Collaboration National Theater-EMST

          

The new 2018-2019 campaign to promote the repertory of the National Theatre of Greece

Collaboration between  the National Theatre of Greece and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST)

The new performances staged at the National Theatre of Greece stay in contact with their audience through the artistic work produced both by Greek and international artists. An exceptional collaboration characterized by special symbolism between the National Theatre of Greece and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST) – the country’s two leading institutions in the field of performing and visual arts – is set thanks to new aesthetical data entering the field of visual communication. For the time period 2018-2019, arts and their audience approach each other and the two interact on each other. Important artworks of the Collection of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST) communicate the message the theatrical performances wish to convey even before they are staged. They address the audience through a new kind of visual vocabulary including semantic language, codes, shapes, myths, images, symbols, meanings as well as the adoption of a different artistic way of expression. Occasioned by the initiative taken by Mr. Stathis Livathinos, Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Greece and after its receiving a really warm welcome by Mrs. Katerina Koskina, Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), the idea of organizing the aforementioned campaign will have numerous benefits at multidimensional level by contributing to the promotion of the artists’ works. It will also strengthen the spirit of collaboration between the two institutions and finally will offer new visual stimulus to those who appreciate art.

The aforementioned initiative will take place thanks to the cooperation among EMST curators and the contribution of the busybuilding creative agency which has been recently awarded the Red Hot Award for designing the National Theatre’s publications (Communication Design 2018 – Red Dot Award).

Information about the productions: https://www.n-t.gr/en/

Melissia

Melissia by Alexis Stamatis
From 10.05.2019 to 09.06.2019
Ziller Building – Stage “Nikos Kourkoulos”

It is a story as familiar as an old acquaintance. Maybe because we have experienced it ourselves; perhaps because we have heard about it; possibly because we imagine that it might be true. Certainly because Melissia is never far away. Although it is a domestic drama, this does not stop the writer from showing us various worlds contained both inside and outside the four walls of the home, in a text that is theatrical to its core and achieves a heightened realism. First presented as one of the GNT Readings in 2012, it has also been published as a novel, losing none of its dramatic intensity.
The prize-winning novelist, poet and playwright, Alexis Stamatis, delivers a vivid dissection of strained family relationships with a domineering queen bee at their centre. Giorgos Paloubis, with a number of exceptional productions in the theatre of realism to his name, returns to the Greek National Theatre for the first time since his successful direction of “Invisible Olga”. His knowledge of contemporary Greek drama makes him ideally suited to helm this modern Greek play, to which he brings his own take on maternal authority.
In a middle-class house somewhere in the Athenian suburb of Melissia, the owner is being visited by her daughter and son-in-law, and her son and his new girlfriend. But when her identity is revealed, everything changes. The bedridden mother, Agapi, is a writer who creates the sense that everything going on between them consists of stories taken from the pages of her books.

creation team
Director: Giorgos Paloubis
Designer: Natasha Papastergiou
Lighting: Vassilis Klotsotiras
Assistant director: Panagiota Papadimitriou

cast: Nikos Arvanitis, Kostas Vasardanis, Maria Kechagioglou, Nefeli Kouri, Lida Protopsalti, Nikos Hatzopoulos

Artwork of the EMST Collection

Niki Kanagini

At Home, 1975
Mixed media
Variable dimensions
Purchased in 2002 on subsidy by the Ministry of Economy and Finance
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST)
Inv. No. 168/02

Since the beginning of the 1970’s- during a period characterized by intense sociopolitical turmoil and a tendency of redefining identities- Niki Kanagini places special emphasis on the systematic studying of the female identity through female stereotypes. The sculptural installation entitled At Home (“En oiko”) (1975) was presented as a part of a wider body of works under the same name that was hosted at Iolas-Zouboulaki Gallery in 1975. The aforementioned work consists of a metal drying rack where instead of clothes, a series of similar silkscreen prints are being hanged presenting-through successive printings- both schematic and abstract landscape pictures.
The artist uses and integrates everyday housework into her artistic practice, disturbing thus the limits between high and low culture, visual language and life experience. Clothes’ hanging in order to dry takes ritual dimensions: i.e., “in house” microcosm enters the field of artistic creation in an undermining manner.

Niki Karagini was born in Alexandroupoli in 1933. She studied painting at the Ecole Cantonale de Dessin et d’ Art Appliqué in Lausanne (1952-54) as well as at Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) (1954-1958) and at London Central School of Arts and Design (1958-1961). Many museums and public or private collections in Greece and abroad host her works. She died in Athens in 2008.

Selfie: the city in the background

Selfie: the city in the background

An urban narrative adventure

Based on texts by Vassilis Vassilikos, Giorgos Ioannou and Nikos-Gabriel Pentzikis

From 29.03.2019 to 19.05.2019

Experimental Stage (-1) REX Theater – Katina Paxinou Stage

Beyond the descriptions and properties attached to it from time to time, the city seems to have its own, hidden, mythological life. It is a life that may chronologically belong to the past, but is ubiquitous today, in an extended present. The prolific actor and director Akilas Karazisis wanders the city where he grew up, retracing a childhood in Thessaloniki after the war through works by three emblematic writers, Pentzikis, Vassilikos and Ioannou. The production, the text, and the narrative adventure constitute an effort to understand or even invent the city in the dark.

When night falls, you can make out small islands of light on Egnatias Street and Agiou Dimitriou Street, at the Arch of Galerius, on Leontos Sofou Street, at Esperos, at the Vakoura and at Titania, in Hilia Dentra, in Polichni, and on the front of the beachside mansions: the vast Plant that devours an apartment block on Kolomvou St; the Sarcophagus on Angelaki St, in the crypt of which illicit couples meet; the outdoor Trikrikonakias tekke near the Jewish Monuments; the yellow stars filing towards the station for Auschwitz; and finally the heroic exodus of Kyria Ersi by train to the exotic Sikyoni after ten years of occupation and civil war. They are mosaics and fragments of two troubled, miserable and yet mythically vibrant decades, the fifties and sixties.

creation team

Dramaturg, Director: Akyllas Karazisis

Sets: Maria Panourgia

Costumes: Ioanna Tsami

Live music: Michalis Siganidis

Lighting: Giannis Drakoularakos

Assistant director: Katerina Zisoudi

Cast: Stella Vogiatzaki, Efthimis Theou, Syrmo Keke, Giorgos Kritharas, Katerina Papandreou, Giorgos Syrmas

On-stage Musicians: Michalis Siganidis

 Artwork of the EMST Collection

Marios Spiliopoulos

The Landscape of Being, 1997

Wooden table (80 x 100 x 70 cm) with hand written text from the Landscape of Being, by N.G. Pentzikis, 10 branches, 12 little black crosses, electric lamp, steel, water, glass, straw chair, 3 glasses, steel cross filled with olive oil, square glass, electric lamp, illuminated box (50 x 42 x 25 cm)

Variable dimensions

Purchased in 2002

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 182/02

Marios Spiliopoulos “narrates” the story of “The Landscape of Being” written by Gavriil Pentzikis, writer and painter   (1908-1993), included in his book entitled Mother Thessaloniki (1970). In the aforementioned story, Pentzikis identifies his limbs with certain areas of his homeland, Thessaloniki. The writer begins with the existential question of “Who am I? I do not believe in this figure reflected in the mirror.  The reflection does not exist no matter how it is being lightened either by virtue or by meanness” and then he draws a map including a kind of “multilayer topography of the city of Thessaloniki where the present intersects with its mythological and historical depth.

Pentziki’s personal and literary universe becomes Spiliopoulos’ great source of inspiration.  The text from The Landscape of Being comes to life, is unfolded and covers further parts of the artwork: the text covers the whole surface of the table, creating a micrography of the city of Thessaloniki while branches and crosses make their appearance. The opened drawer covered up with water refers to the head while the lower part of the table refers to the legs. Spiliopoulos’ works record anewPentziki’s “internal monologue”, his theosophy on idiosyncrasy, his mnemonics, his archival obsession and most of all his declared weakness to compose. Through an affective discussion on the artist’s memories and experiences, Spiliopoulos’ works become his own personal introspection.

Marios Spiliopoulos was born in Polygyros-Halkidiki in 1957. In 1980, he attended in Vienna the courses given by the painter Freidrich Hunderwasser which lasted four months. In the meantime, during the time period 1983-1988, he studies at ASFA (Athens School of Fine Arts) and in particular at the workshop supervised by Dimosthenis Kokkinidis. Since 1991, he teaches at ASFA. He lives and works in Athens. 

The man who laughs

The man who laughs

Victor Hugo

From 23.03.2019 to 26.05.2019

Rex Theatre – Kotopouli Stage

The man who laughs is much more than the stormy romance it seems; indeed, it is Victor Hugo’s most political work and a love story becomes an examination of the excesses of power. The great French writer shows through his exceptional writing how repugnant its true face can be and how it expresses itself in the most vulgar and outspoken way.

This eventful novel of politics and romance is the raw material for a subversive piece of contemporary musical theatre directed with original music by Thodoris Abazis, the deputy artistic director of the Greek National Theatre. A group of talented performers, including actors, singers, dancers and onstage musicians, give their all to bring a complex and demanding musical to the stage using all the tools of theatrical storytelling.

The man who laughs was first published in 1869, just two years before the establishment of the Paris Commune. Without ever having the resonance of Hugo’s other novels, it does not lack their grandeur. Every issue, including social inequality, the corruption of power, the political responsibility to intervene, the crushing of the individual by the system, is latent and is masterfully revealed through a plot in which love is a driving force. Precisely in the same unexpected but very real way, he shows man’s existential tragedy when he suffers at the hands of a warped power. In this case, it is the mask of the merry clown revealed through the violent and artificial laughter of the main hero. But the man who laughs has no choice in the matter. His grin reflects power’s deforming tendencies in the most extreme and direct way.

Early 18th-century London is a highly structured aristocratic society with strict boundaries between the classes. Wealth and a high position in the hierarchy give rise to arrogance. The impoverished, weak-willed people are terrified, with no appetite for resistance and frequently no hope. In this cruel environment, Gwynplaine, a young man whose face has been mutilated into a permanent grin, falls in love with a blind girl, Dea. Their relationship is the most important thing in the world for him. As a member of a band of travelling performers, he will soon become famous for his appearance. When he dares to stand up for himself he comes face-to-face with the callousness of the powerful.

creation team

Translator: Doreta Peppa

Libretto: Elsa Andrianou

Composer & director: Theodore Abazis

Set design: Konstantinos Zamanis

Costume design: Niki Psychogiou

Choreography: Angeliki Stellatou

Lighting: Nikos Sotiropoulos

Assistant director: Eleana Tsichli

Music coach: Melina Peonidou

Second assistant director: Katerina Zafeiropoulou

Third assistant director: Konstantinos Kardakaris

Dramaturg: Vivi Spathoula

 

cast: Thanassis Akokkalidis, Nelly Alkadi, Thanasis Vlavianos, Georgina Daliani, Maria Deletze, Antigoni Drakoulaki, Paris Thomopoulos, Kostas Koronaios, Thodoris Kotepanos, Elita Kounadi, Nestor Kopsidas, David Malteze, Eleni Boukli, Panagiotis Panagopoulos, Evelina Papoulia, Areti Paschali, Emilianos Stamatakis, Lydia Tzanoudaki, Spiros Tsekouras, Dimitra Haritopoulou, Vangelis Psomas

 

Artwork of the EMST Collection

Anna Tsouloufi Lagiou

Forms of life – Survival kit in the mitropolis (Detail), 2012, Installation

37 color pictures printed on adhesive vinyl onto kapamount, each one of them having the following dimensions: 50 x 75 cm έκαστη, 8 maps printed on paper of 2 x (0.50 x 0.40 m.), 1 x (0.50 x 0.45m.), 1 x (1 x 0.40 m.), 3 x (0.50 x  0.60 m.), 1 x (0.50 x 0.50 m.), 8 monoblock videos/recordings with sound and 8 texts accompanying the videos as well as a 40 pages version sized 0.22 x 0.33 m., 3 shelves sized 8.74 m., 7.1 m. and 7.5 μ. In length, 1 shelf sized 60 x 40 cm.and vinyl letters placed on the wall.

The work includes the following videos:

Discussion with GK,  duration 43’

Discussion with Mrs.X., duration 60’

Discussion with MaP, duration 52’

Discussion with Mr. Rick (Ρυκ),  duration 42’

Discussion with T, duration 28’

Discussion with Itavita (Ήταβήτα), duration 28’

Discussion with Mr. Pi Kappa while strolling at Solonos str., duration 58’

The work was realized in the framework of the series EMST Commissions 2012 with the kind support of Bombay Sapphire gin,

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 795/12

 

Anna’s Tsouloufi Lagiou work entitled Survival Kit is mainly focused on meanings and issues pertaining to modern biopolitics and more specifically it refers to the ideas expressed by modern political philosophers. Borrowing tools and practices from the fields of social anthropology, philosophy and political science, her visual research is presented through pictures, discussions recorded in videos, texts and odd maps. The artist has chosen eight persons, all of them living and working in Athens who are have an active participation in the social and political life of the city. They participate in common activities and aim at helping to preserve public goods. The artist, working in cooperation with her main characters and by combining real with staged facts, produces a political artwork in order to talk, in a poetic mood, about the ways to resist and survive within this dead end caused by today’s crisis.

Anna Tsouloufi was born in 1971. She studied fine arts at Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) specializing in sculpture and photography and also in new artistic strategies and public art at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, USA. She has participated in international exhibitions, shows and workshops both in Europe (Greece, Italy, Germany, FYROM, Albania) and in America (Chicago).

One-way ticket

One-way ticket

a musical by Gerasimos Evangelatos & Themis Karamouratidis

From 15.02.2019 to 14.04.2019

ZILLER BUILDING – STAGE “NIKOS KOURKOULOS”

 

An opportunity to think about the here and now in the here and now. To think about our hardships and our anxieties through the unmediated experience of them. To approach the present in the present tense. One-way ticket is an original musical for a generation that grew up believing that the world was their oyster but ended up at the mercy of a world they never made.

The production is written by Gerasimos Evangelatos, one of the most creative contemporary voices in Greece, and directed by the young and multitalented Minos Theocharis, working with the composer Themis Karamouratidis and a unique mixed company of actors and singers. The result is a production that takes us on a journey to real life: a destination that for many has no return journey.

Sunday morning, spring 2017, at Athens International Airport. Shortly after Brexit is triggered, with the fear of closed borders and a last chance for escape being snatched away, eight people are in a departure lounge, determined to leave Greece for an uncertain future in the UK. The flight is delayed and they all have plenty of time to get to know each other, sharing their stories, their fears and their insecurities, confessing their thoughts, reminiscing and re-examining their decision.

Young people, insecure, scared and angry, looking for a new business opportunity or simply struggling to survive.  Each of them has a different story. What unites them is the hope of a better future and nostalgia for a lost dream.

creation team

Text, Lyrics: Gerasimos Evangelatos

Director: Minos Theocharis

Music & orchestration: Themis Karamouratidis

Set designer: Ilenia Douladiri

Movement: Amalia Bennett

Orchestra supervision: Dimitris Siambos

Lighting: Sakis Birbilis

Music coach: Melina Peonidou

Assistant director: Eleftheria Benovia

Assistant set designer: Ioanna Kalavrou

Assisstant orchestra supervisor: Antonis Palamaris

Cast: Konstantinos Aspiotis, Konstantinos Gavalas, Maria Diakopanagiotou, Hara Kefala, Nikos Lekakis, Mariza Rizou, Fivos Rimenas, Nancy Sideri

On-stage Musicians: Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, Antonis Palamaris, Stefanos Sakellariou, Dimitris Siambos

 

Artwork of the EMST Collection

 Dimitris Kozaris

Anschluss, 1993-2002 (detail) | The work consists of three parts:

Anschluss Ι, 1993-2002, Colour photographs on paper 60 x 89 cm

Anschluss ΙΙ, 1993-2002, Colour photograph on paper 60 x 89 cm

Anschluss ΙΙΙ, 1993-2002, Colour photograph on paper 60 x 89 cm

Donated by the artist, 2002

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 160/02

This photographic triptych (artwork in three parts) presents three non-functional versions of the emblematic Wolkswagen T2 vehicle of German origin. Although the vehicle has been combined with various parts which seem to derive from the very same construction, the new vehicles cannot move along, balance or move onward or towards the back. The artworks entitled Anschluss which is sarcastically referred to the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938.

Dimitris Kozaris was born in Athens in 1960. He studied Interior Design at Vakalo School of Art and Design (1981-83), painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, in Milan (1983-87), Industrial Design at the Instituto Europeo di Design in Milan (1989-91) and film and television at  Kunsthochschule fur Medien in Cologne (1995-96). His works are exhibited both in Greece and abroad. He lives and works in Milan. 

The Misanthrope

The Misanthrope

Moliere

From 10.03.2019 to 26.05.2019

ZILLER BUILDING – MAIN STAGE

The Misanthrope is one of Moliere’s finest plays, its characters masterfully deployed in a trenchant comedy that exposes the hypocrisy of every society and every age. Τhis production, by the former Artistic Director of the Greek National Theatre, Yannis Houvardas, gives us a version where anything can happen, and in Chrysa Prokopaki’s excellent new translation, words become lethal weapons in the mouths of the protagonists.

Alceste, a respected member of society, is incurably in love with Célimène. However, he cannot abide anyone else, surrounded as he is by people engaged in flattery, gossip and intrigues, hypocrisy and lies. When Alceste sees with his own eyes that his beloved lives exactly the kind of life that he despises and that she rejects the path of true love, he chooses self-exile and loneliness.

An incurably honest hero who abhors hypocrisy wins our sympathy and admiration. Through the masterful writing of the great French comic dramatist, Alceste is elevated into a symbol that reflects our own preoccupations, speaking for us while also acting clearly making a protest on behalf of the writer.

Creation team

Translation: Chrysa Prokopaki

Director: Yannis Houvardas

Sets: Eva Manidaki

Costumes: Ioanna Tsami

Movement: Stavroula Siamou

Music: Kornilios Selamsis

Lighting: Simos Sarketzis

Video design: Pantelis Makkas

Assistant director: Ada Pourani

Second assistant director: Dimitra Mitsaki, Ioanna Pitaouli

Assistant set designer: Eleni Arapostathi

Assistant costume designer: Alexandra Panoutsopoulou

Musical associate: Grigoris Eleftheriou

Dramaturg: Eri Kyrgia

Cast: Christos Loulis, Michail Marmarinos, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Alkistis Poulopoulou, Konstantinos Avarikiotis, Laertis Malkotsis, Elena Topalidou, Emily Koliandri, Giannis Voyiatzis

Appearing in the filmed scenes: Stathis Livathinos

On-stage Musicians: Grigoris Eleftheriou

 

Artwork of the EMST Collection

Katarina Fritsch

Gardarobe, 2004

Installation

Ladder (wood, aluminium, paint, 280 x 200 x 43 cm)

Umbrella (carbon fibre, plastic, lacquer, diameter 100 cm, height 120 cm)

Mirror glass (240 x 85 x 0.04 cm)

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 531/04

The work entitled Gardarobe by the German artist Katharina Fritsch introduces us- as she mentions- to the “room of superstitions”: this room gathers and juxtaposes- in a humorous way- some things of our everyday life that whose meaning is defined -within different cultural environments- by superstitions regarding “bad luck” and unhappiness such as walking under a ladder, an open umbrella or looking through a mirror when coming back home.

Since the 1980’s, Fritsch creates a rich sculptural vocabulary including figures derived from various sources that range from the very familiar everyday life to the fields of cultural history, religion and both ancient and modern mythology. The artist depicts these figures from a clean sculptural point of view reaching the limits of traditional sculptural techniques as well as of industrial production. These figures become images-symbols with the use of a strict and mysterious monochromatic technique.

Despite having so direct an impact and such a powerful presence in a literal way, Fritsch’s enigmatic installation entitled Gardarobe leads the audience to enter an unfamiliar condition, activating at the same time common fantasies and perceptions and dragging up personal memories, denials and experience. However, as the artist points out, objects included in her sculptural installation stated above manage to function as images having lost their magical and metaphysical features. “All this things change from country to country and because I am doing this work as a picture, the magic hopefully doesn’t work..”

Katharina Fritsch was born in 1956 in Essen, Germany. In 1977, she moved in Düsseldorf so as to study at Kustakademie from which she graduated in 1984. Many individual or group exhibitions in Europe, America and Japan host herworks. She represented Germany at the 1995 Venice Biennale. She now lives and works in Düsseldorf.  

Allez viens…

Allez viens

Dance

From 07.03.2019 to 21.04.2019

ZILLER – HALL

 

The human body is pushed to the limit in a battle between endurance and exhaustion. Eight mature actors, whose bodies bear the burden of age, are asked to dance without stopping, as in Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (1969), a film about the exploitative dance marathons held in the United States during the Great Depression, where the contestants are seen as exhausted creatures in a tranquil garden, like horses in a field. The work is also inspired by Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012), about an elderly couple facing the end of their life together as death approaches.

“Allez viens…” has been created with the creative improvisation of the actors. There is no speech, only movement. And also sound: music, of course, but also the sound made by bodies in motion. So instead of speech there is dance: exhausting, demanding and repetitive, limited only by time. The choreography borrows freely from its sources, transforming the stage and physical exertion into a prison that will allow it to approach the desperation of a society and the feelings caused by enervation, betrayal and futility.

Production team

Concept, choreography & sets: Panagiota  Kallimani

Music: Stavros Gasparatos

Lighting: Sakis Birbilis

Cast: Aliki Alexandraki, Giannis Degaitis, Rania Ekonomidou, Kostas Galanakis, Antonis Iordanou, Vasilis Karaboulas, Ivonni Maltezou, Aneza Papadopoulou

 

Artwork of the EMST Collection

Bia Davou

[Newspaper collage], 1991

Mixed media collage

38.5 x 29 cm

Donated by Zafos Xagoraris, 2002

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST),  Inv. No. 393/02

Newspaper collage belongs to a series of works by Bia Davou, one of the most significant greek artists of the 1970s. Her work addresses the concepts of time and decay through a meticulous and obsessive drawing practice. Photocopies of her own previous drawings–depicting vortices, clouds, triangular shapes, ship sails and numerical sequences- are pasted to newspaper sheets, forming a rich visual vocabulary, moving between a strict mathematical system and poetic creation.

Bia Davou was born in Athens in 1932. She studied painting in Kostas Iliadis’ workshop (1952-1958). In the late 1970s, she became interested in creating a new language of communication based on science and technology codes. In 1978 she exhibited “Serial Structures”, a series of drawings and works in fabric, based on arithmetical sequences which were connected with Homer’s Odyssey in order to create large sailing installations. In 1987 she participated in Sao Paolo’s XIX Biennal. Davou dies in 1996. Two retrospective exhibitions took place at The House of Cyprus in 1996 and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art , Athens (EMST) in 2008.

La Strada

La Strada
Based on the film by Federico Fellini

01 February -17 March 2019
Experimental Stage (-1) – REX Theater – Katina Paxinou Stage

When a classic work maintains its interest over time, giving rise to experimentation and breaking the boundaries between the arts, the result is a kind of rebirth, as in the case of the film that has inspired Fly Theatre (Katerina Damvoglou & Robin Beer) in their quest to tell a new story in a new language. The starting point for their creative approach is Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954), an international Oscar-winning success that is among the greatest works of European cinema.

But how is an idea born? Fly Theatre start their exploration from the very first moment of conception. We first meet Fellini’s work on a stage during the process of its creation. Through the eyes of the director, we see a masterpiece unfolding in heartrending fashion, revealed step by step on stage. At the same time, we see life on two levels, in front of and behind the camera, and are prompted to consider which is the truer of the two.

In post-war Italy, a street performer, the violent Zampano, pays a poor peasant woman to let her daughter come on the road with him. The sensitive and starry-eyed Gelsomina bears his explosive temper and cruel behaviour with cheerfulness. But when, after various travels and travails, she can smile no longer, Zampano abandons her. The news of her death and the memory of her melancholy song might perhaps, years later, soften the heart of the cruel Zampano.

Creation team:
(Fly Theatre) Translation, Adaptation, Direction: Katerina Damvoglou
(Fly Theatre) Direction, Sound and visual design: Robin Beer
Music: Nikos Galelianos
Song Lyrics: Lina Nikolakopoulou
Sets: Ermina Apostolaki
Costumes: Natasa Stamatari
Lighting: Christina Thanasoula
Make-up design: Volha Faleichyk
Assistant set designer: Venetia Nestoridou
Assistant costume designer: Fani Skoulikidi

Cast:
Michalis Valasoglou, Sophia Marathaki, Katerina Mavrogeorgi, Konstantinos Moraitis, Fotini Papachristopoulou, Roza Prodromou, Giorgos Syrmas, Erifili Stefanidou, Apostolos Psychramis

Artwork from the EMST Collection

Piotr Kowalski
Perspective Dhuizon, 1970/1997
Photography on canvas with blue neon
130 x 195 cm
Purchased in the framework of the program «NEON FUND FOR EMST», 2017
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST)
Inv. No. 1086/17

Piotr Kowalski was a mathematician, an architect and an artist. In his works, art and science went hand in hand while throughout his artistic career, he had a keen interest in the concept of space and perspective. In his artworks, Piotr Kowalski worked in non-traditional materials including electronic and mechanical devices, explosions and other natural phenomena. He was pioneer in both kinetic and mechanical arts and one of the first artists who used the neon art since the end of the 1950’s. He produced great installations to be exhibited in public space. In his artwork entitled Perspective Dhuizon, the artist uses neon as a drawing tool in order to write the word “perspective” which seems to be hanging in space, visualizing this way the perception of space.

Piotr Kowalski was born in 1927 in Lviv, then in Poland, now Ukraine. He was a refugee of the World War II. He was a MIT graduate. He moved to France as architect at UNESCO where he lived for many years. Piotr Kowalsky died in 2004 in Paris.

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol of Charles Dickens

07 December 2018 – 27 January 2019
REX Theatre – Kotopouli Stage

Translation of original adaptation: Giorgos Depastas
New Adaptation, Director: Giannis Moschos
With original music by Thodoris Economou

The magic of Christmas comes to the Greek National Theatre as the Marika Kotopouli Stage at the Rex Theatre extends a festive embrace to the whole family. Share in all the joy and excitement of Yuletide in a thrilling musical version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol by the dynamic young director Giannis Moschos, who invites us into the world of dreams and the imagination, revealing the true meaning of Christmas!

Dickens’s most famous creation, Ebenezer Scrooge, is the most iconic miser in modern Western culture, and his trials and tribulations are brought to life on the stage of the Rex Theatre in a unique spectacle that will capture the hearts of young and old alike – especially those who are still able to see the world through the innocent eyes of a child.

Scrooge believes in discipline and hard work and disapproves of Christmas. But this year he has to re-evaluate his life and the people around him when forced to confront his past, present and future by three ghostly apparitions.  Will the hard-hearted Scrooge be moved by the holiday spirit? And if he is, then who can possibly resist it?

Creation team:
Original adaptation: Jack Thorne
Translation of original adaptation: Giorgos Depastas
New Adaptation: Giannis Moschos
Lyrics: Stavros Stavrou
Director: Giannis Moschos
Original music by Thodoris Economou
Set & Costumes: Tina Tzoka
Movement: Zoe Hadjiantoniou
Lighting: Lefteris Pavlopoulos
Directing Assistant: Evi Nakou
Assistant designer: Eirini Koubarouli
Music coach: Melina Peonidou

Cast: Aliki Alexandraki, Stella Antipa, Alexandros Vamvoukos, Kostas Vasardanis, Thanasis Vlavianos, Paris Thomopoulos, Ariadni Kavalierou, Evangelia Karakatsani, Laertis Malkotsis, Christina Maxouri, Eleni Boukli, Zoe Mylona, Alexandros Mylonas, Panagiotis Panagopoulos, Vasilis Papadimitriou, Christos Stergioglou

Choristers: Penny Deligianni, Nikos Ziaziaris, Elias Kapantais, Sofia Malama

And five on stage musicians

Events days and times:
Wednesday to Saturday 20:30, Sunday 19:00

English surtitles: Every day

Artwork of the EMST Collection

Alexandros Georgiou
LOVE, 2008
Mixed media on photograph
54 X 77 cm
Edition 2/5
Donated by the artist, 2010
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 687/10

Over the past few years, Alexandros’ Georgiou artworks are inseparably linked to his experience gained by travelling. Wondering, creating images and writing are the main components composing his artistic work. All the experience, knowledge and feelings gained while he was travelling are being transformed into a sensitive and gentle universe. On April 2005, the aforementioned artist travelled overland from Greece to India, crossing Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. This travel marked the beginning of a set of five journeys composing the work entitled Without my own vehicle (Χωρίς δικό μου όχημα). During his journeys, Georgiou mails out the collected material to certain people and creates handmade cards, photos being processed through his own painting practice, black and white painted photocopies, music CDs as well as movies, books, poems e.tc. The work entitled Love consists of a picture depicting a hard iron canvas on which the word LOVE has been written.

Alexandros Georgiou was born in Athens in 1972. In 1996, he graduated from Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and continued his studies at New York School of Visual Arts. Today, he lives between Athens and New YorK. In the past, he had lived in many cities like Tehran, Varanasi and Bangkok.

Downfall of the egotist Johann Fatzer - Bertolt Brecht
Downfall of the egotist Johann Fatzer of Bertolt Brecht

Translation, Adapation: Eleni Varopoulou
Director: Simos Kakalas

30 November 2018 – 20 January 2019
Experimental Stage (-1) – REX Theater – Katina Paxinou Stage

This rarely performed play was for Brecht an exercise in breaking through the boundaries towards the impossible, the utopian. It is a strange and explosive product of a kind of writing that attempted to undermine convention from a more radical standpoint than any of Brecht’s other plays or activities. Precisely because of its inherent utopianism, it presents an attractive opportunity for an “other theatre”. A challenging play then, it remains so today, as the translator Eleni Varopoulou notes, every aspect of it confirming its place in the field of contemporary experimentation with the theatrical experience.

Simos Kakalas is a creatively idiosyncratic director who always takes a subversive approach. His response to the challenge of the Brechtian text proves that the innovative ideas of the German dramatist remain a fruitful starting point for investigation. The original music is composed by Giannis Angelakas, working for the first time with Simos Kakalas and the Greek National Theatre.

Downfall of the egotist Johann Fatzer is a much-talked about but almost unknown work written by Brecht between 1926 and 1931, which he left incomplete, fragmented and open. There are more than 500 pages of dramatic and poetic material, comprising scenes, notes, choral parts, lyrical passages and philosophical texts. It is a treasure trove of ideas and forms that lends itself to adaptation, political interpretation and experimental staging.

Four German soldiers desert the Western Front during the First World War. The egotistical behaviour of one of them, Johann Fatzer, creates problems within the group. Hiding in the city of Mülheim, the deserters are undone by the irresponsibility of the ingenious individualist, resulting in the downfall of the small “collective”.

Recommended for ages 15 and above

English surtitles: on Thursday 13th & Friday 14th December 2018

Creation team:
Translation, Adaptation: Eleni Varopoulou
Director: Simos Kakalas
Music, Lyrics: Giannis Angelakas
Sets & Costumes: Kenny MacLellan
Sound: Coti K.
Masks: Martha Foka
Lighting: Panagiotis Lampis
Directing Assistant: Dimitris Kalakidis

Cast: Michalis Valasoglou, Nikos Gialelis, Simos Kakalas, Hara Kotsali, Konstantinos Moraitis, Manos Petrakis, Felice Topi

Artwork of the EMST Collection

Nikos Tranos
A Glacier At Our Table, 2013
Glazed clay, wood
230 x 180 x 100 cm
Donated by the artist, 2017
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 1073/17

The sculptural installation entitled A glacier at our table, 2013 has as starting point the nuclear destruction that took place at the installations of Fukushima power plant in 2011. The artwork discusses the meaning of “nuclear winter” as it is the scientific term referring to the case of global environmental destruction that will take place due to nuclear explosions in case a nuclear war takes place.

The aforementioned work consists of successive dense layers of mutant plant and animal organisms, anthropomorphic and monstrous creatures as well as of architectural structures almost fragile, threatened by a permanent state of collapse. The clay became the artist’s raw material- being the main material human beings started to use when they discovered fire- and was fired at 10500 C. Nikos Tranos borrows the pink color from the signs placed at the hospital units where workers were hospitalized after the nuclear explosion took place. The artist locates this sculptural “accumulation” of grotesque shapes onto an old wooden domestic table, referring once more to the destruction and cosmological collapse that will take place both on an anthropometric and –in the end- a familiar scale.

Nikos Tranos was born in 1957 in Zarakes, Euboea. He studied sculpture at Athens School of Fine Arts (A.S.F.A.) as well as at the Ecole des Βeaux-Αrts in Paris. He teaches sculpture at A.S.F.A. He has presented many personal exhibitions both in Athens and Thessaloniki, and has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and international events in Greece and other European countries.   

Zhao the orphan - Ji Junxlang
Zhao the orphan – Ji Junxiang
Directed by Wang Xiaoying

18 November 2018 -2 December 2019
Ziller Building – Main Stage

Zhao the orphan has been described as the Hamlet of classical Chinese literature. It is a zaju play, a genre comprising poetry and prose, dance and mime, with an emphasis on the comic element or a happy ending. Written in the 13th century and attributed to Ji Junxiang, this much-loved story has been staged countless times as theatre, opera and dance productions, and has also been filmed. It is the first Chinese drama to have been translated into European languages, inspiring dozens of adaptations, including those of Voltaire and Metastasio, and an unfinished version by Goethe.

This production takes place under a bilateral agreement between the national theatres of Greece and China. It is adapted and directed by the distinguished Chinese director Dr. Wang Xiaoying, who was until recently deputy president of the National Theatre of China in Beijing. His approach mixes Eastern and Western elements, always in an unexpected way. Our destination is the world of Chinese culture and aspects of the multifaceted identity of an ancient people seen through a landmark play.

General Tu’an Gu massacres the Prince of the Jin Dynasty and his family. Thanks to the selflessness of a doctor, the Prince’s new-born son is saved and years later he will take his revenge. The play is a masterful contemplation of vengeance, power, justice, loss and sacrifice.

Creation team:
Adaptation: Yu Qingfeng
Translation into Greek : Li Chenggui
Translation into Greek: Xu Jing
Editing of Greek translation: Sofia Kapsourou
Director: Wang Xiaoying
Set Design, Scenic Elements: Liu Kedong
Costumes: Zhao Yan
Composer: Iakovos Pavlopoulos
Lighting: Alekos Anastasiou
Director’s assistant: Wang Jiannan
Masks, Make up: Shen Miao
Associate director for the GNT: Stratis Panourios
Associate director for the GNT: Giannis Panagopoulos
Voice Coach,Music Coach: Melina Peonidou
Translations of work material, Interpretation, Chinese language consultant, Surtitling: Christina Filippa
Translations of work material, Interpretation: Christos Milionis
Dramaturg: Eri Kyrgia

Cast:
Cheng Ying (Doctor) – double cast: Hou Yansong
Chen Wu (Zhao the orphan) – double cast: Yu Fengxia
Han Jue (General): Thanassis Akokkalidis
Chorus: Konstantinos Gavalas
Chorus: Giorgos Zygouris
Zhao Shuo (Husband of Zhuang Ji): Stavros Karagiannis
An Er (Maid of Zhuang Ji): Giasemi Kilaidoni
Zhuan Ji (Princess): Elita Kounadi
Chorus, Cheng Wu (Zhao the orphan) – double cast: Lida Koutsodaskalou
Gongsun Chujiu (Former prime minister): David Malteze
Chen Ying (Doctor) – double cast: Stratis Panourios
Chen Wang (Wife of Cheng Ying): Jeannie Papadopoulou
Chorus: Tasos Pirgieris
Tuan Gu (Prime minister): Thanassis Sarantos
Chorus: Dimitra Haritopoulou
Zhang Sanji (Loyal slave of Tuan Gu): Vangelis Psomas

Artwork of the EMST Collection

Pantelis Chandris
Sleepless Cattleya 1, 2016
Steel wire and silk paper
60 x 50 x 35 cm
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 1090/17

The artwork Sleepless Cattleya 1 forms part of a body of works exhibited at the section entitled  “Schattenentblösster”, an ambiguous word derived from a Paul Celan’s poem and may refer either to someone who reveals himself from shadows or to a person who reveals shadows. This artwork, made of black silk paper, results from the artist’s attempt to depict and integrate the trace of shadow and its shadow so as he could represent a memory. Through this kind of fleeting, elusive and vague sculptural object based on a personal memory, Pantelis Chandris makes reference to the indefinite limits, uncertain connections and contradictions coexisting in the concept of shadow and memory as well as in the concept of internality characterizing visual events.

Pantelis Chandris was born in Athens in 1963. He studied painting at Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) (workshop of Dimitris Mytaras 1982-1987) and was awarded a scholarship for studying in Greece by the State Scholarship Foundation. He was also awarded the 1st Prize by Giannis and Zoi Spyropoulou Foundation (1992) as well as the Prize granted by A.I.C.A. (International, Art Critics Association, Hellenic Section) (2010). Since 1963, Pantelis Chandris has been teaching at Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA). He lives and works in Athens.  

Tonight we improvise - Luigi Pirandello

Tonight we improvise a production based on a theme of Luigi Pirandello
Translation, Adaptation, Direction: Dimitris Mavrikios

11 November 2018 – 24 February 2019
Ziller Building – Main Stage

A play by Nobel laureate Luigi Pirandello is once again paired with music by Oscar-winning Manos Hadjidakis, this time given new impetus by director Dimitris Mavrikios and conductor Nikos Kypourgos. The multi-faceted director Dimitris Mavrikios, who has an in-depth knowledge of Pirandello’s works, brings the Sicilian dramatist to the Greek National Theatre.

A theatre company is attempting to adapt Pirandello’s own novella, Leonora, addio!, for the stage. The lack of a script creates ambiguity between the actors, who identify so much with their roles that they dispense with the director in order to live the lives of the characters that they are playing!

The power of the creation over the creator is a dynamic that is essential for art, and especially for Pirandello. The play, which is the third in his ‘theatre in the theatre’ trilogy, investigates his favourite theme of the confusion between the imagination and reality.

Pirandello is not only an extraordinary writer whose works continue to be performed with undiminished success all over the world; he is also a great European intellectual and profound political thinker.

Creation team:
Translation, adaptation, direction: Dimitris Mavrikios
Composer: Manos Hadjidakis
Set design, Assistance in adaptation: Dimitris Polychroniadis
Costume design: Niki Psychogiou
Musical arrangement, adaptation & orchestration: Nikos Kypourgos
Sound design & orchestration: Stathis Skouropoulos
Lighting: Lefteris Pavlopoulos
Movement, Choreography: Valia Papachristou
Associate director: Manolis Dounias
Assistant director, Assistance in adaptation: Maria Vardaka
Hair design, Wigs: Chronis Tzimos
Make-up design and application: Roula Lianou
Music coach: Melina Peonidou
Second assistant director: Eva Oikonomou-Vamvaka
Assistant set designer: Marina Koniou
Assistant costume designer: Marios Panagiotou
Dramaturg: Eri Kyrgia

Filmed scenes:
Director: Dimitris Mavrikios
Director, Director of photography, special effects: Angelos Papadopoulos
Editor: Ioanna Spiliopoulou

Cast:
Konstantinos Arnokouros, Giannis Artemisiadis, Michalis Artemisiadis, Maria Vardaka, Alexandros Varthis, Giannis Voyiatzis, Dimitris Kakavoulas, Dimitris Mavrikios, Giorgos Benos, Lili Dalanika, Rania Ekonomidou, Eva Oikonomou-Vamvaka, Stefanos Papatrechas, Gioulika Skafida, Nektarios Farmakis, Lydia Fotopoulou

Appearing in the filmed scenes: Nikos Karathanos

Song: Lili Dalanika, Rania Ekonomidou, Stefanos Papatrechas

Work of the EMST Collection

Panos Kokkinias
Nisyros, 2014 – 2015
Digital inkjet archival print, Framed
1.5 X3 m
Edition 5 + 2AP
Long term loan by the artist
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST)

The print entitled Nisyros finally resulted from a series of photographic shots that lasted many days and depicts “Stefanos” crater of the volcano in Nisyros. The final print, being a product of thousands of prints gathered together, preserves all purity deriving from natural observation and brings to our minds- because of its size and structure-  the historical paintings. Taking pictures of the crowds of tourists, who either take pictures of themselves or of other things inside this rough landscape of the crater, the artist manages to produce a spectrum consisting of many contrasts at a spatial, temporal and material level. The landscape’s geological time is placed against the human ephemeral lightness. At the same time, Panos Kokkinias- though this kind of photographic “Garden of earthly delights” comments on the photographic medium itself.

Panos Kokkinias was born in Athens in 1965. During the time period 1986-1989, he studied Photography at Athens University of Applied Studies and then continued his studies in 1991-1993 at New York School of Visual Arts, in 1994-1996 at Yale School of Art, and completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Derby (2002-2009). He was awarded many scholarships by the State Scholarships Foundations, by Stavros Niarchos Foundation and Yale School of Art while he was awarded the Ward Cheney Award of Yale University. His artworks are exhibited in museums and private collections both in Greece and abroad. He lives and works in Athens.

Wake up, Vassilis - Dimitris Psathas

Wake up, Vassilis – Dimitirs Psathas

Wake up, Vassilis
Dimitris Psathas

19 October 2018 – 03 March 2019
Ziller Building – Stage “Nikos Kourkoulos”

Dimitris Psathas’s caustic socio-political critique of the game that money plays with every ideology is also a hilarious and skilfully constructed comedy.  Psathas, a much beloved writer for both theatre and cinema, wrote an astute and timeless satire in which his pen skewers the opportunism of fanatics of every ideological stripe in Greek society.

While remaining faithful to his own very distinctive theatrical approach, Aris Biniaris finds a characteristically inventive way of bringing the atmosphere of the sixties to the stage, probing beyond the idealised image of the era in the collective unconscious. With a contemporary eye, he decodes the distinctive register of a writer who talks about serious issues while delivering laughs with a punch to the stomach, and shows how the play is relevant to today. We thus see a twentieth-century play – that was adapted into one of Greek cinema’s most entertaining films – in a new light.

In the offices of Farlakos Publishing, the politically conservative Vassilis clashes with Manos, a progressive, over working conditions but also the content of the books they publish. The flashpoint for their intellectual dispute is the poet Fanfaras and his stridently conservative works. However, it is not long before fortune causes the political convictions of the two partners to change amidst the most trying of circumstances. But which of them will manage to adapt to the morality and spirit of the new era?

Creation team:
Adaptation, Director, Lyrics: Aris Biniaris
Adaptation, Stage adaptation: Theodora Kapralou
Set & Costume, Video: Paris Mexis
Music: Fotis Siotas
Lighting: Stella Kaltsou
Assistant director: Dora Xagorari
Hair design, Wigs: Chronis Tzimos
Dramaturg: Vivi Spathoula

Cast:
Vasilis Vasilakis: Giorgos Gallos
Antigone: Elisavet Konstantinidou
Dina: Iro Bezou
Fanfaras: Giorgos Papageorgiou
Periklis, Leles: Stefanos Pittas
Narrator: Konstantinos Sevdalis
Ioulia: Lydia Tzanoudaki
Mrs Farlakou: Elena Topalidou
Manos Hatzistrapatsos: Aineias Tsamatis
On-stage camera operator: Aris Biniaris

Work of the EMST Collection

Dimosthenis Kokkinidis
May 1967, 1967
from the And regarding the remembrance of evils …1967-1997 series
Acrylic on conservation cardboard stuck on sea-water resistant plywood
116.9 x 60.5 cm
Donated by the artist, 2002
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 234/02

Being a great painter and professor of many younger artists for a long time (he also served as Dean at ASFA), Dimosthenis Kokkinidis had already presented since the beginning of the 1960’s, a group of artworks with a deeply critic, politicized and social content. From May 1967 until spring of 1968 –during the first months of the Greek Military Junta- he completed the largest part of the group of 12 works entitled “….regarding the remembrance of evils…” At some point, he found a parcel of cardboards in a corner of his workshop and decided to put pictures on them derived from clippings including photos of fully-uniformed officers. The artist presented a distorted image of these figures, almost grotesque either in an abstract way, without any distinct features and details or in a more expressionist way; heads on service caps, political puppets, humanoid caricatures, flags, tanks, muted figures are transformed through Kokkinidis’ expressionist writing to screams full of pain and denounce that horrible reality Greece had been experiencing due to the violent overthrown of the democratic government.

Dimosthenis Kokkinidis was born in 1929 in Athens. He studied at Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) (1952-1958). Since the 1960’s, he had been member of the “Art Group Alpha” and the “Group for Communication and Education in Art”. In 1976, he was elected professor at ASFA (Athens School of Fine Arts) where he taught painting and also served as Associate Dean (1978-1980) and Dean (1980-1982) of the School. He lives and works in Athens.

Revolutionary methods for cleaning your swimming pool
Revolutionary methods for cleaning your swimming pool – Alexandra K*
17 October 2018 – 18 November 2018
Experimental Stage (-1) – REX Theater – Katina Paxinou Stage
Alexandra K*, one of Greece’s most remarkable young playwrights, employs exceptional theatrical writing in probing the most short-sighted aspects of our way of thinking. Keeping her distance and observing, she sees the distortions that we often overlook, introducing us to a vicious circle in which we have become accustomed to an authentically Greek view of the world. There, we will recognise elements that are truly ours. Or if not our very own, then certainly belonging to someone we know: a friend or neighbour.

Following its success last season, Alexandra K*’s new work has been brought back to the Experimental Stage of the Greek National Theatre for a limited number of performances. The play is directed by Sarantos Georgios Zervoulakos, who boasts an award-winning career abroad and whose first work this is in Athens. The production challenges us to be bold: to look into the mirror that has been prepared for us and perhaps to understand something of what we see there.

The first privatisation of public land threatens the illegal holiday home of Anthony Such and with it, his entire personal mythology. Mostly, however, it threatens the expectations that he has for his children. Determined to do his utmost to save his investment, Anthony comes into conflict not only with the mechanisms of the state, but also with his own children.  Powerless and alone against the government and foreign capital, he declares the land that he has grabbed an independent state and is hailed as a popular hero for a day. But the issue was always what would happen next, in the future that should have belonged to his children.  The corrupt old guard clashes with the spoiled younger generation, emotional law with civil law, and the typical Greek family with its own survival.

The performance is presenting with english surtitles.

Creation team:
Director, Set design: Sarantos Georgios Zervoulakos
Set and Costume design: Ilenia Douladiri
Music: Kornilios Selamsis
Dramaturg, Assistant director: Stella Rapti
Video: Nikos Pastras
Lighting: Nikos Vlasopoulos
Surtitles: Elli Katsinavaki

Cast:
Anthony Such: Manolis Mavromatakis
Daughter Such: Roza Prodromou
Son Such: Michalis Titopoulos
Eva, a friend from Germany: Eva Maria Sommersberg

Work from the EMST Collection

Yorgos Gyparakis
Global, 2000
Photographic print
100 x 100 cm
Donated by the artist, 2002
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 471/02

Hybrid works produced by Yorgos Gyparakis are being developed through his perceptive and detailed observation of everyday aspects being critically processed and reshaped.

The artist’s photography entitled Global forms part of a wider group of works, namely a group of enlarged lightbox photographic prints. Gyparakis places emphasis on and isolates details of both human and natural environment as well as of things belonging to everyday life. He takes pictures of them using his wide-angle macro lens from a minimum distance of 5cm. The process of cutting and de-framing the details mentioned above places great emphasis on this particular element of “minor” which by being hyper-enlarged succeeds in depicting ’the whole”. From an incisive and deforming point of view just like a naturalist does, the artist is aiming at connecting microcosm with macrocosm, asking at the same time questions about the condition of being human as well as its global dimensions.

Yorgos Gyparakis was born in Thessaloniki in 1962. He studied at the School for Applied Arts “Vakalo” (1980-1983) as well as at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1984-1989, 1990-93). He is Associate Professor at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens.

Timon of Athens - by William Shakespeare & Thomas Middleton
Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare & Thomas Middleton

27 September 2018 – 03 March 2019
Rex Theatre – Kotopouli Stage

Timon  of Athens is a historical and symbolic figure, but one that is very familiar to us today, as the central character in a tragedy balanced between satire, farce and allegory, like life itself. This production is by the artistic director of the Greek National Theatre, Stathis Livathinos, who declares himself fascinated by an enigmatic play of and inexhaustible mystery that was written in unusual circumstances and is rarely performed.

Timon, the ruler of Athens in the fifth century BCE, lives way beyond his means, spending his fortune on gifts to friends and pleasures in which all the men of Athens participate.  But Timon’s friendships will soon be tested, and those who have benefited from him will be called on to prove their loyalty.

Inspired by a real figure of ancient times, Shakespeare co-wrote Timon of Athens with one of the most popular playwrights of his time, Thomas Middleton. This hybrid work came at a time of investigation and experimentation for the great dramatist, and is his only attempt at a form without precedent in his other plays.

It is a challenging work about wealth, debt, friendship, flattery, wilful blindness, errors and delusions, generosity and ingratitude, with a timelessness that always strikes a nerve. It is brought to the stage by Stathis Livathinos’s indefatigable team and graced by some of Greece’s most outstanding young actors.

Creation team:
Translator: Nikos Hatzopoulos
Director: Stathis Livathinos
Designer: Eleni Manolopoulou
Music: Lysandros Falireas
Lighting: Alekos Anastasiou
Movement: Maria Smajevic
Music coach: Melina Peonidou
Assistant designer: Evmorfia-Melina Koukoutsaki
Dramaturg: Eri Kyrgia

Cast:
Timandra : Argyro Ananiadou
Timon: Vassilis Andreou
Lucullus, Lord, Senator: Giorgos Dambasis
Jeweller, Lucius, Lord, Senator: Ieronymos Kaletsanos
Sempronius, Cupid, Senator, Painter: Nikos Kardonis
Flaminius, Lucilius: Stathis Koikas
Servant, Ventidius: Fotis Koutrouvidis
Servant, Officer: Anastasis-Simeon Laoulakos
Caphis: Phevos Markianos
Lord, Senator: Stratis Panourios
Apemantus: Dimitris Papanikolaou
Flavius: Maria Savvidou
Alcibiades: Christos Sougaris
Servilius: Manos Stefanakis
Poet, Lord, Senator: Aris Troupakis
Phrynia: Antigone Fryda

Work from the EMST Collection

Alexandros Psychoulis
The Waterfall, 2005
Acrylic on leatherette
Diameter 112.5 cm
Purchased with sponsorship by Greek collectors, 2005
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Inv. No. 542/05

The artwork entitled The Waterfall marks a double shift both morphological and thematic within the multifaceted work produced by Alexandros Psychoulis who redefines painting as a medium as well as the artistic genre of landscape painting. The artist using a clean design and a linear clarity draws his visual vocabulary from the field of graphics and animation, expanding thus the limits of painting at this exact point where it coincides with graphic arts.

This artwork follows Mammals, a body of works the artist presented in 2005, a series of circle paintings exploring the meaning of family in an anthropological way as well as a “mechanism of collection trauma production”. The artist with an ironical and playful mood puts under the microscope-as implied by the round shape of the works- family memories of his childhood. The past is reexamined and redefined not in a final way but through a fragmented ambiguous iconography open to psychological and interpretive approaches. In particular, the enigmatic Waterfall apart from being a work of personal mythology, it is the artist’s attempt of a personal version of landscape that goes hand in hand with his birthplace, Volos- uneasy, ambiguous and barely idyllic.    

Alexandros Psychoulis was born in Volos in 1966. During the time period 1984-86, he studied graphic arts at Athens University of Applied Science and then painting at Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA). In 1997, he was awarded the Benesse Prize for his artwork entitled Black Box with which he represented Greece in the 47th Venice Biennale. His works have been part of many solo and group exhibitions. He is a professor at the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly. He lives and works both in Athens and Volos.

 

Texts: Daphne Vitali, Tina Pandi, Stamatis Schizakis  – EMST Curators.

Posters of the plays