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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.