The Freedom of Art provokes? Contemporary French theatre in Greece, free, without shame, harsh, tender, true, utopian, timely…

 

The French Institute of Greece and The Michael Cacoyannis Foundation are organizing the Contemporary Theatre Festival entitled French Theatre à la Grecque from the 6th of May to the 3rd of June 2014, at 21:00, to be housed in the specially adapted underground hall of the MCF.

Contemporary
French dramaturgy, productive and injected with new blood, meets Greek
translators, directors and performers whom, via the works of pioneering
and award-winning writers, and using methods which are often provocative
and direct, poetic yet sometimes acute and extreme, showcase a theme
which is open and colourful, set in a continuously evolving world.

Employers
and employees, masters and servants, extremism and cynicism, the
capitalist world, its sanctity, loneliness, dignity, the search for
individual identity, the denial of difference, the utopia of
coexistence, torture and violence, sexual fantasies and even Medea and
the Pope are unlocked through the works, like a broad composition of
the multi facets of reality and its values.

A contemporary
Theatre Festival which seeks the dialogue and the mark of the current
cultural identity through 20 performances and from the vantage point of
the French writers and the Greek production team of each performance.
No value taken for granted, no relationship taken for granted. The
Freedom of Art gives emphasis and provokes.

* Five works translated especially for the Festival and presented for the first time in Greece:

• Elle by Jean Genet

• Au Bord by Claudine Galea

• La Demande demploi, Pièce en trente morceaux by Michel Vinaver

• Médée, poème enragé by Jean-René Lemoine

• Hilda by Marie NDiaye

* Five translators: Effie Giannopoulou, Dimitris Dimitriades, Asimenia Euthimiou, Dimitra Kondilaki, Andreas Staikos

* Five directors: Lefteris Giovanidis, Themelis Glynatsis, Vassilis Mavrogeorgiou, Thanassis Sarantos, Yiannis Skourletis

* Thirteen actors: Polydoros
Vogiatzis, Danny Giannakopoulou, Miranda Zisimopoulou, Orestes Karydas,
Aggeliki Karistinou, Anna Koutsaftiki, Nestoras Kopsidas, Aspasia
Kralli, Vassilis Margetis, Dimitra Matsouka, Nicholas Piperas, Thanassis
Sarantos, Stratos Tzortzoglou.

Photographs for the program: Orfeas Emirzas, Thomas Arsenis
Video: plays2place productions

Coproduction: The French Institute of Greece & The Michael Cacoyannis Foundation

The plays: La Demande demploi” Pièce en trente morceaux
by Michel Vinaver, Médée, poème enragé by Jean-René Lemoine, and
Hilda by Marie NDiaye are available from AGRA publications.

——————
Olivier Descotes
Cooperations and Cultural Action Consultant
General Director of the French Institute of Athens

In
Greece theatre remains a popular art. Since my arrival in Athens in
2011, my aim has been, through means traditionally propitious to
theatrical expression, to revive the theatrical relationship between
France and Greece. Through a policy which supports the translation,
production and presentation of works, we contribute to the revival of
Greek practice of French theatre, standing by the new generation of
artists as well as the audience. Our efforts must be in conjunction with
a continuous commitment from both institutions and artists from both
countries. The Michael Cacoyannis Foundation is one of our
collaborators who shares this vision and the organization of the
Festival French Theatre à la Grecque is proof. This year, the
opportunity has been given to five directors, Yiannis Skourletis,
Themelis Glynatsis, Thanassis Sarantos, Lefteris Giovanidis and Vassilis
Mavrogeorgiou to present new scripts from French dramaturgy by Jean
Genet, Claudine Galéa, Michel Vinaver, Jean-René Lemoine and Marie
NDiaye. Subsequently three of the scripts will be published by AGRA
publications. I would like to thank the whole team at the Michael
Cacoyannis Foundation and the translators but most of all the actors
whom, through their talent in their craft, relay the messages of the
times.

—————–
Yannoulla Wakefield-Cacoyanni
Chairman of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation

The
Michael Cacoyannis Foundation was one of the first to join in the
initiative taken by the French Institute in 2011 for a dynamic
reinforcement of the cultural exchange between Greece and France and
collaboration of institutions and intellectual and artistic
personalities. This collaboration was a strategic decision on our part
as from the beginning of its operation, the MCF had set as one of its
main goals, the creation of a place where cultures and ideas would meet,
where young artists could experiment freely. This year we are
organizing, with the French Institute, the Contemporary Theatre
Festival, French Theatre à la Grecque where five young Greek
directors, whom have all left their mark on modern Greek theatre, will
be tested with five contemporary French scripts, each director offering
his own interpretation of these unexpected, subversive and enquiring
texts. The works are being presented for the first time in Greece,
especially translated for the Festival by renowned names of the art and
literary world. In a world constantly in motion and in turmoil, this
festival proves its intercultural nature. It abolishes stereotypes.
Whats more the most French of the five writers the great Jean
Genet, one of the most free-spirited and controversial writers of the
20th century, was born of unknown parents.

———————
In a few words:

* Elle by Jean Genet
Tuesday 6, Wednesday 7, Thursday 8 & Friday 9 May 2014, at 21:00

Forerunner
of the theatre of the absurd, a prominent and controversial novelist,
blasphemous and poetic, ingenious and provocative, teetering daringly on
the brink, but always in harmony with his own truth and theory of life,
Jean Genet wrote the play Elle in 1955. The work, which discusses
matters of power and personal identity, was neither published nor staged
while the writer was alive and many believe it to be the precursor to
his other provocative play Le Balcon which was presented two years
later.

Elle is a harsh, lyrical work, somber yet
ridiculous, based on the mechanism of power and its enticing snares. A
work about self, the image and their sad in between. The play is
about a photographer, the Pope, his Holiness, the eternal muse, she
which Genet loved to hate more than any other. This is why he uses
quotations: it is not Her, but Her, her sanctity and holiness closed
up, boarded in and protected.

Elle by Jean Genet

Translation to Greek: Asimenia Euthimiou
Direction: Yiannis Skourletis/ Bijoux de kant

Performing: Stratos Tzortzoglou, Polydoros Vogiatzis, Orestes Karydas

Bijoux de kant
Music: Costas Dalakouras
Assistant Director: Electra Ellinikioti
Set design: Yiannis Skourletis, Pericles Pravitas, Dio Liakoura
Movement: Tasos Karachalios
Lighting: Christina Thanasoula
Photo: Panos Michael
Communication Manager: Aris Asproulis

Appropriate for ages 15 and above

*********

Au Bord by Claudine Galea
Saturday 10, Sunday 11, Tuesday 13 & Wednesday 14 May 2014, at 21:00

Grand Prix of Theatrical Literature 2011, France

Hailing
from Malta, Claudine Galea grew up in Marseilles and lives in Paris.
She studied philology and worked as an actress and in Greece is known
for the performances of her works Erchomai apo Makria (Je reviens de
loin), 2009 and Kontorevithoula (Petite Poucet), 2013, and her
participation in the open discussion entitled Apenanti apo to
Diaforetiko (Facing Diversity). She writes plays, novels and stories
for adults, teenagers and children. During the festival her play Au
Bord, which won the Grand Prix of Theatrical Literature in France in
2011, will be presented for the first time.

Prompted by gruesome
photographs of Abu Ghraib prison published in the Washington Post in
2004, Claudine Galeas Au Bord, using coarse, complex and harshly
honest prose, explores the place of a contemporary European writer in
relation to the atrocity of war and to politics as well as love and
memory and image, seeking some hope for redemption.

Au Bord by Claudine Galea
Translation to Greek: Dimitris Dimitriades
Direction: Themelis Glynatsis
Set design and sound: Andrianos Zacharias
Lighting: Melina Mascha

Performing: Woman: Aspasia Kralli, A Body: Nestoras Kopsidas

Appropriate for ages 18 and above

*******

La Demande demploi Pièce en trente morceaux by Michel Vinaver
Tuesday 20, Wednesday 21, Thursday 22, and Friday 23 May 2014, at 21:00

One
of the greatest contemporary playwrights of French theatre, Michel
Vinaver, was born in Paris in 1927 to Russian parents. He enrolled in
the Free French Forces in 1944 and over time rose to the position of a
highest ranking officer. Following that he became the owner of the
subsidiary companies of the multinational Gillette. His plays are
closely connected to historical events and in most of his works he
places man in an environment of financial exchange.

In his play,
La Demande demploi: Pièce en trente morceaux, the meaning of Work in
the capitalist world is discovered via subtle humour as so is the
introduction of the technocratic method of production into the human
psyche as opposed to basic human desire. The entrapment of man in the
never-ending pursuit of money and artificial bliss whilst all around
moral values crumble and a mockery is made of vested rights.

La Demande demploi: Pièce en trente morceaux by Michel Vinaver
Translation to Greek: Dimitra Kondilaki
Direction: Thanassis Sarantos
Set design-costumes: Vassiliki Syrma
Movement: Olga Spyraki
Assistant Director: Emi Panourgia
Lighting: Savvas Sourmelidis

^{hairstyling by xstudios}

Performing (in alphabetical order):
Miranda Zisimopoulou, Aggeliki Karistinou, Vassilis Margetis, Thanassis Sarantos

Appropriate for all ages

*******

Médée, poème enragé by Jean-René Lemoine
Tuesday 27, Wednesday 28, Thursday 29 and Friday 30 May 2014, at 21:00

The
award-winning writer, for his plays, and director, Jean- René Lemoine,
was born in Haiti in 1959 and lived in Zaire and Belgium, later working
as an actor in Italy and France and finally settling in Paris in 1989
where he collaborates with the Academy of Experimental Theatre, founded
the Erzuli company (1997), writes play, teaches, directs and acts.

In the play Médée, poème enragé,
Jean-René Lemoine draws upon myth and tragedy and the mysteries of love
and passion but also from the deepest wounds of betrayal, from
compliancy and guilt to compose a song of a multiple exile. Medea,
banished not only from her homeland and family, but from her own self
and identity, forever wandering, a stranger without a home, a tramp,
ultimately denied the love which defined her life, struggling to
remember, to relive her story, to be reconciled with herself. Medeas
utter loneliness is culminated at this exact point where the enamored
and betrayed woman meets the black princess, a scorned and abused figure
in a world which denies diversity, enforcing its own laws of violence.

Médée, poème enragé by Jean-René Lemoine
Translation to Greek: Effie Giannopoulou
Direction: Lefteris Giovanidis

Performing: Dimitra Matsouka

Appropriate for ages 18 and above

*******

Hilda by Marie NDiaye
Saturday 31 May, Sunday 1, Monday 2 & Tuesday 3 June 2014, at 21:00

Born
in 1967 in central northern France to a French mother and Senegalese
Father, Marie NDiaye started writing at 12-13 years of age and studied
at the Sorbonne. She has received both the Femina Award (2001) and the
Goncourt (2009) for her novels and her plays have been shown regularly
in theatres since the year 2000. The literary magazine La Quinzaine
littéraire described Marie NDiaye has having found her own totally
unique way of talking of subjects which belong to us all.

In her
play Hilda, the heroes are a young maid, Hilda, and her mistress.
The writer dives into the depths of the eternal existence of the
relationship between master and servant, superior and inferior, strong
and weak. A story about the alienation of identity and the utopia of
coexistence. Hildas mistress wants to give life to her confused and
utopian ideas regarding freedom, democracy and equality whilst Hilda
herself quite simply just wants to remain a maid. A catastrophic story!

Hilda by Marie NDiaye
Translation to Greek: Andreas Staikos
Direction: Vassilis Mavrogeorgiou
Set design-costumes: Constantinos Zamanis
Lighting: Stella Kaltsou

Performing: Anna Koutsaftiki, Nicholas Piperas, Danny Giannakopoulou

Appropriate for all ages