Mystery 97 University Theatre Festival

Mystery 97 University Theatre Festival is a celebration of all the theoretical and applied branches included in performing arts – acting, dramaturgy, stage design, costume design, lighting, dramatology – with the art of directing as the common denominator.  

The aim of the festival is to provide young artists in what is called “the future of theatre” with a space and a springboard for creativity, exchange and networking. By hosting major productions from all of the country’s university departments in performing arts education, the birthplace of Aeschylus becomes a meeting point for University Performing Arts and the Theatre and a hub for the future of this unique live Art. 

The festival features four plays created in the academic year 2022/2023 by students of Theatre Directing at the Theatre Dept of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: All Those Who Became Streets, directed by Ariadne Zoupina; Anatomy Class, directed by Irene Sevastopoulou; The Sheen of the Opal, directed by Georgia Diakou; and Patti & Robert, directed by Alexia Paramytha. Also involved in the productions are students specialising in other majors of the Theatre Dept: acting, stage design, dramaturgy. The plays were first presented at the Kleio Theatre in June and September 2023, in the context of the Directing IV course under the supervision of Professor Michael Marmarinos. 

About the plays 

All Those Who Became Streets 

A play based on four short stories from the collections Fish Eye and Big Roads by Lena Kitsopoulou: “Donousa,” “Spyridoula,” “Karaflobekatsos” and “Big Roads.”  
 
 
Director’s note 
If I could buy something for me at the time, the only thing I’d like would be a skin one size larger. My skin felt too tight. All over. Can one live without love? And if so, who would want to live like that? What do these people do? What do they eat, where do they sleep, what do they think when listening to music? Don’t these people deserve a lane? Just so that they are not on their own on the beach, at a family dinner, in their new home or on a public bench nearby. If only so that they could join all the others who became streets and gathered at Telis’s steakhouse, where there was live music and a party. Wouldn’t it be nice? No worries, no anger or misgivings, without priests and short ladies, no satellite dishes, no shoes, extension cords or pills. There would only be hats for the sun, lots of drinks and plenty of vegetarian food; just electric drills, and an accordion playing Bach. For all those who became streets long before they were streets. 

Author: Lena Kitsopoulou
Director: Ariadne Zoupina
Assistant Director: Athena Haikali
Dramaturgy: Orfeas Papadimitriou, Danae Demka, Athena Haikali, Ariadne Zoupina
Stage & Costume Design: Rallou Sarri
Assistant Stage & Costume Designer: Anna Maria Yfanti
Music: Michalis Stefanidis
Kinesiology: Anastasia Tei
Lighting: Emmanuela Krisilia
Trailer: Giorgos Zlatanos, Katerina and Kosmas
Photography: Athena Haikali
Cast: Eleni Georgaki, Konstantinos Daftsios, Amalia DIakaki, Lefteris Konstantinou
Performing Μusicians: Ifigenia Datsiadou, Hariklia Zagorianou, Michalis Stefanidis, Anna Maria Yfanti 

Duration: 75΄ 

The performance is suitable for persons over 16 years of age.

Anatomy Class 

The inspiration for the play came from the novel by Nobel laureate writer José Saramago. Saramago deals with the question of death and love. Or death through love. Or love through death. So, love and death – the two fundamental issues preoccupying humans, theatre, art, our life. 

Director’s note 

“Humankind’s first words were ‘ah’ and ‘oh.’ Or was it just a moan?”, says the angel in The Wings of Desire. Perhaps a human being also dies with these words. We do not meet death until the very last moment. We can’t see it, but we feel it. It is next to us. At all times. How does one fight death? What are its weapons? Its weaknesses? Its Achilles’ heel in his formidable armour? Can love beat death? Stillborn love, that magic moment of meeting the other living body; that “now” that becomes “forever”? We go into love unarmed. Vulnerable. By definition fragile. And it is this fragility that arms us against death. Makes us immortal, if only for a while. For how long? For the duration of a story… that ends and starts anew. 

Director: Irene Sevastopoulou 

Assistant Director: Georgia Diakou 

Dramaturgy: Georgia Diakou, Irene Sevastopoulou, Eleni Oikonomou 

Stage & Costume Design: Vicky Kitsiou 

Assistant Stage Designer: Irene Agianniti 

Music: Capette 

Lighting: Fani Polyxeni Kourtidou Vlachogianni, Ioanna Kapeliani 

Poster Design: Anastasia Loule 

Photography & Video: Marianthi Xyntarianou 

Cast: Angelos Kourepis, Yannis Didaskalou, Irene Sevastopoulou, Fani Polyxeni Kourtidou Vlachogianni 

Duration: 50΄ 

The performance is suitable for persons over 16 years of age.

The Sheen of the Opal 

Based on “The Hour of the Star” by Clarice Lispector 

The heroine, Macabéa, is an orphan rickets sufferer who grew up in north Brazil. Following her parents’ death, she lives with an aunt, who maltreats her. Macabéa grows up learning not to question the causes behind things. Upon her aunt’s death she moves to Rio and lives with another four girls. She has not much hope of bettering her life, but this does not seem to bother her. She once asked herself “who am I?”, but it scared her so much that she stopped thinking about it. Even her sleep is a struggle to quell her persistent cough. Unexpectedly, one day she meets a young man, Olímpico de Jesús, and she responds to his advances, but Olímpico soon loses interest. Her visit to a fortune-teller unlocks hope for a single moment of absolute beauty shortly before the end. 

Director’s note 

A play about the minimal. An attempt at telling the insignificant story of a creature that balances between the ancient, the angelic, misery, and the absolute autonomy of being. Clarice writes: “and don’t forget that the structure of the atom cannot be seen, but is nonetheless known.” It is under this principle that we start playing around with the text, taking the words to the body, and the body on stage. What emerges is a landscape, a reality within time or, in other words, a play. “What’s the reference, what are you dealing with?” you may well ask. We shall tell a story about a woman. Clarice writes a story about a woman who is small, indifferent, and simple, simple like grass and ever-present, whole in her existence, whole in herself. Clarice talks to the journalist about what she has written and, as she talks, she builds the details that make her heroine emerge. She emerges through her, gets born in her body, and her body becomes creative. Through a discussion that occurred long ago and is still occurring, Clarice creates this weird creature called Macabéa, and Macabéa puts together the unfamiliar side of Clarice, the woman who tries to build her world with words. To the author, the world is out of her, and she is out of the world. She is connected to the ancient figure of a young woman from the north-eastern part of Brazil, where her class and gender enclose her in her vast subjectivity, experiencing the beauty of the spirit generated by the human. 

Director: Georgia Diakou 

Dramaturgy: Georgia Diakou, Nadina Katsanoula 

Stage design: Georgia Diakou, Nadina Katsanoula 

Music: Dimitra Kampantaidou 

Lighting: Fani Polyxeni Kourtidou Vlachogianni 

Cast: Nadina Katsanoula, Nikos Tziouvaras

Duration: 40΄ 

Patti & Robert 

A performance about the peculiar relationship between the “punk priestess” Patti Smith and the provocative photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. A stage interrogation of the birth of the artist. A pulsating collective narrative that erupts into an electrifying punk rock live performance.  

The performance “Patti & Robert” synthesizes together fragments from the life and work of the renowned poet and musician Patti Smith and the eccentric photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It traces the path of the two artists from their childhood and early artistic sketches, through their meeting in New York in the late 1960s, their stay at the infamous Chelsea Hotel – the haven of the cursed artists – their confrontation with financial poverty, sexual pursuit and artistic uncertainty, and finally their rise to fame in the 1970s.   

Six people on stage deliver a narrative in which speech, images and movements intertwine with the “dirty” sound and the distortions of an electric guitar.  

Director’s note 

It is the summer of ’67. The summer of love and troubles. The summer when Patti meets Robert in Brooklyn and they join hands to walk along the path of art, devotion, hunger, and initiation. Together they trace “the sacred mystery of what it means to be an artist” and find a way to artistic utopia – where sometimes you win and sometimes you are defeated by art. 

Director & Dramaturgy: Alexia Paramytha
Assistant Director: Argyro Vlachopoulou
Original Music & Sound: Christos Papadopoulos
Stage Design: Despina Papadimitriou
Costumes: Eleni Ziaka
Photography, Video & Trailer: Manos Angelakis
Cast: Elina Antoniou, Chryssa Dom, Constantinos Drabazis, Marios Drosos, Irene Irodotou  

Performing Musicians: Christos Papadopoulos (electric guitar), Kostis Liontas (drums), Argyro Vlachopoulou (bass)  

Duration: 75΄