Event Category: Theater

Performing Arts Award 2023
From the Association of Theater and Performing Arts Critics

After its extremely successful presentation in May 2023, the performance “SEBASTIAN” by the group Nova Melancholia, directed by Vassilis Noulas, returns for six performances at PLYFA from February 6, 2024.

The show was honored by the Association of Theater and Performing Arts Critics with the Performing Arts Award for the 2023 artistic season.

Director’s Note
Sebastian is a polyprismatic archetype, a kaleidoscope, an avatar of desires and moods. Reflecting on the tradition of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, as it is reformulated through the dense figurative representation in Western art from the early Renaissance onwards, we focus on concepts / sensations / symbols that touch our own sensibility and imagination. The performance is the totality of its cultural references. We read poems, reenact paintings, act, pose, sing, dance, get inspired by the tradition of an eccentric, experimental cinema. We are interested in the co-emotional and embodied practices through which we today can relate to such a symbol.

Sebastian is associated with youth, beauty, sports, archery, carnal pain, hideousness, homoeroticism, martyrdom. A primary co-signification around Saint Sebastian (since the Middle Ages) is the Plague, the Black Death. We associate the tradition of homoeroticism around the figure of Sebastian, with the AIDS disease that was considered in the 80’s and 90’s a kind of “gay plague”. Like people at the dawn of European modernity, we too today resort to Saint Sebastian as an apocalyptic symbol of evil. The show is dedicated to those who take the risk to go from vision to experience, from representation to performance, risking the misunderstanding of existence.

More information about Nova Melancholia, and the performances it has presented, can be found at novamelancholia.gr

* The show is dedicated to HIV positive activist Zackie and experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger who died in May 2023

This play will be performed in Greek.

In a lettuce garden, at the top of a tree, on the highest mountain, under a water lily and next to a stone take place five hilarious (or not) inclusive stories starring characters from across the animal kingdom and inspired by Alessandro’s book Boffa “You are a beast, Viskovic.”

A transsexual snail, a germ with an inferiority complex, a chameleon in search of identity, a dominant male moose and a suspicious finch introduce us to the wonderful world of animals, teaching us how important it is to be yourself. Or not.

In an attempt to render the world of animals with a human eye, we invade a parallel world where the characters, presented as animals, resurrect human stories.
The notes of the music travel with the plot and the images reach a world balanced between the human and the animal.
Questions deep and unresolved, make us wonder if the answers are always the destination, or if the questions ultimately give the journey a meaning.

A performance inspired by the short story “Ai George” by D. Hatzis.
Four actors construct the stage space in order to tell the story in a stage narrative that the constitution of the space and its boundaries are constantly undermined
The question that arises is one and it comes back in multiple ways • the weakest of us humans, how do they live? Can they be happy, fall in love, have a right to dream of the piece of the pie we call collective happiness?
No matter how guarded you are, no matter how small your dreams are, no matter how humble you approach your happiness, when you are on the side of the “defenceless” even Love or Light can tear you down, burn you
A show about people who try to live like everyone else and fail
In the performance, a short excerpt from G. Kontrafouris’ play, “The children mourn” (1997) is heard.

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