Messengers
Messengers is the last work in progress of Theatro Domatiou, performed by 20 performers that took part in a two months’ workshop.
Crew:
Angela Brouskou, Parthenopi Bouzouri
Associate dramaturg: Youla Boudali
20 performers
Venue: Vyrsodepseio (Basement)/ 174, Orfeos st. Athens
Why Messengers?
In ancient Greece Messengers carried oral or written information that could change the fate of their listeners. The messengers – on foot or horseback – were one of the first systems of transmitting information concerning war or peace.
How has this notion of Messengers survived today? Who are today’s Messengers, what sort of messages they carry and how do they influence us?
Our Messengers – like in Ancient Greek Tragedy – are everyday, common people, working as waiters, experiencing a modern slavery. Part of an entire generation of unemployed whose only chance to survive is to work in the touristic industry of the country.
During the endless working hours and the barren repetition of their tasks, they try to remember, to reevaluate, to redefine, to bring forth messages that could unfold the story, create a narrative for their trauma. The trauma of a wounded country whose body first suffered a financial blow but is now experiencing a crisis far more general; a crisis that is humanitarian. Social deprivation, poverty, unemployment, suicides and a neo-Nazi party in parliament, organizing bread lines just for Greeks and at the same time beating up or murdering immigrants and Greeks.
After the first shock we all become witnesses and messengers of this disaster. What we called “national identity” up to now and its narrative changes irrevocably. Ancient Greek Tragedy opens cracks through which messages can come to surface: messages from the past, the present and the future. Messages from poetry, prose or everyday oral speech uttered in the streets or in long queues buildings, from events that pass unnoticed in the newspapers, important news that never reach us, from lost diaries of people we never met.
We use the Greek Tragedy as our base to build upon, because it is a theatre that has politics and history in its foundations.
Food will be a link between those on stage and those in the audience since the products of a country are messages themselves.
We are dealing with a communal narrative; in Ancient Greek tragedy it was called the Chorus.
... to remember who we are... and move on...
