Between, Against, Beyond: Challenging National Identities in Contemporary Greek Theatre Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie am Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften der Freien Universität Berlin vorgelegt von Ariadni Lignou Tsamantani Berlin 2020 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Matthias Warstat Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Miltos Pechlivanos Tag der Disputation: 9. Juli 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... 3 Preface ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 6 1. Framing this study: concepts, contexts, histories ............................................................. 20 1.1 On nation, nationalism and identity ............................................................................ 20 1.2 On nation and theatre .................................................................................................. 28 1.3 Greek (theatre) histories: pasts and presents .............................................................. 36 1.3.1 Nation-state and theatre stage ............................................................................. 37 1.3.2 Performing nation on/as “national stage” ........................................................... 45 1.3.2.1 National Theatre ..................................................................................... 48 1.3.2.2 Hellenic Festival ..................................................................................... 56 2. Between past(s), present(s) and future(s) ......................................................................... 65 2.1 “Familiar” stories from a remote past ........................................................................ 68 2.1.1 Ancient as “national”: on the reception of ancient tragedy in contemporary Greece ................................................................................................................. 69 2.1.2 Narrating (hi)stories, redefining identities: Herakles in times of crisis ............. 74 2.2 Bucolic tears in ancient ruins ..................................................................................... 93 2.2.1 From Winnie to Golfo: performances of non-ancient drama in Epidaurus ........ 93 2.2.2 Coming to terms with an (irrevocable) past: Golfo at the Epidaurus Festival .. 102 2.3 Returning to the past, confronting the “now-time” .................................................. 124 2.3.1 Ιn search of “our” identity: the National’s two-year season 2011–2013 ......... 124 2.3.2 Malaises of the past and/in the present of the (hopeless) future: Papavasiliou’s Koutroulis’ Wedding and The Fortune Hunter ................................................ 131 2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 148 3. Deconstructing symbols, heroes and identities ............................................................... 153 3.1 Petit bourgeois dreams and banal nationalism in Greek society .............................. 157 3.1.1 Contemporary Greek dramaturgies: the case of Lena Kitsopoulou .................. 158 3.1.2 Beloved (national) families and the poetry of social pathologies: A Greek Blood Wedding ................................................................................................. 165 2 3.1.2 Challenging reassuring (national) certainties: Lena Kitsopoulou’s Athanasios Diakos ............................................................................................................... 188 3.2. The “temptation” of being “Greek” ........................................................................ 208 3.2.1 New voices in Greek theatre: dealing with crises ............................................. 209 3.2.2 Performing de-hierarchisation: Nova Melancholia’s The Temptation of St. Anthony ............................................................................................................. 216 3.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 231 4. Beyond borders and identities ........................................................................................ 236 4.1 Fragmented identities, collective experiences .......................................................... 239 4.1.1 From the marbles of the nation to the post-industrial buildings of the city ...... 240 4.1.2 Standing together on the ruins of history: Marmarinos’ Dying as a Country .. 246 4.2 In search of borderless “homelands” ....................................................................... 264 4.2.1 Contemporary Greek theatre abroad ................................................................. 266 4.2.2 Performing migration (hi)stories, transcending national identities: Karazissis’ The Dance of the Solitary Heart. ..................................................................... 271 4.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 292 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 296 Works Cited ........................................................................................................................... 305 Appendix ............................................................................................................................... 338 Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 338 Zusammenfassung in der deutschen Sprache ................................................................. 339 Selbständigkeitserklärung zur Dissertation ........................................................................... 341 3 Acknowledgments I gratefully acknowledge the funding provided by the Elsa-Neumann-Stipendium des Landes Berlins. First and foremost, I am grateful to my first supervisor Prof. Dr. Matthias Warstat for his invaluable guidance and insightful feedback. Special thanks also to my second supervisor Prof. Dr. Miltos Pechlivanos for his support and inspiring critical insights. I owe many thanks to Prof. Platon Mavromoustakos for his stimulating comments and steady encouragement. I would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Jan Lazardzig and Dr. Sarah Ralfs for participating in my dissertation committee. I am indebted to the directors Michael Marmarinos, Akyllas Karazissis, Anestis Azas, Prodromos Tsinikoris, and the group Nova Melancholia for providing me audiovisual material of their performances. My sincere thanks goes also to the directors Vasilis Papavasiliou and Lena Kitsopoulou for our interesting discussions about their work and granting me access to the video recordings of their performances. I am grateful to Yorgos Loukos for the insightful discussion we had about his work as artistic direction of the Athens & Εpidaurus Festival. I also want to thank the director Elias Giannakakis for the copy of his documentary film. Many thanks goes to William James, Skye Hughes and Alexandra Kalapothaki for their help in proofreading my manuscript. I am grateful to Catherine, Marina and Michalis not only for their scholarly comments but also continued friendship from near and afar. Special thanks to Willi for his patient support and critical comments, especially at the beginning of my research. My heartfelt thanks goes to my partner Oliver for his loving encouragement during the last years of my project. Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my family, Louli, Giorgos and Kyveli. This long journey would not have been possible without their love, patience and steadfast support. 4 Preface Fascinated by the potentiality of a theatre beyond fixed meanings and considering the issue of national identity an outmoded topic, I left Greece to pursue postgraduate studies abroad. I became part of a group of international students from very different cultural but also academic backgrounds. During an introductory exercise in the very first days of the programme, I realised my bewilderment towards the question of identity, when I was asked whether I could define myself as “hybrid” in any sort of way. My first spontaneous negative answer revealed not only my theoretical limitations but also my difficulty to offer any short – and why not “fancy” – answer without really having reflected before on my own self-identification in terms of Greek identity. Since then, the question of Greek identity gained the central position in one way or another in my research interests. A couple of years later, I embarked on the present research cautious about the pitfalls of such an “existential” attachment to the object of inquiry. Over the past years, while attending different kinds of performances and particularly performances whose aesthetics would often be characterised with “post-” labels (be it postdramatic or postmodern), the same questions kept haunting me. To what extent could contemporary theatre in its various forms of expression and modes of performance indeed encourage the spectators to reflect on their national identities? How – if at all – could this kind of theatre invite