The adaptation of literary works for the stage is an old practice. The difference in the action by the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, “Literature on Stage”, is that the interaction is within this generation. Following the performance “Onward to the booth”, by the poet Giannis Stigas, directed by Medea Electronique, comes “Alba” by Thomas Tsalapatis, directed by Constantinos Chatzis for the month of February.

 

 

Startled, the visitors to the museum end up as its exhibits, a child grows older than its father, uphill refuses to become downhill, in a neighborhood in the city, the inhabitants are purely Nietzsche and the woods stand inverted to the sky.

Welcome to the world of Alba. The world of a city and the world of a girl with the same name. To the diary of a single week.
Welcome to the staging of the poetic writings of Thomas Tsalapati, directed by Constantinos Chatzis.
In an interaction between literature and the stage, where words and bodies are made of the same material and breath is movement and movement, words. Welcome to an extraordinary meeting.
Constantinos Chatzis notes: “ From the first lines of the poem you realize that the poet has come up against the deepest roots of his “being”. Words, silences, gestures and images bring forth an incessant voice which whispers deafeningly. As long as you walk the path of Alba, as long as you live in its days, each one separately, each time you come across it and you see it in its entirety, your voice has a need to join other voices. You realize that your own personal journey identifies with the personal journeys of all those who have lived, who live and who will live. You come to see that “Alba” is a personal polyphony. That is the feeling I had when I first ready Thomas Tsalapatis’ poem and that is one of the reasons I decided to explore the possibilities and the boundaries of ‘works’ which have not been written for the stage.”

Walk the streets of Alba, its waterproof outside, and keep the illicit cloud you hide in your pocket as silent as possible.