SLADEK

Ars Moriendi Theater Group Presents Ödön von Horváth’s “SLADEK”

Following a successful three-show run last season in Thessaloniki, Ars Moriendi Theater Group presents the political drama “Sladek” by the Austro-Hungarian playwright Ödön von Horváth in Athens. The play depicts the rise of fascism in the Weimar Republic, as engineered by the paramilitary “Black Army.”

Von Horváth’s play is set during the interwar period and the Great Depression, when inflation, unemployment, famine, poverty, and homelessness plagued Germany and drove people to desperation, providing an opportunity for extreme political groups, such as the Nazi Party, to win the hearts of the defeated and the poor. In Sladek, we see how social conditions lead “small” people to desperate acts and heinous violence, paving the way for dictators and fascists who exterminate anyone who stands in their way: women, homosexuals, Jews, communists, democrats.

The work predicts with terrifying accuracy the cycle of violence that was about to spread across Europe. The fascism of 1920s and 1930s Germany is no more, but History today creates similarities that urge us not to be complacent. Online hate speech, the impoverishment of language, femicides, xenophobia, homophobia, and television and internet populism compose the Eternal Fascism, as Umberto Eco calls it, which feeds on the natural fear of the different, on the feelings of humiliation of vulnerable social groups, and on our primal need to be heroes in our mundane lives.

“The hero,” however, “of Eternal Fascism is impatient to die,” and “in his impatience he usually sends other people to their death” (Umberto Eco). This is the story of Sladek and his comrades.

The production Sladek is presented under the auspices and with the financial support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and the Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki.

Duration: 80 minutes
Suitable age: 14+