Vasilis Katsikonouris is one of the most significant modern Greek dramatists. His writing and thematic are both substantial and original, and despite his subjects\u2019 topicality, he – as a dramatist – is anything but \u201ctopical\u201d.<\/p>\n
On the contrary, through modern thematic actualizations he excavates, seeks and reflects the \u201carchaic\u201d human entity through the mechanisms that govern the respective “topical”, the current society. The dramatic environment of his plays lies far from any beautification or bourgeois comfort. His dramatic heroes are authentic characters and not \u201cmade\u201d fa\u00e7ades. The time, place and conducts of his characters \u2013 which on the surface and in the first place are reminiscent of a realistic technique \u2013 serve, in fact, as a familiar “raw material” for the recognition and integration of conflicting innermost landscapes.<\/p>\n
Katsikonouris\u2019 standard technique, which governs all his plays, consists of the following: those who initiate conflicts are always characters divergent, inadequate, unique, obsolete, unable to adjust to the given situation and conform to the rules of the standardized social gaming. These \u201cbizarre\u201d heroes bear the marks of an emphatically differentiated \u2013 albeit strong and rebellious \u2013 identity, within the community in which they exist and operate. They do not comply with orders, nor are they able to adjust to the given historical, social, political or ideological environments. Katsikonouris\u2019 alien, deranged characters emerge as gaping wounds of a past \u2013 both personal and collective \u2013 memory; they actually refer to an archetypal, universal Memory. Through the dramatic plot, the playwright\u2019s heretical heroes transcend the current conditions and elicit man\u2019s lost sense of measure. So, the young immigrant vehemently refuses to become assimilated, by abrogating his origins and memory (Milk<\/em>). The heroine with the wounded memory \u2013 caused by “Attila\u2019s\u201d invasion in Cyprus \u2013 refuses to forget (The Missing<\/em>). For similar reasons, the enraged youngsters (California Dreamin\u2019, Harley\u2019s Jacket<\/em>) refuse to integrate and conform to a world without values, dreams, culture…<\/p>\n Throughout his work, the playwright argues that the human essence has been \u201cburied\u201d by the current circumstances and abolished through an imposed, modern, intra\/extra-institutional regularity. Katsikonouris\u2019 dramaturgy focuses on the demonstration of the underlying causes of human deformation, which \u2013 in reality \u2013 is included in people and societies\u2019 “norms”. Eventually, this image reversal functions as an implication and also as the author’s conviction about the need to reinstate the in quasi authenticity that nests in our protean core. The dramatist reveals the purity and projects it not as evidence of some kind of morality but as an element of existence; as the basis of the first, the archaic human self.<\/p>\n Katsikonouris\u2019 writing \u2013 dense, formidable, excellent \u2013 points to a primary musicality and an exclamatory, rich poetry.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [Translation: Elena Delliou]<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Stivanaki<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","categories":[11,12],"class_list":["post-4960","review","type-review","status-publish","hentry","category-essays","category-general-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greek-theatre.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/4960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greek-theatre.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greek-theatre.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greek-theatre.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/4960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greek-theatre.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greek-theatre.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}