"Making the Impossible Possible. Or TRANSPORTING THE UNDERGROUND SEEDS AND BIOGRAPHIES OF AN ‘OTHER’ WORLD" PART ONE

Can a whisper change your life?

It has always been whispers from other worlds guiding me on what kind of theatre I want to create, on what terms, with whom, and for whom... Whispers that have insisted to be heard, for the past ten years in my work as theatre creator in Greece, during times of continuous crisis on all levels of our society, demanding that I give them a share of the stage so that, through the 'performance as vehicle', and the occupation of the actors' bodies, they can incarnate, converse with the living, and tell the story that they want... And they hope that "at least part of this story, will continue after the performance has ended as a living memory within the spectator. Because otherwise, they risk becoming forever erased from all dimensions of time and space, as if they never existed in the past or will never exist in the future.”

They also tell me that as they observe us/humanity invisibly every day, that they have useful things to tell us that will help us, sometimes on how to survive, and sometimes on how we can live beautifully and well, both within ourselves and in society... "But only if the performance is alive and not deadly," they emphasize, as expert theatre critics. And I must here make a pause to protest to you dear participants, that these whispers have been interfering for over 30 years, even in the makeup of my actors, transforming them, sometimes loudly, sometimes more subtly, into strange creatures, with the clown's white base. Despite my pleas to them to leave me alone and let me try something different, almost always, with a few infinitesimal exceptions, they find a way to draw masks on my actors' faces with my hands...

Ghosts, spirits and the stage

In such moments, I muse that perhaps the stage is, among other things, a space for conscious or subconscious invitation -and sometimes unsolicited visitations- from ghosts. And that the theatrical act is a dance of past and future worlds, which, however, always come to tell their story in the living, present space and time of the spectators. And this suspicion of mine about ghosts was confirmed by an elderly inmate at the Women’s State Prison in Thebes (who, I was told, had spent her life in prisons since she was about 12 years old). When, within the first two minutes of the appearance of the comic chorus, hitting their pots and pans with their staffs and demanding “bread, cheese, wine,” while half the room of the female prisoners burst out laughing and joining the uproar, she let out a scream of terror and got up to leave the room with the guards’ assistance.

When I asked her, “What is happening? Why is she leaving?” she answered, “Ghosts from the other world have arrived, those with the white faces, and I’m scared”… I couldn’t convince her to stay and watch the performance, nor could I assure her that these were not spirits summoned to the stage by some magic shamanic act, but only actors with painted white faces... She was sure they were ghosts... And perhaps this woman, who had never seen theatre in her life until she was almost 80, in her first encounter with it, sensed something of the magical and ritual origins of this art in the various parts of our Earth...

And reflecting on my adventures with whispers and ghosts, I sense that perhaps this awe, this Aristotelian Fear and Pity you feel, as a living person, to converse with the dead, the muses, the collective unconscious and the otherworldly realms, co-creating with them a strange third space-time outside of daily life during the performance, is what makes you feel, whether a director, an actor, or an audience member, a kind of “Catharsis”.

And perhaps I can describe this "Catharsis" as the feeling of being fully alive, with all your senses and body in operation, and all the different fragments and pieces of you united into something that you recognize as your true, deeper self, your truth... Not the one you think you are or should be, nor the one others think you are or should be...

A complete acceptance of exactly who you are in harmony with yourself in the presence of others, with whom you also feel connected as part of a larger whole...

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photo from the historical memory community performance installation of "The Cycle of Futile Acts" by Spiros Tzokas, at the theater of Akronafplia, next to the site of the infamous Akronafplia Political Prisoners Concentration Camp, with the participation of 50 citizens of the periphery of Argolis, September 2018 and the actors of omada piragma, adapted and directed by Angeliki Kasola

Another world is possible

At fifteen years old, I was lucky enough to live for two years in the ongoing "utopia" of peaceful coexistence between 200 students and teachers from all the colors, religions, races, languages, and dialects of the earth, but also from all the wars and dictatorships on the planet from which most of them came. As they were so many. Many many more than the relatively freer more democratic words.... Our job was intercultural exchange, international understanding and peace.

At the beautiful vistas of Duino, that hosted us all in safety, I discovered one of the most useful things both for my life and for my understanding for theatre:

that the global language of humanity, the one with which everyone can understand one another, is the energetic language of emotions... and that when you share your pain, you are comforted and its energy decreases transforming its bitterness and angst in something humbling and sweet and healing, while when you share your joy, its creative energy spreads, increases, expands, and freeing it by sharing it with others, many other gates and portals to many other worlds of many other possibilities appear and open, and new worlds are born in creative communal dream time...

photo from the historical memory community performance installation of "The Cycle of Futile Acts" by Spiros Tzokas, at the Kesariani Shooting Range, in October 2017, with the participation of 100 citizens of the periphery of Athens, and the actors of omada piragma, adapted and directed by Angeliki Kasola. Many people in the audience as well as from the participants were relatives of the near 750 executed political prisoners during WW2 and the Greek Civil War that followed. Among them the two cousins of Napoleon Soukatzidis, refugee from Asia Minor whose story is told in the performance

The performance as a vehicle to give you the courage to speak freely in times of oppression and to recognize others like yourself

In 1995, age 23, the year of the Zapatista uprising, I found myself in Mexico giving a performance that included narratives about the tortures and disappearances in Argentina. There, for the first time, I felt anxiety before the performance, realizing its “dangerous” topic, when entering a University theatre guarded by a grim soldier with an automatic machine gun in his arms. In a country both magical and wondrous but where you immediately felt, right from the airport, that it would be very easy for someone to disappear without trace and never be found.

And while the spectators were watching in a thick blanket of total silence, when a woman in the audience suddenly shouted, “Bravo, for speaking out. No one speaks here. These things are happening here, right now, today, everyday, in our country, in Mexico,” instead of me feeling joy with the applause and the storm that erupted in the hall, that would have been my customary reaction as an artist, my mind was kept fixed on the image of the armed soldier at the door and the rest of the day I was dazed, like walking in a dream.

And then I understood that what I had felt was pure terror, for myself, for my group, for the audience, for the soldier. And, later, also the terror of responsibility... When students approached me the following day to sign a petition for the liberation of the indigenous disappeared students of Mexico during that year that I had brought with me from Scotland, knowing full well that putting on their name and signature could be life threatening for them.

And then I realised that a performance, in times of repression, can be your credentials for gaining the trust of the audience, so that they are willing to break their silence, to expose themselves, an act that may cost them their lives. But also for one to recognize companions who were previously strangers...

Twenty years later, in Greece when we performed "Mamma Togni" by Dario Fo and Franca Rame with Irini Mela in Nafpaktos in 2014, in a café, we asked the audience why, despite participating, applauding, and singing along with us, it seemed something was bothering them throughout the performance. We could feel a tension that was not coming from us. And why they kept looking outside the large cafeteria's windows?

The answer, was that they were afraid the café would be attacked by the local Neo Nazi Golden Dawn members who were armed in their area... That they felt they were almost committing an illegal act for which they would be punished by watching and loving this performance... That it felt like the times they would go to sing resistance songs in the underground night clubs during the Greek Junta, in year 2014!!! That's how serious things were...We had heard again and again in our extensive touring of mainland Greece of bands of Neo Nazi's arming themselves...

Returning to Mexico... There I understood that with this trust, created between the stage and the audience, comes also the moral obligation to the creator of theatre: a plea not to betray them and to become a carrier of the seeds of their dreams and struggles with the whispers now commanding: 

"Preserve my story, write it, share it, transport it, carry it to the people, because I may not be around for much longer..."

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Photo from the performance of "The Life, Death and Resurrection of Popolo Plebe" by A. Kasola, at the 2nd Anti-fascist Festival of Performing Arts at Omonia Square in Athens protesting for the racism, violence against Immigrants and refugees as well as some assassinations. With the actors of omada piragma and a group of protesters, volunteers and social activists, March 2015