- The Bitter Water,
- 2021
- 6 male - 3 female - 5 male/female
Playwright: Sofianna Theofanous
- A Song for the Suffering of Epirus. During the Revolution, blind singers in mainland Greece and the islands traditionally memorised as many songs as they could, from every genre and every period. Some eventually learned an enormous number of them, while all knew a great many. Carrying this treasure in their memory, they wandered continuously across Greece, travelling from the tip of the Peloponnese to Constantinople, from the shores of the Aegean to those of the Ionian Sea. They went from city to city and village to village, singing to the people who immediately gathered around them wherever they appeared. They chose the songs they believed best suited either the place or the occasion and received a small payment, which constituted their entire income. The blind singers of the Revolution closely resembled the ancient rhapsodes and functioned as the military newspapers of their time, informing ordinary people throughout Greece about current events. They were regarded as guardians of memory and history. The Bitter Water tells the story of the Last Singer, guardian of memory and History, who, over the years, no longer remembers either who he is or what has happened. And a person without memory is a person without identity. Attempting a journey back through time, he tries to remember the significant events that defined one of the greatest massacres and defeats in Epirus, at a time when no one remained except him. When the time comes for the Last Descendant of Epirus, in an age that transcends space and time, the psychopomp leads him to the Acheron. Having paid his obol, the Ferryman asks him whether he knows who he is. Three times he asks the question, and the Last One, who has neither a name nor an ancestry, answers that he does not know. The Ferryman then leads him to the Necromanteion, where no oracle is given. Instead, the dead relatives, distant in time, are given a voice. They appear and call upon him to learn what happened and why they are here. The Ferryman leads the confused Last One to the middle of the Lake, telling him that Hades cannot accept him, because those who have neither memory nor identity cannot enter. There, the Bitter Water challenges him and plunges him back through time, to the moment when the Village That Withstood Seven Battles is defeated in the eighth, leaving no one alive, in 1821. What happened then, when no one saw the signs that foretold the destruction of History? When the Last One was a child and, although he could not see, recognised those signs better than anyone else? Yet no one believed him. Who will remain to continue the story?