We follow step by step their journey towards the creation of a secret feminist group, but also their reunion, the doubts and obstacles they encounter, in a story with humor and sensitivity, which oscillates between action and narrative, between realism and the imagination.

When the health minister of their country announces the ban on abortion, the four women decide to upgrade their action with a big business. What follows will reunite the four friends forever.

The b.p.m. team was founded in 2018 by graduates of the drama school of the Art Theater – Karolos Koon and quickly distinguished itself with awards and remarkable success in its performances. After the successful second year of performances of “Hyperspace or else..”, the group insists on taking a stand on contemporary political and social issues, keeping a humorous and fresh perspective. The original, contemporary play “Those you didn’t catch” is expected to be released immediately by Kappa Publishing.

This play is performed in Greek.

Based on the novel by Margarita Karapanou “The Sleepwalker” / Kastaniotis Publications.

In a world where every day ends, in a world where every day a new self-fulfilling prophecy is proclaimed, in a world where God seems absent or “tired”, one would say that people would reach their limits, meet the activated themselves. They would rush furiously to any solution that would secure their salvation.

In an informal antechamber of Paradise, in a modern Purgatory, a new Apocalypse takes place starring a group of artists looking for a new Messiah. And they find him. The problem is that the world will once again not end. They too will have to live with the Messiah. With a Messiah in the role of a policeman, who watches, punishes and redeems. “Everyone wished something would happen” say the protagonists. And their wishes are translated by “God” at will.

The show “Triptycho. Study in Inactivity” is a stage experiment. Its materials are Margarita Karapanou’s award-winning novel “The Sleepwalker”, adapted by Dimitra Dermitzaki, the visual work of Francis Bacon and digital media.

This play is performed in Greek.

A Hybrid Performance of Water Deities

A co-production between Greece, Portugal and Italy in the framework of the European project Stronger Peripheries, co-funded by the Creative Europe

Polygreen Culture & Art Initiative (PCAI) presents “ICHTHYOLATRY: A hybrid performance of Water Deities”, a performance conceived and directed by Eva Giannakopoulou at the PLYFA Industrial Park on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 January, in co-production with Artemrede (Portugal – in collaboration with the Municipality of Torres Vedras) and L’Arboreto (Italy).
Inspired by the theorist Astrida Neimanis’ book “Bodies of Water” (2017), which introduces for the first time the concept of Hydrofeminism, according to which water, femininities, embodied practices and ecology are interconnected creating “new” future synergies, ICHTHYOLATRY is a hybrid performance with confessional elements about elderly, floods, fluids and menopause. It is based on research conducted in communities linked to rivers, lakes, torrents and groups of women, during the course of two research and two creative residency programmes carried out in Greece, Portugal and Italy, in the framework of the European project Stronger Peripheries: a Southern Coalition. The visual artist-director and the creative community jointly developed the dramaturgy and texts through personal confessions and interviews with individuals from the local communities of Piraeus, Torres Vedras, Portugal and Mondaino, Italy, in such a way that their content is an intellectual co-creation of all participants.
If water is the element from which all organisms originate, how could we possibly return to this original state of existence, removing the boundaries between evolution, genes, history, culture and nature? The answer to this question is what ICHTHYOLATRY attempts to answer, bridging the “gap” between past, present and future, between human and non-human forms of existence, jellyfishes and dogs.
The eccentric creatures of ICHTHYOLATRY – a warrior, a post-human creature, a female phenomenon and a fish – will inhabit the stage of the Plyfa Industrial Park and the stage of the Teatro Cine in Portugal to take a dive into a dreamy ocean of fluid possibilities. This is a performance that “dives” into an immersive universe of emotional and underwater coalitions.

Are you ready to swim?
* The performance is a new co-production of PCAI (Greece), Artemrede (Portugal – in collaboration with the Municipality of Torres Vedras) and L’Arboreto (Italy) in the framework of the European project Stronger Peripheries: a Southern Coalition, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. In 2023, ICHTHYOLATRY will also be presented in Portugal.

** The material of some costumes was created during a creative workshop with the audience attending the open rehearsal during the artist’s artistic residency at Teatro Dimora L’Arboreto (IT).

*** The performance will be presented in Greek with English surtitles. It contains scenes of nudity and is recommended for those over 16 years old.

BLUE is the first part of a theatrical color pentalogy created by the theater group “Bleu en Haut Bleu en Bas” based in Switzerland and first presented in 2016 in Geneva. Since then, he has been hosted on theater stages in Greece, Cyprus, Switzerland, France, Lebanon, and at major international festivals (Festival La Bâtie, Festival Plein Tube, etc.).

After the success of her last project G.O.L.D. which premiered at the Festival de la Bâtie in August 2022 and which will be staged in 2023 in Paris, Anna comes for once again in Greece with Blue only for a few shows.

In Switzerland, after Blue, Anna uploaded Bloody Fuchsia, White, G.O.L.D. (Glory or Little Dreams) and is now preparing Black – What a Beaty-Full Catastrophe.

At the same time, she is preparing her first choreographic project and film Kiss and Fly.

This performance is in Greek.

After two unique performances, one at the outdoor sculpture gallery of Zongolopoulos in December 2021 and one at the Municipal Slaughterhouses of Tavros in May 2022, the “Witches” meet their audience again reformed and with new content. This time at PLYFA for only 10 performances.

This play is performed in Greek.

The project

“The Witches” is a performance in progress, which acrobats between stage composition and lyrical performance. It is based on the play by Natasa Sideri, which was written on the occasion of the events of violence against women. With material from historical records of gender-based violence in Europe, but also from the Greek oral tradition, as well as the contemporary paradoxical “Greekness”, the work highlights the timelessness of women’s issues, already present in narratives of the past, but still alive as demands to this day.

The performance is under the auspices of the General Secretariat of Family Policy and Gender Equality and is part of UNESCO’s actions to combat gender-based violence, “Orange the World”.

After the enthusiastic reception of the audience and critics in the spring of 2022 on the main stage of BIOS, the show “Pethaino san Chora” comes to ΠΛΥΦΑ for a few performances

This play is perfromed in Greek.

The play Pethaino san Chora”, written in 1978 by Dimitris Dimitriadis, makes us witnesses of a country that is at the end of time, at a critical historical moment when no woman gives birth to a child anymore. After a thousand years of war and while the enemy army is about to cross the border from time to time, we see the exhausted nation welcoming a new historical cycle. At those moments, the multifaceted kingdom of fantasy is enthroned in all heads and world-historical rearrangements take place. The end of an era has come like the premeditated death of an incurable disease.

Double performances on 18/12/22, 08/01/23 and 15/01/23 – at 18:30 and 21:00.

Important Notice:
Cancellation of performances on December 22 and 23, the following has been added:
Thursday 5 and Thursday 12 January at 21:00

This play is performed in Greek.

Almost a year after “Antonio or the message” by Loula Anagnostaki, a performance that was well received, the Little Things Orchestra returns to PLYFA with Edouard Louis’ work “Who Killed my Father”, which is staged for first time in Greece, directed by Christos Theodoridis.

The show has been sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

A musical-theatrical production based on Bost’s play and original music by Henri Kergomard.

Ritsaki, a four-year-old girl, disappears from the face of the earth in the middle of the day while she was fishing with her father. This is where the play begins. Or not. Inside the living room of a 19th century bourgeois family, Bost invites the viewer to see the effects of “civilization” on human life and works.