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BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN
Based on the screenplay by Radu Jude – Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival 2021
Adaptation: Katerina Papanastasiatou
Direction: Sotiris Roumeliotis

For the first time in Greece, the social comedy Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is being presented on stage. The play is based on the screenplay of the award-winning film of the same name by Radu Jude, which received the Golden Bear at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival. Directed by Sotiris Roumeliotis, the production will be staged at PLYFA, starting Monday, October 20. The cast features an outstanding ensemble of actors: Angelos Andriopoulos, Eleni Vaitsou, Eleni Daphni, Spyros Sourvinos.

Synopsis

When a video of a primary school teacher’s private intimate moments leaks online, the parents of the students decide to take matters into their own hands!

A school assembly or a public tribunal? Concern for the future of our children or yet another excuse for public shaming? Social drama or surreal comedy?

Based on the provocative screenplay by award-winning Romanian director Radu Jude, this theatrical adaptation brings the story into contemporary Greek society. With biting humor, unexpected twists, and constant conflicts, a simple discussion between parents and teachers transforms into a true duel over the taboos of sexuality, social roles, parental responsibility, and the boundaries between private and public life.
In a society that lives through images and snap judgments, people are increasingly exposed to voracious public critique, especially online. But when it comes time to discuss face-to-face—without screens and apps in between—the masks of progressiveness fall loudly, and deeply rooted social prejudices are revealed with tragicomic clarity.

The production is made possible with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture.

Duration: 70 minutes
Recommended age: 28-50

“The Hood”

Thanasis Triaridis’ play The Hood is a dystopian future drama, a powerful punch to the stomach, written with humor, bitter irony, and absurdity.

As the author himself writes in the prologue to his book:
“So what of it? There are lakes of blood for a thousand reasons… The important thing is that we ourselves do not press the button that kills.”

A woman goes to a Distribution Station that hands out hoods and asks the clerk for one—so she can use it, as the Emergency Decree requires, at the Defense Assemblies. In these Assemblies, all adult citizens of the country are obliged to ritually murder detained migrants—by pressing a button that activates a hammer which crushes their heads. Then comes a second woman—identical in appearance to the first, but entirely different in manner and in the personal story she carries. And then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and so on. In total, ten women appear—identical in form, yet utterly different in every other way. The saleswoman suspects that it is always the same woman, sent repeatedly by the State to test her. In the end, everyone leaves the Station with the hood they desired.

Directorial Note

Thanasis Triaridis’ The Hood is undeniably a socio-political play that confronts issues concerning life itself, human values, and the freedom of will. In a regimented authoritarian state that hides brazenly beneath the hood of democracy, in a not-so-distant future, society and its pressing problems unfold. The play’s characters must obey absolutely the command of the organized State. But where does that lead? To the murder of the most precious thing a human has: memory. Without memory, consciousness is lost, all emotion is lost, and the human being functions mechanically, pressing—effortlessly and shamelessly, hooded—the button of annihilation. The annihilation of human by human.

In Western society, the act of hooding is emblematic of the social and political alienation produced by the sole surviving socio-economic system: capitalism. The surplus value of capitalism, its alienation, contains within it the suffocation of the human species. Its triumph is that this suffocation occurs almost painlessly—through a symbolic hood. The hood is the suffocation of our social life. And this suffocation, paradoxically and strikingly, produces an absolute pleasure: the pleasure of chaos.

The Direction

The direction follows the line of German Expressionism, with elements of interwar cabaret, focusing on the body and the grotesque expressions of the face, where the delivery of speech is driven by them. On the stage, the performers—a woman and a man, here (by directorial license) embodied as a non-binary person—search for the truth that has been lost, just as their memory has been lost. Their duty is to awaken the spectator and to transmit to them all the emotions and situations that arise, making the spectator a participant and accountable for what takes place on stage but, in essence, within society itself and life itself.

The stage setting of the play (again, by directorial license) is a human being—an actor-musician—used as a living stage-object. On them, the performers sit, flirt, quarrel, comment. This human stage, at times silent, at times expressing itself through sounds and live music it produces on stage, always under the prompting and command of its master, symbolizes the human as object: the human without essence, the human as slave, the migrant human, the pet human, utterly humiliated in an inhuman world.

The direction exploits the peculiar humor of the play, thereby underscoring even more intensely its harsh and dramatic substance. At the back of the stage stands a visual artwork inspired by the play, evoking the sense of a futuristic environment in which the story unfolds.

The costumes follow a retro-futuristic line.
The lighting intensifies the drama of the scenes, focusing mainly on the faces and choreographed movements of the performers.

“TRUTHS ONLY”

What happens when politics, love, and death go… on air?

In a TV studio preparing for the grand premiere of the new late-night show “TRUTHS ONLY”, two women – the host, Smaragda Lambraki, and the Minister for Citizen Protection, Clytemnestra Patrioti – come face to face just minutes before the “ON AIR” signal.

A staged set.
Pre-recorded applause.
Notes with pre-arranged questions.
Everything predictable. Everything under control.

Until two pieces of news arrive – both from the Minister’s own mouth:
(1) The massive protest is heading straight for the TV station where, very soon, the show will take place. The official reason? The 13th dead protester “from the fire of defending police officers.” The real reason? (and 2) The identity of tonight’s dead protester…

How much propaganda, how many certainties, how many masks and worn-out lies would collapse if a person were to learn that tonight’s dead protester is their very own father – and that the “political” figure responsible for his death is sitting right across from them?

“TRUTHS ONLY”, the new play by Spyros Sourvinos, is a play about love and truth, about faith and betrayal, about utopia and… the non-existent emergency exit toward it.

Two women, trapped on a stage-turned-cage, struggle to manage truth, betrayal, love – and an audience that expects so much from them.

And as the cameras close in,
as their relationship is revealed,
as the protesters reach the building,
the talk show becomes theater,
and the theater turns into a showdown
of life or death.

A play about the people who refuse to remain silent,
about the loves that are born in the mud of (any) power,
and about the truths that cannot bear the light.

We thank Thanasis Dimitropoulos and the restaurant Honolulu Athens for their kind sponsorship.
We thank the traditional products store Tsakanikas in Kallithea for their generous sponsorship.
We warmly thank Kalli Diki and vitho creative for managing the performance’s communication on social media.