Performances

“Big in Japan” is a work inspired by extreme social phenomena encountered in contemporary Japan and addresses the chaos and despair that has inundated modern Man. In a world that’s hurtling along at breakneck speed, shedding dreams in the name of profit and worshipping growth, competitiveness and productivity like gods, Man can only wonder: “Is it worth living the way I do, and if not, does the solution lie in giving up or fighting to change my life?”.
 
The heroes of the five linked stories in “Big in Japan” are people much closer to us than we imagine; people struggling to express that part of themselves that is desperate to get out of the darkness, the dead end they find themselves in; to do what needs to be done and not to give up. People who seem very far from us, “in a faraway land”, but with whom we may actually share a part of ourselves.

 

Each of the stories tackles a different extreme phenomenon: people who vanish, people who die on the job, people who stay shut up at home for years, elderly people who commit petty crimes so they can live the last years of their lives with dignity in prison, people who find peace committing suicide in the infamous “suicide wood”. The stories are linked by the Compère, who asks us to enjoy these “bizarre and exotic stories” so totally disconnected from our own reality. But are they really?

 

Credits

Directed by: Pantelis Dentakis, Sets: Kiki Grammatikopoulou, Danai Pana, Costumes: Kiki Grammatikopoulou, Music: Stavros Gasparatos, Movement: Lena Moscha, Video - Lighting: Apostolis Koutsianikoulis, Masks: Martha Foka, Assistant to the director: Katerina Louvari Fasoi, Production coordinator: Marina Chatziioannou, Make-up artist: Manto Kamara

Cast: Iordanis Aivazoglou (Monk), Ioanna Demertzidou (Cécile), Emmanouela Kampitsi (Emma, Young woman at the supermarket), Aigli Katsiki (Philippe, Woman), Ioanna Pagiataki (Maya, Manou), Vasilis Spyropoulos (Nago), Christos Stylianou (The Old Man), Giannis Tomazos (Clerk, Young Man at the Supermarket, Compère), Konstantinos Chatzisavvas (Ron, The Slightly Older Man)

 

Info: National theatre of Northern Greece | www.ntng.gr | Τ. 2315 200 200

 

Photos under That long black cloud

 

 

 

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