- Prova Generale,
- 2001
- 4 male - 3 female
Playwright: Theodore Tsapakidis
- Following a road accident, the police arrest Sotiris Kalokyris, 38, of no fixed occupation, the driver of one of the cars, after weapons, explosives and manifestos are found in the boot. That same day, they also arrest Konstantinos Mavridis, 35, a tutor at a private tuition centre; Theodoros Skandalis, 26, a painter and decorator; Marina Loumaki, 33, a homemaker; and a Spanish national whose other details remain unknown. The driver is being treated at the General State Hospital, while the others are remanded in custody. They are rumoured to be members of an international terrorist network. They are detained under the provisions of the new anti-terrorism law, without charges having been brought against them and despite the absence—with the exception of Kalokyris—of any incriminating evidence. Mavridis and Skandalis are taken to an empty prison wing undergoing renovation. In this state of confinement and waiting, everything that makes them human—love, passion, humour, the need for food, companionship, travel and dreams—is not abolished but imprisoned alongside them. Visits, parcels from Mum, books to read, shaggy wool rugs and bedside lamps, conversations through the windows with the women prisoners opposite, as well as arguments, physical fights and misunderstandings, become their new daily reality. And, of course, meetings with lawyers and painstaking scrutiny of the newspapers. Kostas and Thodoros’s differing outlooks and attitudes to life emerge within the few square metres of their cell, until, together with Marina, they decide to begin an escalating hunger strike that will push them to the limits of their physical and mental endurance. As the strike progresses, they increasingly lose touch with reality, drifting into a world of fantasy, a hallucination of freedom, a tragicomic utopia. Yet what remains clear to the very end is their human tenderness, the simplicity of being, and their genuine concern for one another.