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“Bitter Orange Tree Needles” by Panayiotis Kalivitis
Direction Dimitra Dermitzaki

What does a person do when they suddenly come very close to death?
What do many people do at the same time when they suddenly come very close to death?
What does someone do when they struggle to form living, breathing relationships?
What happens in a city full of parallel monologues?
How do parallel monologues interact?
How is the social fabric held together?
How does one feel reassured that everything will be alright?
What happens when, in the midst of absolute disaster, everyone sees opportunities for professional, personal, or emotional advancement?

Micrographia is pleased to present the first staging of The Bitter Orange Tree Needles, the play by Panagiotis Kalyvitis, winner of the 2020 Best Play Award. It will be mounted at PLYFA, in hall 7A, directed by Dimitra Dermitzaki, starting January 26th, 2026, every Monday and Tuesday at 21:15, for a limited number of performances.

Wishing to speak about things slightly more complex — unprepared, peculiar, awkward, or clumsy — that take place within private spheres, within individualities, it seems we stand before an ideal condition. Because the temporality the play handles is the pandemic, the horrific year 2020, and the sounds, images, quirks, and habits that this year revealed or cultivated, and which remain with us to this day. What do we hear? What do we see, and how do we approach the flood of information?

Everything seems continuous. Without pause. Soaked in simplification. Simplification and proclamations. In the play, these proclamations lead the bodies of some characters all the way to the distant year 2039 — where the pandemic of evil, this time lodged even deeper within, strikes again.

By the time the performance we are preparing reaches its premiere,
six whole years will have already passed since the outbreak of the pandemic,
and since that first, unprecedented experience of lockdown and quarantine.

A young doctor in the play wears a suffocating mask.
He thinks: “Absolute isolation, therefore absolute protection.”
But how much protection is truly found in isolation — and how much danger?

The performance is presented with the Support of the Ministry of Culture and the generous sponsorship of the Stegi “Vitsentzos Kornaros.”

Duration: 80 minutes
Suitable age: 16+

Phyllostormni

“Phyllostormni” is a hybrid term.
It denotes a space where fragments — of time, of memory, of bodies — accumulate and form new ground.
A name for a place that did not previously exist, but is born from whatever falls and whatever remains.

Phyllostormni is a scenic composition unfolding in a non-place, after the collapse of linear time. It is not an answer, but a question: what does it mean to exist today, when certainties have dissolved and the future does not arrive?

Where do we stand as bodies, as collectivities, as erotic desires that persist nevertheless? The stage functions like a capsule-shelter: a space where past, present, and future have already collapsed into fragments. A phrase by Barthes, a life vest, a Joy Division song, a selfie, a touch — all coexist, without linearity yet with the human insistence to be preserved. And among them, love: not as narrative, but as pulse; as the small spark resisting decay. The performers do not play characters; they are survivors of a society that has changed
radically. With their bodies they carry memories and desires like ritual objects, and relive them: sometimes playfully, sometimes exhausted, sometimes tenderly.

Each scene becomes a silent prayer before nightfall. A chorus of voices without voice, insisting on forming community — and on keeping love alive, even as everything around them decomposes.

Phyllostormni is a political gesture of silence and desire. It does not narrate events, but the moment when collectivity becomes body again; where memory becomes action, and poetry becomes a mode of resistance. And love — fragile, imperfect, endless — functions as that thin thread binding those who remain. It does not depict an era; it seeks a new chorality, a shared presence born from the necessity of the now. It is a ritual space where memory is experienced collectively; a work that wonders how we stand together — without time, without narrative, without roles — only with the desire to hold on to something common. And within this “common,” love also becomes part of resistance: a warmth that does not fade.

Among the fragments, we are still here.

AUTHOR–DIRECTOR’S NOTE

For me, Phyllostormni is an act of persistence.
An attempt to stand within the chaos — not to control it,
but to live through it collectively.

It was born out of the need to rediscover the body as a site of political action;
to remember that theatre is not escape, but a community under trial.
An act of silent resistance against speed,
against the power of the image, against the productivity that exhausts.

There are no heroes here — only survivors.
Bodies carrying stories, silences, memories,
and trying to find how to stand beside one another.
To share the exhaustion and the warmth of the moment.

Within this field, love as a concept and play as a form of communication become modes of
resistance.
They pass from body to body, from language to language,
sometimes tenderly and sometimes ironically,
transforming the stage into a site of expression and rupture.
The stories intertwine, the roles shift,
the forms struggle to find their shape within the fluidity of the now.

Phyllostormni moves between the sacred and the ridiculous,
the political and the erotic, the ritual and the pop.
There, in the midst of contradictions, I find true theatre —
where body, memory, and imagination meet.

I am not interested in certainty, but in presence.
The moment when something is born without your knowing why.
The moment you remember that even within the wreckage,
there is always a leaf falling slowly, being born again,
reminding us that we are still here.

Duration: 60-75 minutes

L E M O N at P L Y F A

8 years of journeys in 8 + 1 performances!

*The performance is presented with English surtitles

In 2018, Lemon began its journey by stepping off the theatrical ship of Athens out of a need to be in every corner of Greece to offer a cultural opportunity to residents of decentralized areas.

After 8 years of original performances between land and sea, the incredible story of the virtuoso pianist 1900 -who never got off the ship on which he was born- anchors for 8 + 1 unique performances at PLYFA.

25,000 spectators, 184 performances in remote areas of Greece, countless meetings with people-spectators who never left their home. The independent and handmade artistic production of Lemon continues to connect the points of our collective map broadening the boundary between theatre and real life. Proposing an active theatre, with a social footprint and political prothesis.

“theatre exists where spectators exist”

Lemon returns to Athens after 42 consecutive sold-out performances at the abandoned Bageion hotel during the 2019-2020 season, where the performance travelled by word of mouth.

The raw and atmospheric industrial space of PLYFA in Votanikos will be the ideal setting both for the story of the greatest pianist of the Ocean and for the story of Lemon’s journey.

“We played so the world wouldn’t feel the passage of time”

Conceived, artistically directed, site-adapted and produced by Melachrinos Velentzas and with the support of local communities, Lemon continues its research journey sometimes on land, sometimes at sea and sometimes somewhere in between: on board ships, in shipwrecks and anchored ships, on beaches and breakwaters as well as in village squares, on a lemon process factory, in abandoned places where a theatrical performance is presented for the first time.

The award-winning performance-experience thrills audiences wherever it is presented receiving excellent reviews. Energy that floods the stage, moves and excites in 70 torrential minutes of a deeply human story that brings to the surface the existential question:

“Where do you feel happy?”

The story of the pianist 1900, based on the original text by Italian writer Alessandro Baricco (translation: Stavros Papastavrou) and adapted-directed-choreographed by Georgia Tsagkaraki is brought to life on stage by the actor and pianist Melachrinos Velentzas in the role of 1900 and the actor Giorgos Drivas in the role of the trumpeter Tim Tooney.

Before the start of each performance, spectators can arrive earlier at PLYFA to travel through these 8 years through photos and videos that will be projected in the space. They will also have the opportunity to watch the performance without their mobile phone through the original action #theatroxwriskinto (theatre without a mobile).

The set of parallel actions aims at the activation of the senses with the goal of a pure collective performance experience, which will remind us of the ritualistic character of theatre.

On Saturday, February 28, after the end of the last performance, a live piano will follow with Melachrinos Velentzas taking us on a special night in the company of his piano and his personal narratives: stories full of memories from these 8 years.

Plot Summary

The play unfolds at the beginning of the previous century on the steamship Virginian, which is making the transatlantic journey from Europe to America. A newborn baby is abandoned by his immigrant parents inside a box of lemons on the grand piano, in the first-class ballroom. The sailor who finds him gives him his own name: Danny Boodman and along with it the nickname T.D. Lemon (from the box of lemons) adding 1900 (from the year he found him). Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon 1900 will become the greatest pianist of the Ocean. The trumpeter Tim Tooney -1900’s only friend- encourages the latter to step onto the land to experience another life.

What has been written about the performance

«…their energy floods the stage… an ingenious performance for two actors…» Athinorama | Tonia Karaoglou

«They truly give their all on stage!» Euronews | George Mitropoulos

«…a 2 men show!» Athens Voice | Stefanos Tsitsopoulos

«Those who saw it, wrote the best. And perhaps, for the first time in my life, I will agree with all my colleagues!» EfSyn (Newspaper of the Editors) | Nora Ralli

«…no make-up needed for those actors, who also impersonate jugglers for the needs of the role. They can feel proud for the many times they conspiratorially showed us the royal road to emotion…» in.gr | Dimitris Doulgeridis

«A pocket musical with two wonderful actors!» Grafein | Konstantinos Bouras

«A small diamond!» Tetragwno.gr | Kostas Zisis

«…the performances are excellent, moving and captivating the audience…» Theatromania | Maria Mari

«I was impressed by the seriousness and quality of a very difficult endeavor!» Huffington Post | Manos Stefanidis

«Melachrinos Velentzas plays the piano, dances, sings. His energy floods the stage. George Drivas is equally effusive!» PRAKTOREIO free press | Christos Kalountzoglou

«…a feast of poetic language, flawlessly choreographed movement, breathtaking aerial acrobatics, and abundant wonderful music, performed live…» diastixo.gr | Marion Choreanthi

«A meticulous work that stands out for the energy of the actors in a space that suits it!» Clickatlife | Ioanna Vardalachaki

«A duo with explosive on-stage chemistry elevates the legendary pianist 1900!» Woman TOC | Georgia Karkani

«…with momentum, passion, enthusiasm they craft their theatrical story in a handmade way…» Tovima (Sunday Edition) | Myrto Loverdou

«…their chemistry is terrific…» Debop.gr | Sofia Alexiou

Duration: 70 minutes (no intermission)
Suitable age: 4 to 104

IPHIGENIAS
Georgia Karlatira

4 Iphigenias stand before the sacrificial altar …
A minimal austere stage, as befits Death.
Their starting point is a fantasy of the future ; one that is denied,collapsing under the weight of maintaining power and prestige.
Lives exiled, trapped beneath their own skin,
an inescapable sacrifice….

A theatrical performance based on excerpts from Euripides, Goethe, Yiannis Ritsos and from the monologue Iphigenia/Prey by Vivian Stergiou.

Directing approach
An archetype.
The daughter.
Her sacrifice.
How marriage becomes the sacrifice of the daughter?
How many daughters are sacrificed on this altar, to maintain social balance?
Αnd, how 4 different writers handle this sacrifice?
I break, I divide Iphigenia into 4  faces and Ι still have 1…

Duration: 60 minutes