Translation: Elena Delliou
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThe Screaming Silence of No\u2019s Knife in Yes\u2019s Wound\u201d \nSeveral years ago,\u00a0 at a moonlit roof balcony in Aristippou street, Constantine Constantopoulos, committed to writing a dramatic trilogy with the family unit at its core. The promise has been fulfilled: \u00a0<\/p>\n Play 1: In the Name of the Mother and the Son<\/em><\/p>\n Play 2: Of the Son and the Saint<\/em><\/p>\n Play 3: The Spirit in Spirit<\/em><\/p>\n \nThe last play of the trilogy consists of two parts and 29 images. Turbulent, dense\u2014like the other two\u2014, tense, and full of suspense, its plot revolves around the tree of life, the tree of knowledge. Its protagonists search for meaning, for cure, for a way to reconcile every dichotomy and division, every fragmentation that accompanies the trauma of existence. They strive to achieve Harmony. Besides, in Greek mythology, Harmonia is the illegitimate child of Ares and Aphrodite; the sister of Phobos [Fear.] \nThe characters of the trilogy\u2019s last play, The Spirit in Spirit<\/em>\u2014familiar from the previous two \u2013 are Thomas: a mature man and artist\u2014actor, director and writer\u2014, Young Thomas\u2014his inner child\u2014, his mother Adamantia and his sister Daphne. The space is the symbolic dimension where the transformation of the character brews. Beach, moon-mirror-gate, dressing-stage, home-family, a glass menagerie with “broken forms inside the mirrors \/ that no one can now reassemble … images of horror on the threshold of sleep \/ faces intolerable from affection…”<\/p>\n The protagonists of Constantopoulos\u2019 works (departing from the postmodern man whose characteristics present a paradox where self-realization coincides with the apotheosis and the simultaneous fragmentation of being) stand out in their burning need to open themselves to others. Thus, they do not stifle cries of terror, anger, and agony; they rave and convulse, they are untamed and passionate as they revolt against absurdity: Why must man suffer? Why doesn\u2019t the internal and external war end? \nSo, is there no way out of this hell? \nForgiveness is a feat, perhaps because one must trace the plight of man inside him before embracing the unfamiliar, the Other, the indecent, the repellent. \u00a0<\/p>\n Moschovi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","categories":[11,12],"class_list":["post-5002","review","type-review","status-publish","hentry","category-essays","category-general-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greek-theatre.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/5002","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\/5002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greek-theatre.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greek-theatre.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0Samuel Beckett<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nWe are “trapped” in time and space, captives within the\u2014sometimes suffocating\u2014family; prisoners of past deeds, intentions, thoughts, and emotions, which intertwine to become blurry by the thoughtless imitation that we call life. Only briefly is there a crack; sickness, helplessness, loss, betrayal, and grief can make us realize how vulnerable we truly are.<\/p>\n
\nThe play moves beyond the conventional space-time; its time is expandable, existential, the one of dreams or nightmares, or the one of the inner passage of the transformation of trauma into miracle.<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0The first play of the trilogy opens with the panting of a man who has been digging around a solitary tree. He has been digging the grave, the womb, the earth, the primordial vulva. This is a nightmare that comes to an end with Thomas\u2019 invocation to the Father, and the reminder that the Earth is our ultimate cradle.
\n\u00a0Ten years after the death of the Father\u2014from drowning\u2014and three after the loss of the Mother, ten white roses (planted by mother at the father\u2019s field) will be ceremonially scattered to the water, and the protagonist will be hurled into the night, the arena-stage of life, the arena-stage of the theatre; because for the playwright every man is primarily an actor, who owes it to himself and to others to become a ‘person,’ to overcome complexes, passions, and decline in order to become illuminated with the grace of a lucid consciousness that holds the potential for resurrection.
\nIn other words, in the author\u2019s world, the existence is both a test and a performance, and the art of living is identified with living artistically. This mode of life has no need of cover-ups but of revelations; it destroys to reconstruct. Instead of someone adapting everything to their small, narcissistic ego, people should turn towards the whole, towards the other, towards an elusive unity.
\nThe relationship with the haggard\u2014by illness\u2014sister (Daphne, with the gloom voice), the regression to the country of their youth, and their childhood games will unfold part of the abysmal sexual instinct, the terror of castration, of annihilation. The sister who removes the eyes of the boy-doll, sister and the knife; “will you marry me to have children? Come closer then, closer, closer. Here, can you see? Bring your head closer to take a better look, see? You must enter here.\u201d The \u201chere\u201d is” the female swampland”, the vulva that devours, the frightening crevice. The nightmare, “the past that is crying.”
\nChiozza asserts that illness is the physical manifestation of a suppressed truth that the individual does not want to acknowledge because its significance is unbearable. For the most part, the disease is a symbolic response; an unconscious attempt to change either the meaning of the story or its end.<\/p>\n
\nForgiveness.
\nIs it possible?<\/p>\n
\nIn the second play, Thomas\u2019 inner child\u2014Young Thomas\u2014will be led by its adult counterpart via the dramaturgical inquisition to discover theatre\u2019s divine purpose. \u00a0Deprived of all senses\u2014sight, taste, hearing\u2014 I will emerge at the place of the unseen and the unheard. Shattering pitiful facades, I will open the way for the third birth of the Self\u2014since, according to Gregorious Nazianzenus we undergo three births: … and the third birth will come through our tears and pain, which will cleanse our image from the blemish of vices, as we become our own creators and assume full responsibility. Because “it is a spiritual effort. To finally attribute the spirit in spirit”
\nIn a personal way, Constantine Constantopoulos\u2019 trilogy admirably transforms \u00a0autobiographical material in a drama that is meaningful, bold, \u00a0generous, \u00a0inquisitive, and results in \u00a0“aidonia\u201d \u2013a term attributed to the philosopher Aristippus of Cyrene, which describes a state between pleasure and pain. Because “a man can be loved for being a passage and an end.”<\/p>\n