¿Qué
Pasa?

GREECE   Andrea Kapsaski

September is always the most difficult month for Greek Cultural Life. The Summer Theatres and Cinemas are closing one by one,  new performances and movies usually start around the beginning of October. A last few performances of the Athens Summer Festival, a few new movies, some concerts…

Theatre
"Heclesiasouses" (Women at power) by Aristophanes, one of the last highlights of the Athens Theatre Festival 2000 (09/08 in Byronas and 09/10 in Maroussi) under the direction of Vassilis Nikolaidis with the National Theatre of Greece. A play not too often staged, but nothing special: too loud, too plain, too folkloristic.

The Center Stage of the National Theatre: "Autumn Story" by Aleksei Arbouzov, directed by George Remoundos,with Anna Fonsou & Giannis Karatzogiannis. It’s “Educational Stage” plays "Rigas Velestinlis Feraios" by Takis Chrisoulis and the Children’s Stage the play: "Drum Trumpet & Red Sugarplums" of Giannis Ksanthoulis. Don’t bother!

Barbara Mavromati is directing the “Blue Room” , a boring desaster due to the two protagonists Dalia Dragoumi and Aris Lebesopoulos.

If you’re in Athens, you better go and see the “grand maitre” of Greek music Mikis Theodorakis directing himself the “Canto General” at the Herodus Attikus Theatre .

Cinema
Editor’s Note: This month’s report by Andrea on movies in Greece is featured in inView with her reviews of the 6th Annual Athens Film Festival. Click here to dine on her commentary.

Traveling in Greece?
Don’t miss the unique performance of “Oedipus Rex” by the National Theatre directed by Vassilis Papavassiliou the 13/14 of the month in Volos! Papavassiliou performed the play this summer in Rome at the Colloseum and at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus. The chorus, made out of plaster becomes a silent audience , a ghost town for a king of ghosts.

And: If you are in Andros, go and see Henry Moore’s exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

© 2000 Andrea Kapsaski ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

¿Qué Pasa?

NORWAY Ren Powell

Vinter (Winter)

by Jon Fosse

Premiered the 9th of September at Rogaland Teater in Stavanger.

Directed by Marit Grønhaug.

A white bench in a black space. A man passing time. A woman enters.

A familiar starting point: we’ve been here before. Which is exactly what Fosse wants us to recognize. The man is on his way to a business meeting. The woman is “strung out” on something. She needs him, seduces him with her need and wakes the next morning alone in his hotel room.

The man never makes it to his meeting. He spends the morning shopping for food and clothes for the woman and while he is gone, his wife calls. The woman answers the phone. We’ve seen it coming and we know where the story is headed. But Jon Fosse is not a playwright to dazzle his audiences with plot. Instead he shows us an ultra -realism—recreating the tension of our stressful, yet mundane lives. Fosse takes us to world stripped of details—even the details of conversation, as the characters often repeat themselves in meaningless banter. Vinter provides the mesmerizing rhythm Norwegian audiences have come to expect from Jon Fosse; he is a master of dialogue and creates delicious tension with his words.

Yet also typical of Jon Fosse is that his characters never change—their circumstances change but the characters remain passive in the face of their respective “fates”. It is interesting to note that in Vinter the catalyst for the only dramatic action of the play is the woman’s “altered” behavior on the night of their meeting. Both the man and the woman avoid controlling their fates—they ride the wake.

I’ve heard many people praise Fosse for his realism. “That’s how life is,” they say.

I hope not. Does Fosse speak to a generation of disillusioned and indifferent men and women? Or for them?

A thought-provoking hour.

Vinter was commissioned by Rogaland Teater as part of the themed millennium celebration in Rogaland, Norway: “The Ten Commandments.” Jon Fosse has chosen the seventh commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

© 2000 Ren Powell ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Don Bridges Australia
Claudine Jones San Francisco
Michael Bettencourt Boston
Chandradasan India
Andrea Kapsaski Greece
Ren Powell Norway
Steve&Lucille Esquerre New Orleans
      

This
Issue

september 2000

SEPTEMBER 2000

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