“But My Devotion Is Unconditional”

A performer onstage speaks to the audience. This stage however is not at its usual place. Performer and spectators do not have the expected distance from each other but a much bigger one. What kind of relationship can be developed in this case? What remains graspable in this distance? Being hardly visible and audible with difficulty, how close can they come to each other? And when the issue comes exclusively to the arts, which are often accused of being placed “outside reality”, unable to reach the outside world and change something in it, how can theatrical structures respond to one such challenge and defeat this distance?

Experimenting with distances of the stage and of life, But My Devotion Is Unconditional moves at the edge of experimental stage acts that are usually all about the “here and now”, in order to explore the size of human nature and the performing arts, as well as the conditions and operational modes of our communication.

The work is presented in two parts: a durational performance-installation and a theatre piece, which the audience can see with the same ticket, creating a community that returns to engage with it in different forms. Nevertheless, the two parts remain independent and can also be seen separately.

Director’s bio:

Danae Theodoridou is a performance maker and researcher currently based in Brussels. She completed her PhD at Roehampton University, London. Her research focuses on the dramaturgical structures of experimental theatre, dance and performance. She studied Greek Philology and Linguistics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Acting at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Northern Greece. She has worked as an actress in theatre, cinema and television. As a performance maker and researcher she has been creating and participating in solo and collaborative live works and artistic research projects with international artists and theorists such as Bojana Kunst, Ivana Muller, Karen Christopher, Tim Etchells and others, in the UK, Greece, the Netherlands, France, Slovenia and elsewhere. She teaches in various University Departments in Europe. She was a member of the curatorial team of the PSi Regional Research Cluster Encounters In Synchronous Time (Athens 2011) and is one of the editors of the online international lexicon for the performing arts, PSi Marathon Lexicon. She is a research assistant of Performance Matters research programme. Her research texts have been published and presented in numerous international journals and conferences in the UK, Greece, Slovenia and elsewhere.

Her work has been supported by important cultural institutions in Greece and abroad (AHRC, Greek General Secretariat for Youth, European Union, Theatre of Neos Kosmos, workspacebrussels, and others). In 2013 she was an invited artist of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels for the project Residence and Reflection. She is the artistic director of the Athens-based Construction works performance company. More info: www.danaetheodoridou.com