SEBASTIAN
Nova Melancholia
SEBASTIAN returns for two unique nights in Athens before being presented at the Nicosia International Festival 2026. The performance has been honored by the Theatre and Performing Arts Critics Association with the Performing Arts Award. A performance with a “camp” sensibility, a kaleidoscope of references around the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, an avatar of desires and moods that plays with death and exorcises the darkness of our days.
Sebastian is a multiprismatic archetype, a kaleidoscope, an avatar of moods and desires. Delving into the tradition of Saint Sebastians’ martyrdom, as recast through its dense representation in Western art from early Renaissance onwards, we focus on concepts / senses / symbols resonating with our own sensibilities and imagination. The performance is the grand sum of its cultural references. We read poems, recreate paintings, mince, pose, sing, dance, and draw inspiration from an eccentric cinematic tradition of experimentation. We are interested in exploring those affective and bodily practices which will enable us to relate to a symbol like Sebastian in the present.
Saint Sebastian is associated with youth, beauty, sports, archery, physical pain, salacity, homoeroticism and martyrdom. Already since medieval times, there is a strong connotation linking him to the Plague, Black Death. We tie together the tradition of homoeroticism as expressed through the figure of Sebastian and the AIDS disease, which, in the 80s and 90s, came to be regarded as a kind of ‘homosexual plague’. Just like people did in early European modernity, we too resort to Saint Sebastian, assigning him with an apotropaic function to help us ward off evil. The show is dedicated to those who dare cross over from vision to lived experience, from representation to presence, thus taking the risk of being consumed by the blazes of existence.
The performance is dedicated to HIV-positive activist Zack/Zackie who was brutally murdered in Athens in September 2018, and experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger who died in May 2023.
“The language of theatre is not ‘natural’. We have to create it over and over again (says Roland Barthes). And we are indeed so rarely given the opportunity to watch a group of people construct their own language in front of us! Piece by piece, this precious pastiche called SEBASTIAN is moulded in Nova Melancholia’s performance.”
Louiza Arkoumanea (theater critic)
“SEBASTIAN is the most beautiful – so to speak – and thoughtful and elaborate performance I have seen in recent years, with a language that connects references and personal emotions and metaphors from art and experiences without pretension, in a way that is honest and effortless and ultimately redemptive.”
Argyro Bozoni (art journalist)
“For the first time, a younger generation of creators is approaching AIDS primarily as a cultural legacy, as an archive of images, losses, and forms of resistance that continues to organize collective queer memory.”
George Sampatakakis (prof. University of Patras)
http://www.novamelancholia.gr/en
Duration: 90 minutes, no intermission
Age recommendation: 16+
