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The Guides
An original FONACT production at PLYFA
Written and Directed by Jamie Bradley
Created with FONACT Actors

Her body is silent yet she is speaking to you all the time
Who is the real Penelope?
Demi-Goddess, Lover, Tour Guide.
Everybody wants to find her, especially her long lost son. Hidden within the ancient stories she tells to contemporary Athenian visitors, her elusive spirit chimes with his own struggles.

Merging music and mythology, and created with an international ensemble. The Guides is a vibrant story of chosen family, ambiguous histories and the hidden divine feminine.

5th, 6th 7th 8th June 2025 9pm
7th June 6.45pm

Performed in English with Greek surtitles
Running time: approximately 70 minutes

BIRTHLAND
Good Girls Don’t Talk About These Things
by Mina Petrić, in collaboration with Venia Stamatiadi & Eleni Apostolopoulou

Eleni Apostolopoulou and Venia Stamatiadi collaborate with playwright Mina Petrić to create the theatrical piece BIRTHLAND: Good Girls Don’t Talk About These Things. Rooted in lived experience, the play centers on how a woman artist is treated during pregnancy.

In the film Good Girls Don’t Talk About These Things, Beatrice plays a woman who is at risk of losing her job because of her pregnancy. However, as filming progresses, the characters begin to unravel, the story collapses, and the script starts to resemble her own life more and more. Can fiction really come so close to reality?

A note from the creators
How openly do we talk about workplace discrimination that women face due to pregnancy? How often are abortions not a choice, but a forced decision to keep a job? How freely do we speak about the difficult sides of motherhood?

The play Birthland: Good Girls Don’t Talk About These Things speaks to and about women who struggle to decide whether or not they want to have children. About others who regret the choice and can’t even admit it to their own reflection. About time—how it ticks by and turns against you. About that looming NOW OR NEVER that weighs heavily on women around the ages of 35 to 40.

Because even though many of us now choose to walk away from social expectations, we still carry the anxiety. About our jobs. About whether we’ll have a family—and what shape that family will take. We constantly face dilemmas.

We believe this anxiety is something our whole generation feels. And we wanted to write a play about that: about the fear of trying to remain professionally active while facing the question of motherhood. And whether a child can grow up happy in the midst of all this chaos.

I Am the Reincarnation of Sylvia Plath

A woman, in a kitchen—though a different kind of kitchen. Because in this kitchen, nothing is being cooked. Perhaps only a suicide. After all, she flirts with death every day. But before she makes her decision, she must first confess what weighs on her.

And manage, for once, to reach completion—since in sex, she never quite does.

And to share some of her psychological traumas with her vibrator.

And to try to understand why her body, and her very existence, feel so profoundly lonely.

And to do a little sexting.

And to watch some of her favorite films.

And to leave behind a will.

And to write a few songs.

And to not ask for one last kiss. From someone who might be worth dying for.

As open as we’ve become as a society on issues that were once considered private, the stigma around our emotional and sexual difficulties remains insurmountable. We speak easily about our physical health, but we still find it incredibly uncomfortable to talk about anxiety, depression, our sexual entanglements or fantasies, or the uncontrollable sense of futility and loneliness.

“She” – with sharp humor and raw honesty – satirizes the digitization of sexual life, the power of trauma, the deep roots of patriarchy which, no matter how consciously we now try to cast it off, has already—subtly or obviously—defined us to a large extent; and the fear of what we most deeply desire: the exposure of our true selves and a deeper connection with another being. Or two. Or three. Or countless.

“Is there an app where people can cuddle to sleep? Just for a night, a one-night nap. And in the morning, each goes home or to work, wherever they want. No strings attached—you just show up in your pajamas, we lie down, and sleep holding each other. We might not even exchange names, not even say goodnight. But we hold each other like we’ve known each other forever. There isn’t one? What a shame.”

Through the desperate “baring” of her most hidden and unseen sides before an audience—without fear or shame (after all, she’s probably going to die right after)—she discovers that there is beauty even in the darkest places. Because the more we accept them and share them, the more we step into the light. And then we see—we’re not really that alone.

“I Am the Reincarnation of Sylvia Plath” is a work that references Sylvia Plath. A work inspired by Sylvia Plath. And a work that is certainly not just about Sylvia Plath.