Prometheus by Nikos Karathanos premieres on New Year's Day at Onassis Channel on YouTube
Digital premiere: 01.01.23 at 21:00 (EST) | Available until 05.01.23
On New Year’s Day, the Onassis YouTube Channel brings nothing but a blast of freedom for the new year. Nikos Karathanos’s “Prometheus” has its digital premiere on Sunday, January 1, at 21:00. The play that had sold-out shows at the Main Stage of Onassis Stegi, now returns to our screens.
Nikos Karathanos’s “Prometheus” is coming to bring us nothing but a blast of freedom – this time digitally. This acclaimed artist gives us his take on this tragedy by Aeschylus, attempting, in his own words, to “mythologize daily life.” Karathanos himself, as a perceptive observer of transcendence through readings of the familiar, directs and performs as Prometheus. He recognizes each and every one of us in this character. Prometheus represents you and me and everyone, in that moment where we look upon the reality of life and it looks back at us. There is something so very ancient inside every human being that makes time bend away in shame,” he notes. Nikos Karathanos is turning his hand to ancient Greek drama for a second time, after tackling Aristophanes’ “Birds”; it is a source material that moves him because “it seems to be telling me constantly that ‘the opinions I have are my tomb, and justness is my resurrection’.”
"A surrealist reading of the Aeschylean fable, bold, evocative, and deeply human.”
Embedded media
If you want to enjoy embedded rich media, please customize your cookie settings to allow for Performance and Targeting cookies. Your data may be transferred to third-party services such as YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and Issuu.
There is no Caucasus here. No rock, no chain; nothing to keep Prometheus bound. Everything takes place inside a house. A house-cum-meteorite hanging in space-time, engulfed by the four natural elements. Prometheus (Nikos Karathanos), Power and Hermes (Christos Loulis), Bia and Io (Galini Hatzipaschali), Hephaestus and Oceanus (Giannis Kotsifas) – all live here, like a family, making worlds.
“To live is to devour light and darkness, every minute.” Nikos Karathanos gives us his take on this tragedy by Aeschylus, attempting – in his own words – to “mythologize daily life”: “I’ve always tried to understand how pain inside a room can escape those four walls, travel through the air, birth gods and monsters, and bring us myth.”
“One of this work’s most moving scenes is the ‘epic’ list with our country’s mountains and rivers (the bare sound of these words brings up a certain feeling, similar to the vibrations of Greek folk poetry), next to Karathanos’s salute to the people with whom he somehow connected."
Photo: Andreas Simopoulos
“The Birds,” directed by Nikos Karathanos, were first presented beyond Greek borders in May 2018, at the legendary St. Ann’s Warehouse theater in Brooklyn, New York. The work was included in “New York Magazine”’s online “Vulture” list of that year’s Ten Best Theater Productions. Two years later, “The Birds” were staged at the Santiago a Mil International Theater Festival in Chile, amidst major social and political upheaval.
Translation/Text: Yiannis Asteris
Adaptation: Nikos Karathanos, Yiannis Asteris
Set Design: Eva Manidaki
Costumes Design: Aggelos Mentis
Live Music: Angelos Triantafyllou
