2024-04-18 20:36:08
The work of the Italian writer Edoardo Erba “UTOYA, a forgotten day” is presented by Non Grata Productions at the Kyklos Theater (Aravantinou 14) in Ioannina for four performances on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 May, at 7 pm and 9 pm.
The play is staged for the first time in Greece, directed by Gianniotis Thodoris Gogou, who shares the stage with Elena Moundrouvalis, who has done the translation. The music is edited by Vassilis Kontaxis.
On July 22, 2011, on the Norwegian island of Utoja, a far-right criminal shot dead 69 of the 560 young people who had gathered peacefully at a Socialist Party camp. Through the eyes of three couples touched by the tragedy, we relive the horrific episode in an emotional and dramatic theatrical performance: two parents who sent their daughter to the camp, two police officers on the shore opposite the island during the massacre, two brothers of whose property adjoins that of the murderer, are shocked by the severity of the events. Their lives will never be able to return to the way they were before, that afternoon marks a point of no return. For them and for all of Norway.
Eight killed by car bomb in Oslo as a distraction… and then the real target: Labour’s children. 69 children were killed one by one on the island of Utoya, the “Nordic paradise”, the historic summer camp site for socialists from all over the world.
The version given by the media was distorted, when it was not biased and arbitrary. The massacre was presented as one of the many tragedies that armed “lunatics” can cause, such as those that happen so often in America. Nothing could be more wrong. This was a completely different kind of “madness”. The massacre had been planned years before, with a clarity and conscientiousness that bordered on madness. It was not against a random target, instead it aimed at the nursery of the young “promisers” of European socialism.
The Utoya massacre was a political massacre. The newspapers, in the first hours, argued that it was an Islamic terrorist attack. The truth was just the opposite. In the icy eyes, in the blond hair, in the robust physique, swollen by the anabolic steroids of the butcher, not a single drop of Arab blood “flowed”. His hatred of immigrants led him to shoot these young people in cold blood to “shoot down” any possible future multiracial idea.
When the truth about the killer was revealed, there was a fishy silence about the young Labor people who were executed for their ideas. This shocking event ended in oblivion. The butcher, who was declared safe and sound, is so far the only one who has been convicted. But what were his contacts (for there were, of course!)? How did he get weapons and explosives? Is there a network of extreme nationalists, violent and xenophobic in Europe? How does it work; Who supports it? Who is funding it? This story gets to the heart of some of the deepest wounds wracking the world today and our lives. Utoya is an attempt at memory and denunciation without doing “political theatre”.
General admission 15 euros. Presale more.com. Reservations phone 6979139705.