του Αργύρη Χιόνη

TO MHNYMA | THE MESSAGE


An absurd farce

Director / Set Designer:
Anthi Founta

AUTHOR:
Argiris Chionis

Actors:
Maria Menegaki
Anthi Founta

What remains of a human if you take away his start and his ending?

“They” gave them a message to deliver to “Him”. They told them to walk straight, but they have gone lost and they can´t remember the message. They are two messengers without a message. Two messengers without a name. It is A and B, and they have forgotten where they started and where they are heading.

They are walking now for weeks, months, years, or maybe centuries. They keep on making new messages, which again they forget. Will they manage to remember the message?

An existential farse with clear influences from the theatre of absurd. A smart and deeply humaine performance that can fit in the strict borders of a set design that reminds us of a wooden riddle.

What is a messenger without his message anyhow?

It is a story about two messengers who walk an infinite distance trying to reach “Him”, a figure they don´t recall, but they believe is expecting them and the message they carry.

But they have forgotten the message.

On their long journey, they tend to even forget that they carry a message and then suddenly they remember. And then they remember, that they have forgotten the message and then they give all their energy to try to remember it again.

Throughout their journey it is their phantasy that accompanies them and gives them some relief to their endless reality.

“Imagine a car would pass by and pick us….”

Another time they use their phantasy to create a story to pass the time, because time really seems to stand still.

Later on, their phantasy will become a tool. Since they don´t remember the message, they could create a new one, a very significant message. Still, after a while, every effort and every creation seems to fade out and nothing is there anymore apart from them and their endless mission.

A key factor to the performance is the interactive stage. Every one of the 4 stages of the play is developing together with the stage.

Starting from a 2-dimentional world where everything seems to be organised and countable, we move to chaos, and from there to the construction of a 3-dimentional world.

The endless journey becomes an endless construction.

Excerpts from a performance at Theatre Fournos, Athens, October 2021

CREDITS

written by
Argiris Chionis

Director / Set Designer:
Anthi Founta

Actors:
Maria Menegaki
Anthi Founta

dramaturgy:
APUS
Anthi Founta
Antonis Kyriakakis
Giorgos Paterakis

Motion Curator:

Efthymis Christou

Scenery constructors:
Stamatis Leontios,
Kyriakos Koutserinakis

Costume design:
Xenia Sofianatou
[functional clothing lab]

Light technician:

Konstantinos Anagnostou

Graphic design:
Christoph Gratzer
[exidas.com]

PAST PERFORMANCES

Open Theatre of Grava, Athens, July 2021

Theatre Fournos, Athens, October 2021

Horos Theatre, Athens, May 2022

X

Space
without
a name

I created a space without a name.
I don’t know why.
But it seems to fulfill its purpose.
Fragments of the world.
Photographic words.
A labyrinth.

When I am not writing, directing or performing
I find myself in this space without a name.
I never know how I got in there.
I never know how to get out of there.
I just have to be there till I am out of there.

So
If you find yourself here
Be here
Till you are out of here.

Anthi Founta