the Peiramatiki Skini Milou
invites you
to the theatre performance
“THE ANNIHILATION OF MILOS”
based on the work of the same name
by the poet YANNIS RITSOS
and on the
“MELIAN DIALOGUE”
of Thoukydidi
on Friday 27 July 2007
at 12 midnight
at the Milos Conference Centre
Georgios Iliopoulos
A theatre performance dedicated to the history of Milos
The Milos Experimental Stage production “The Annihilation of Milos” brings to the stage two important anti-war texts about the destruction of ancient Milos by the Athenians in 416 BC.
The first is Thucydides’ famous and ever-relevant “Melian Dialogue”, a text that deals with this dramatic chapter in the island’s history and is also a world-famous example of cynical imperialism clashing with an appeal for freedom and humanity. This “rational yet irrational” debate left to us by Thucydides is a timeless reminder of the moral corruption brought about by military power and war, when self-interest pushes justice aside.
The other great text is Yannis Ritsos’ long dramatic poem “The Annihilation of Milos”, in which three old women, uprooted from Milos and enslaved in a foreign land, recall and recount the beauty of peaceful everyday life in their lost homeland, then remember the threat, the “surrender” cynically demanded of them, the cry of “freedom or death”, and the destruction that war brought, the blood and the uprooting. A superb poetic text that echoes ancient tragedy.
The Milos Experimental Stage set out to create a theatrical work by weaving these two texts together in counterpoint, so that the whole approaches the structure of ancient Greek drama: a performance that adds something important to our cultural history and that can be shown on video at every opportunity as a representative cultural work of Milos.
The performance is part of the 2007 Milos Municipal Festival and is a production of the Milos Experimental Stage, with the support of S&B, the LEADER+ Cyclades programme and the Prefecture of the Cyclades.
Syntelestes
The combined text and direction are by Vasilis Kontaxis. Assistant directors: Fotini Papachristopoulou and Giorgos Giannakopoulos. Music and songs (settings of passages from the poem) by Gerasimos Triantafyllou. Songs performed by Vasilis Kontaxis. Movement: Georgia Mavromati. Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue, in a stage version by Petros Papageorgiou, is performed by the actors Arto Apartian and Giorgos Symeonidis. From the Experimental Stage: Katerina Berdologou, Avra Valsamanidou, Maria Chintiraki, Georgia Mavromati and Fotini Papachristopoulou.