Direction: Kostis Kallivretakis
Direction assistance: Dimitra Thomaidou Dramaturgy: Iury Trojaborg Music: Stavros Gasparatos Stage and costume design: Cécile Marcand Light design: Catalina Fernández Translation and Subtitles: Christina Symeonidou |
Tonight it's not thirty thousand Greeks fighting against thirty thousand Germans but sixty thousand soft human bodies against countless steely machines. These are the two true opponents, humans on one side, machines on the other. And the latter will doubtlessly be the victor. Machines don't feel pain, don't love, have no imagination, no clue of the lust for life and the sun's sweetness.
- Life in the Tomb by Stratis Myrivilis A visit with those returning from the Western front. From a war that was different from every war preceding it because it was dominated by a war machine that neither the human mind nor the body was prepared for. Thousands of casualties every day and survivors with innumerable terrible wounds. Soldiers almost at their mental breaking point, who as a result of their traumata were often labelled as "hysteric hypochondriacs". How do you understand a shocked society? People whose lives were turned upside down while they don't know if they should be fearful or hopeful, should fight or surrender? Crisis, war, or coma? Kostis Kallivretakis seeks to take a step back from today's Greece and embarks on a time journey, not in order to find ready answers but to create the appropriate space for his questions. He goes back one century to the first shocked generation in Europe - from current states of emergency to the birth of shell shock in World War I. Paranoia battles its way to the foreground, targeting the individual soldier, thereby affecting whole societies. A darkroom where it isn't photos that are developed but memories which slowly become tangible. Sometimes perceptible only as a silhouette, sometimes razor-sharp and vivid. What is real, what is a fantasy? Who is this person over there? Your brother? Your enemy? Are they even real? What happened out there? When will it finally be over? |
A production from Kultursprünge im Ballhaus Naunynstraße gemeinnützige GmbH, sponsored by the District Cultural Fund Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. Performance rights at Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg and at the Edition Romiosini / CeMoG. Première December 10th, 2015.