Plan Ahead for the Athens and Epidaurus Festival

Androniki Marathaki & Cloudsdonthaveshape

Painfully Painless

How does the body in pain move and communicate? Where are the boundaries between pain and pleasure in an era where the alternation between those two takes place instantly? The performance painfully painless seeks a sensory, pre-linguistic, unspeakable language, one that focuses on the mobility changes of a person in pain.

The ensemble approaches this subject matter through methods invented by humans for pain management, and develops the piece along two basis axes, one kinetic and one sonic. On the one hand, it focuses on the sensation of bodily pain. A body in pain moves in such a way as to always pursue and complete what is not there. It lives, organizes and regulates itself through memories from the time when it was “complete” and healthy. Its movement, presently elliptical, is realized every moment along with whatever is omitted. On the other hand, it guides us to listen to the particular language in which the phantom of pain expresses itself. Performers on the microphone recite mantras, words, instructions on pain management; they laugh, cry, breathe and everything is recorded, played back and gradually converted into audio frequencies. In this piece, the two aforementioned axes cross paths in multiple ways and instantly illuminate connections highlighting social, religious and cultural mandates on pain.

RootlessRoot

Silence

If something has been brutally banished from our current age of technology and information, that’s silence. The ever-present barrage of human activity causes endless noise. In addition to silence, the capacity to listen also seems to be fading away. However, what is silence? What dimensions can it assume?
In their latest piece, the RootlessRoot duo creates a world dedicated to silence and its power. They explore an unknown universe where silence communicates with all those listening carefully to it, with all those conversing with it and utilizing what it has to offer them. Silence is treated as an absolute condition, confronting those who participate in it with the mystery of their own selves and the world at large. Sometimes as a place of reflection, critical thinking and memory, sometimes as a place of faith, prayer and encounter with the divine, silence becomes the space for movement before the actual movement or action. Drawing material from philosophy, theology, poetry, literature and painting, the duo investigates the condition of silence as a medium of self-knowledge and an experiencing of the world. Via improvisations and exercises, the movement research will dictate the choreographic material and theatrical elements of this production.

Elli Papakonstantinou

The Bacchae After Euripides

Elli Papakonstantinou’s The Bacchae is an original reading of Euripides’ tragedy, weaving ancient myth and research on gender fluidity together and making full use of new media, dance and sound, and mystical experiences. The dramatist immerses herself in the nebulous world of desire and mythical atrocities in order to speak out about a post-apocalyptic world in the face of an upcoming, ever-approaching catastrophe.

Wealthy members of the upper middle class and their servant, in circumstances similar to those in Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia, are waiting any minute now for a meteorite to hit the Earth; a meteorite named “Dionysus” by the scientists. Dionysus arrives in person and guides the heroes to the Room of Desire. There is no other room more terrifying than that. To reach it, they must traverse a mysterious energy field, overcoming the fear of revelation, fall, contamination, decay, hubris and shame. The god Dionysus will not take refusal, postponement, contempt for an answer. He will execute his mission at all costs. A seismograph records every vibration shaking the house on a paper roll that ceaselessly unfolds on stage; a gigantic oscilloscope of the world. The play is built upon speech, music and a dance narrative, investigating a queer performing language, one that is pop yet contains classic operatic outbursts, at once dance-based, mystical and subtle. The Venezuelan alchemist of sounds Ariah Lester and the imaginative choreography of the French duo of Christophe Béranger and Jonathan Pranlas Descours also contributed to the creation of this multilingual play, with English, French, Spanish and Greek all heard on stage.

The Athens Epidaurus Festival performance will launch the European tour of this production, following its premiere at La Filature, Scène nationale de Mulhouse in France in March 2023.

Anestis Azas

The Republic of Baklava

Following a string of sold-out performances in Greece and abroad, including Sarajevo (MESS International Theatre Festival – Best Actor Award to George Katsis), Skopje (MOT Festival) and Zurich (Kurtheater Baden), The Republic of Baklava, an Athens Epidaurus Festival 2021 commission as part of the 1821 Bicentennial tribute, returns to the Festival for only two performances.

Anestis Azas’ performance is set in modern-day Greece, halfway between fiction and documentary, even though its plot is fictional. Featuring a mixed couple, a Turkish man and a Greek woman, who decide to found their own nation-state, with their home and private business as their headquarters, the production theatrically renegotiates tensions that have been active since the Greek Revolution. Through a number of hilarious situations, the heroes are confronted with the contradictions of contemporary Greek society, the problem of national identity and the utopian reality of a future, universal, digital nation, taking us along for the ride.

Dimitris Mytilinaios

Repair

Three iconic, short choreographic works – L’après midi d’un faune (Paris, 1912), Grand pas classique (Paris, 1949) and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (New York, 1960) – are scrutinized, analyzed and reconstructed as a choreographic collage, forming a new whole.

Repair is a quartet focusing on the notion of pas de deux, familiar to us through the history of ballet. The ambiguous title, Repair, primarily denotes an intention of “restoring” what a “dance duet” means today, taking into account the topical debate on gender identities. At the same time, as a pun, the title implies a re-pairing, as the duet here is actually performed by four dancers!

Despite the clear reference to historical sources, nothing is taken for granted. Every element used is differentiated from its original source, neither describing it nor representing it. Ballet is not approached as a form of movement but as a system revealing the dance situation to the performers. With meticulous technical precision and detail, the famous music works and choreographies are presented in a new “orchestration”. As such, a new relationship between them is forged, as composite aspects of the present piece.

Jerôme Bel

Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan, a performance by iconic choreographer Jérôme Bel, made for and in collaboration with Elisabeth Schwartz, focuses on the figure of Isadora Duncan, continuing the series of dancer portraits initiated by the choreographer back in 2004. Bel himself performs on stage, joined by one of the greatest students of the Isadorables group. Beneath the romantic figure, he discovers a visionary choreographer, investigating her legacy and the myths that accompany her.

In contrast to the previous instalments of this series (Véronique Doisneau, Cédric Andrieux and Pichet Klunchun and myself), in which Bel was in dialogue with the artists, here he creates the portrait of a dancer who is no longer alive, based on her autobiography. Duncan, widely regarded as the “mother” of modern and contemporary dance, had close ties with Greece, first visiting the country in 1903, with 2023 marking a 120-year anniversary of her visit.

Any Attempt will end in Crushed Bodies and Shattered Bones

Jan Martens & Dance On Ensemble

Avant-garde Belgian choreographer Jan Martens with the Berlin-based Dance On company put on a production consisting of 17 dancers aged 18-71 years old. Borrowing its title from a specch delivered by Xi Jimping, President of the People’s Republic of China, to the Hong Kong protesters in 2019, ‘any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones’ showcases each dancer’s unique, signature style within an ensemble demonstrating a joint physical and perfor mative energy. Martens brings on stage language itself as a performing medium, introducing oral excerpts from Scottish writer Ali Smith’s novel Spring*, as well as online, written declarations of hatred, fragments of which are projected behind the dancers.

Emily Louizou

Symptoms of Weightlessness, Gianni Skaragas

Is our fate a second chance we were given? Can we escape our character because we were loved dearly? 19 July 1969: Two days before humanity’s first moon landing, the lawyer of a young man who was acquitted for his mother’s murder visits the country house of his client’s family, accompanied by his wife. What initially seemed like a leisure trip escalates into a violent, psychological story, rife with well-hidden secrets and twists…

Inspired by Aeschylus’ Eumenides, the play Symptoms of Weightlessness by internationally acclaimed playwright Gianni Skaragas is a story about the heaviness of traumatic memories and human character, which carries the same, unbearable darkness, regardless of whether it is found in a different planet or era.

Under the helm of Emily Louizou, a young, London-based director, the performance transports us inside a purgatory, where characters arrive in order to be purified. Even though the Areopagus has acquitted Orestes, the actual trial takes place now as a close-door session. Memory is fluid and the Erinyes are invariably present: no matter how much they are appeased, the scar will remain open, akin to a perpetual injury.

Kraftwerk

The iconic group from Düsseldorf literally created electronic music in the 1970s and with each new album redefined the course of the genre in the ensuing years. Albums such as Autobahn (1974), Radio Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978) and Computer World (1981) have set a benchmark for numerous artists worldwide and nowadays form an integral chapter in the history of contemporary music.
Radical and pioneering as few other artists are, in their live performances Kraftwerk have always utilized the latest sound and visual technology, creating multidimensional audiovisual spectacles. For their Odeon of Herodes Atticus debut, they will present their newest audiovisual show which has received rave reviews across the world. Kraftwerk’s great hits will be presented live in a unique manner specifically designed for the Roman Odeon stage.

Gilberto Gil & Family

Aquele Abraço Tour

Gilberto Gil needs no introductions. His voice and songs have been strongly identified with the Brazilian soul and continue to captivate us. As a musician, he was at the forefront of the Tropicália artistic movement, which defined the new Brazilian sound, creatively melding musical tradition, bossa nova, rock’n’roll and reggae as well as bringing Brazilian music back in touch with its African roots. As a politician, he tirelessly defended democracy and championed musical diversity.
As part of the Aquele Abraço Tour, celebrating his 60-year-old career, Gil returns to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus for a farewell concert that is expected to move us deeply.
The artist is joined on stage by a group of musicians from his extended family, performing songs from Gil’s outstanding musical oeuvre.

Gisèle Vienne

L’Étang by Robert Walser

Drawing on dance, music and theatre, director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne has been building her own, atmospheric world, noted for its strong visual elements, for the past 20 years. She was first introduced to the Greek audience in 2018 with the performance Crowd, a piece about the dark relationship between the personal and the collective sentiment. This year, she will present the riveting L’Étang at the Festival, a piece that had its premiere in 2021 at the Théâtre de Vidy-Lausanne in Switzerland and is based on Robert Walser’s short play Der Teich (German for The Pond), tackling a dysfunctional family environment.

A boy, feeling rejected by his family, desperately fakes his own death, supposedly drowning in a lake. Vienne creates a powerful psychological drama, shedding light to Walser’s disturbing insinuations about child abuse, incest and family trauma. Vienne’s two performers, sharing 10 roles on stage, the hypnotic lighting and the minimal electronic music by Stephen O’Malley bring to the surface repressed urges and pent-up emotions. The self is scattered amidst all the pain. Every sentence is shrouded in doubt. Were all these things truly narrated or was it just a dream? While Walser’s text offers a sliver of hope for reconciliation, there is no happy ending in Vienne’s world. The trauma is too deep.

Having studied music, philosophy and puppetry, Gisèle Vienne, born in France in 1976, founded her own theatre company in 1999. Since then, she has created a total of 11 performances and 7 productions in collaboration with Etienne Bideau-Rey, presented all around Europe, Asia and America.

Io Voulgaraki

Hecuba by Euripides

Our screens are daily inundated with images of war, images of unspeakable violence and agony from every place in the world. The absurdity of war seemingly concerns only those who experience it; for the rest of us, it is packaged as a dry, virtual and harmless piece of information, buried amid numerous other news and disconnected from the experience of mourning. We are thus familiarized with the image and information of violence; we are trained in death yet we have unlearnt how to mourn.

In Euripides’ eponymous tragedy, Hecuba emerges as a character from a place we have all of us forgotten: the place of mourning. In the first part of the play, mourning, both individual and collective, seemingly gives birth to its metaphysics: the living and the dead are locked in a constant dialogue; an unburied boy disrupts his mother’s sleep; a girl stands on the border between life and death. In Hecuba, everything unfolds at a liminal time, after the end of the war. Nevertheless, violence is not over yet. It is precisely here, at this transitional time, where mourning-style Hecuba becomes revenge-style Hecuba, opening up a provocative dialectics with the present.

A large ensemble of brilliant actors and musicians, along with Helene Varopoulou’s new translation made especially for this performance, are the cornerstones of this endeavour.

National Theatre Of Northern Greece, Christos Sougaris

The Trojan Women by Euripides

The Trojan Women, the only extant tragedy of Euripides’ trilogy about the Trojan War, was premiered in 415 BC at the Great Dionysia. The play was written shortly after the destruction of Melos in 416 BC, in which Athens, demonstrating unspeakable cruelty, killed all the adult men on the island and sold women and children as slaves.

Euripides attempts to warn us about the consequences arising from the victors’ impunity and also remind us of the importance of remaining human, away from a false sense of omnipotence caused by temporary victories. In The Trojan Women, the poet showcases the human dimension of the enemy. By focusing on the greatness of the Trojan women, he foregrounds that power which makes humans persevere even in the wake of catastrophe.

A recipient of the 2018 Young Theatre Artist award by the Union of Greek Critics for Drama and Music, director Christos Sougaris, head of the National Theatre of Northern Greece artistic programming, presents a novel take on Euripides’ masterpiece.

Simos Kakalas

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

Never before have we in human history ever “looked” so far away inside the cosmos and so deeply inside humans. Very often, in the brink of destruction, we realize that the evil we are fighting against is, in fact, ourselves. Oedipus’ face is humanity itself in front of the mirror. Having found the culprit, he reaches the point where it is imperative that he make a choice, even at the eleventh hour, even after he has already committed the gravest error.
In this performance, approached as a ritual of purification, a group of actors wearing masks of Elders comprises the writhing, mourning Chorus in agony. Through this Chorus, the tragic characters, namely Oedipus, Jocasta, Teiresias and Creon, are revealed.

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