Event Category: Theater

An actress embodies (only) discourses of women connected to the dense field of gender violence. The roles played are both fictional and real, and they are essentially “political figures” rather than fixed and materialized identities. The social worker, the mediator, the psychologist, the mother, the peer, the activist, the lawyer talk about trauma in a waiting setting. A trauma that does not appear as a psychological process or a physical wound, but is a political stake.

This play is performed in Greek.

The co-emotional landscapes concern those “atmospheres” that are created individually and collectively and that co-shape the public space as a place of political confrontation with the injustices that it produces every day.

Adopting the slogan “we are full of f–rage” that the brutal public murder of Jacques Kostopoulos highlighted and that echoed at the same time in the protest marches for Eleni Topaloudis, as in other cases of femicides, in this work care is intertwined with the rage it creates the daily reproduction of the injustice of the deaths of those who haunt the public space, while the search for social justice is constantly pending.

The text of the show is a transcription of a series of fiction audio documentaries – podcasts produced through interviews and systematic research within the framework of the research program “Co-emotional landscapes of care: Gender-based violence and resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic”*, Department of Social Anthropology, Pantheon University.

*The research program “Co-emotional landscapes of care: Gender-based violence and resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic” is funded by ELIDEK (Hellenic Research & Innovation Foundation), within the framework of the 4th Call for Action “Science and Society “, Flagship Action entitled “Interventions to deal with the economic and social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic”, with the Diotima Center as a collaborating organization and housed at the Department of Social Anthropology, Pantheon University of Social and Political Sciences.

A documentary performance about work

This play is performed in Greek.

“Work is half our life! And what are you doing?
Do you throw it away? You don’t.”

Three actors, with unique material the narratives of people who worked, are working and will work in different professions, compose the show and ask themselves:

Can we imagine a world without work?
What exactly is a typical eight hours?
Does our work define us? And if so, how much?
What makes a man endure his work over the years?
What does he hope and expect?

Work arose as a Human need.
However, how humane the working conditions end up being for those who make up The Human Resources?

Nova Melancholia presents a performance diptych consisting of the performances SEBASTIAN and VANITAS. These are two distinct parts that complement each other with common references to art history and movie stars. Two shows with a “camp” mood that play with death.

This play is performed in Greek.

SEBASTIAN

The performance is the totality of its cultural references. 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. Sebastian is a polyprismatic archetype, a kaleidoscope, an avatar of desires and moods. 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.

VANITAS

The performance of the group Nova Melancholia is a stage meditation around the concept of vanitas. The performance is articulated through the (counter)juxtaposition of the emotionally charged sound of the electric guitar and Andy Warhol’s cynical and often funny speech. The performance VANITAS wants to become an ephemeral mirror of our “vanity”, its illusory shine. At the same time it works like a seductive baroque painting: it exorcises the fatigue of the days and restores faith in the beauty of life!

In art history, vanitas is the symbolic work of art that shows the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death; these concepts are presented by the juxtaposition of a skull with symbols of wealth, affluence, and luxury. The Latin noun vanitas comes from the adjective vanus (void) and refers to the phrase from Ecclesiastes “vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas” (vanity of vanities, all things vanity). Vanitas still lifes, a popular genre in 16th- and 17th-century Western Europe, often depict luxurious vessels on rich fabrics, musical instruments, books, scientific instruments, smoking paraphernalia—everything that can bring joy and pleasure to man—together with hourglasses, fragile glass objects, skulls. All this suggests the futility of wealth, the passing of beauty, the inevitability of time. These paintings call for contemplation, they act as a memento mori (reminder of death). However, the flip side of vanitas could be carpe diem (seize the day). A celebration of the ephemeral and the senses, an affirmation of the uncertainty of existence, a memento vitae (reminder of life).

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.