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Α few words about the play

A young maid working in a well-to-do residence in Athens commits suicide. Angela comes up from the country and takes her place. She meets the brother of the unfortunate girl and falls in love with him. He is trying to find out who’s responsible for his sister’s death. But it’s not long before he realizes that he’s tangled up in something far darker than he could ever has suspected.

 

“Angela” by Giorgos Sevastikoglou was written in Moscow in 1957. It presents a realistic portrayal of a post-civil war Greece plagued by unemployment and corruption through the eyes of its most vulnerable social group: the country women who have come to the city to work in bourgeois homes, where they are exploited absolutely and enjoy no rights at all. Their oppression, in which the authorities are complicit, sets the scene for horror and for a cover-up. From the rooftops of these wealthy homes, the women articulate a voice through their guilt, hope and rejection. A voice of submission, a yell of resistance or a howl of despair?


Duration: 100min (no interval)

 

Directorial approach

The production seeks to highlight the play’s two main themes: love and the lower classes’ struggle to make ends meet. While showing great respect to the text, which remains intact and unchanged, both the temporal and spatial context of the play are deconstructed on stage. To achieve this, the actors worked as a team and approached their roles not as individuals, but as members of a chorus reminiscent of the choruses of ancient drama. In addition, it was one of the primary goals of the direction from the start that the cast should coalesce into a team during rehearsals and after. In this way, the direction emphasizes the play’s human element without approaching it as something everyday. This is helped by the special attention paid to the actors’ physicality, whose stylization serves to counter realism throughout. At the same time, the careful use of rebetiko music helps to ground the action. The harmonious combination of all these elements produces an on-stage result rooted in the search for truth through art which highlights just how topical Giorgos Sevastikoglou’s play remains and how much it has to say.
 

 

Credits

Dramaturgical processing - Direction: Dimitris Bitos, Set - Costumes: Nelli Sfakianaki, Lighting: Nysos Vasilopoulos, Assistant to the director: Lela Mentekidou, Assistant to the set - costume designer: Christina Thalassa, Production coordinator: Marily Ventouri

Cast: Theodora Elli Athanasopoulou (Fani, Mrs Papa), Iordanis Aivazoglou (Stratos), Melina Apostolidou (Georgia), Nikolas Drosopoulos (Lampros), Zoi Efthymiou (Nera), Giannis Karamfilis (The Revellers), Eleni Michailidou (Anna), Ioanna Pagiataki (Angela), Thodoris Polyzonis (Menios, Waiter)

Μusicians on stage: Giannis Karamfilis (bouzouki, vocals), Nantia Pavlidou (guitar, vocals)

 

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

 

Photos under That long black cloud

 

 

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