2024-03-04 11:19:55
After the consecutive sold outs in Thessaly, Macedonia and Athens, “The old women who gather the nettle”, researched, dramaturgically edited and directed by Kostantinos Della, come to Ioannina for three performances, on Friday 1st, Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd Of March.
The performance is a theatrical approach to the female body of old age and its connection to folk magic, cooking and ritual practices. The starting point is the region of Thessaly and its tradition of magical practices, which wants the witches of the region to have received their secret skills from Medea and to specialize in bringing down the moon, also known as “milking the moon”. Guides in this secret journey are three female figures, who converse between the familiar and the archetypal, the harmless “grandmother” and the dangerous therapist and talk about their lives, about what they learned from the old ones. What they suffered as women and what they pass on to the next generation.
Spending their lives in the shadow of the dominant male power, the women of the 19th and 20th century periphery remained largely on the sidelines without being able to have a say in the decisions that were exclusively the right of men.
In the Thessalian area, in addition to the other tasks, with which they contributed to the economic production of the family and the community as workers in the fields, they also had the responsibility of feeding their family members, but always inside the house. Thus, they developed a secret code, a latent power, based on the use of magic and herbal know-how, the so-called “practices”, the ability to “dissolve” and other skills, through the use of the materials they used and in cooking , the herbs and grasses of the area, oil, water and flour.
These “Women of the Earth”, who remained invisible for years even to researchers – since they did not consider a woman’s story about the history of a place worthy of recording – are approached on stage by three male young bodies, attempting to bring the personal and collective to the stage narrative of the familiar aging female body. With expressive tools the raw materials of the ritual process, the disguise, the mask and the coordination of speech and body, the three actors indulge in a stormy storytelling, which travels from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Lucan’s Pharsalia to modern Greek literature of Thomas Psyrras, from older narratives, recipes and medical codes of the 19th century, to modern interviews made during the performances in Thessaly.
The show “The old women gathering the nettle” is a work in progress on the dialogue between performance art and social anthropology with the main axes being social roles and the gendered dimensions of food and folk magico-religious practices. The theatrical text is constantly mutating and redefined, as it is fueled by the volume of interviews carried out alongside the performances. The public is invited to participate in the research and, if they wish, to contribute to the continuation of the recording of the oral history that has already begun since the beginning of the performances.
Performed by Michalis Anagnostou, Manousos Georgopoulos, Platonas Giorgos Perleros.
The shows will be given on “Stage 125” (within KE.PA.VI.), with a start time of 9 in the evening, and their duration is 70′. General admission 13 euros and 10 euros reduced (unemployed, students, disabled). Pre-sale at “Skala” Coffee Bar and “Anagnostis” and “HARTEX” bookstores, as well as online from more.com. Information on phone 2651312830.