Suitable for ages 16+ Duration: 100 min (no interval)
Dawn King’s “Foxfinder” won the Papatango New Writing competition and premièred in London in 2011. A devastating text with elements of British humour, it shows how confronting fear can lead to the Self mercilessly pursuing the Other. A contemporary existential noir directed with a cinematic flow, a fast pace and poetic atmosphere by Christina Chatzivasileiou, "Foxfinder" weaves its thread around the illogic of power and faith.
Α few words about the play
In a world in crisis, staring famine in the face as crops are destroyed by torrential rain, agents of the Authority resolve to send an Elite Foxfinder to identify the causes of low productivity. William Bloor, in training since childhood in a special state institution, visits Samuel and Judith to ascertain if they have been infected by the “red beast”: vulpes-vulpes. However, as his investigation progresses, hidden truths long suppressed begin to surface and upset the delicate balance between the couple and their close friend Sarah.
Director's Note “Heavy water never becomes light, murky water never clears. It is always the opposite. As it rediscovers its dead, reverie near the water, like a submerged universe, also dies. […] More explicitly, we shall see how water furnishes the symbol for a particular life attracted by a particular death.” Gaston Bachelard The deep, dormant, dead waters and marshes conceal the death of a young child in their sunken hollows. Just four years old, he drowned one cold March night just feet from his home. Inside the house, the silence of grief and unbearable guilt—it frozen, too—will be interrupted by the arrival of a strange visitor: William Bloor, an elite Foxfinder, rootless and homeless, will take up residence in the nursery and work methodically to prove the truth of what he's been taught. This enforced coexistence prizes a shining hope out of the mud: this final turn of the screw will prove too much for Samuel’s sanity. “A life is described by death”, Poe writes somewhere, and life in the Covey home is ultimately delivered over to death via permanent fear and anxiety. Often, the existential impasse that’s ripped open when every belief about faith in oneself, in the divine, and especially in Mankind is shattered, cannot ever be closed again.
Christina Chatzivasileiou
Credits Translated by: Giorgos Chatzinikolaou, Direction-Dramaturgical processing: Christina Chatzivasileiou, Sets-Costumes-Video: Eleni Stroulia, Music: Bampis Papadopoulos, Lighting: Eliza Alexandropoulou, Assistant to the director: Kiki Karaiskou, Assistants to the set-costumes-video designer: Tatiana Nikolaidou, Tzanos Mazis, Production Coordinator: Filothei Eleftheriadou Cast: Giannis Karamfilis (Samuel), Revekka Tsiligkaridou (Judith), Nikolas Maragkopoulos (William), Lila Vlahopoulou (Sarah)
Photos under that long black cloud