THEATRE
Premiere in October 2014 at Onassis STEGI Culture Center
The screenwriter Efthimis Filippou brings his unique fictional world for the first time on stage, with a new theatrical play written for Argyro and VASISTAS theatre group.
Dimitris Kalafatis, aged 40 or so, accidentally rips open his throat in July 1989. He can only watch on as his wound fails to heal, festers and leaves its bloody traces on his shirt, his pillow, and the bodies of his wife and children. He writes to his dearest friend about it. BLOODS, takes the form of the correspondence between two friends. The play, laced with the bizarre and the humorous, with politician’s paranoid speeches and the daydreams of ordinary folk, is transformed into a punk oratorio awash with surrealism and quick-witted comedy.
For BLOODS, the stage is turned into a ring within which Argyro orchestrates the ‘moving pictures’ of a bizarre production-concert: an oratorio of bodies and emotions, outlandish fantasies and revelatory admissions. The corresponding characters are brought to life and invite us to bear witness to their reality. Which is how the play becomes an extended-play love song to Nineties Greece, to personal and collective trauma and, ultimately, to the bizarre feeling of living in a world haunted by open wounds and vital lies.
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It’s very strange, Unheard of | But when you cut my tongue, I felt no pain |
And when you broke my arm, I hardly noticed | Nor when you stabbed my back, at night |
My friends were scared, and tearful | “Beware” they said, and then they stared |
It’s very strange, I don’t know why | You kick and hit it, and it won’t die |
You kick and hit it, and it won’t die
Credits
Text: Efthimis Filippou | Stage direction: Argyro Chioti | Dramaturgical consultant: Christiana Galanopoulou | Stage set: Eva Manidaki | Lighting design: Tasos Palaioroutas | Costumes: Pavlos Thanopoulos | Music: Jan Van de Engel | Director’s assistant: Daphne Koutra, Matina Pergioudaki | Artistic associate: Ariane Labed | Surtitles translation: Memi Katsoni | On stage: Evdoxia Androulidaki, Antonis Antonopoulos, Eleni Vergeti, Giorgos Gallos, Efthimis Theou, Evi Saoulidou, Georgina Chryskioti
Photos: Vassilis Makris
Production: Onassis STEGI Culture Center
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