A Brief Guide for Prospective Tightrope Walkers
Stathis Markopoulos (Ayusaya Puppet Theater)
Jumping-in-the-air-and-gravity-defying puppets come to meet you and tell you their big secret: “Nothing ties you to the ground; dance, you shan't fall!”
Photo: Stavros Habakis
We are all tightrope walkers, hence worthy of attaining freedom; this is what Jean Genet seems to be telling us in his famous lyrical manifesto “Le Funambule” (“The Tightrope Walker”, 1955), which has inspired this performance by the Ayusaya Puppet Theater.
Puppet players, musicians and dancers give life to hand-made puppets. Drawing inspiration from Genet’s instructions to the tightrope walker Abdallah Bentaga, to whom he dedicated his allegorical essay, our troupe invites us to discover the craftsman-artist inside us all and respond to the challenges he sets us in the art of living.
Credits
Direction-set design-constructions-puppets: Stathis Markopoulos (Ayusaya Puppet Theater)
Dramaturgy: Vicky Georgiadou
Movement: Antonis Koutroumbis (Plefsis Group)
Original Music: George Kastanos
Cast: George Kastanos, Vassilki Maltsaki, Stathis Markopoulos, Anneta Stefanopoulou, Maria Fountouli
Executive Production: Delta Pi
Produced by: Onassis Stegi
The performance is based on the translation by Christoforos Liontakis of Jean Genet’s “Le Funambule - Le Condamné à mort” (“The Tightrope Walker - The Man Sentenced to Death”), Ekdoseis Eikostou Protou (21st c. Editions), Athens, 2016.Read more about our activities “Outside the Onassis Stegi”
For the fourth consecutive year, Onassis Stegi will be taking an original production on tour around Greece. True to its goal of making what it does available to everyone, Onassis Stegi has set its sights on children in secondary education, educators and special groups with limited mobility — like schools in remote areas, but also the elderly, the sick and the institutionalized.
Over the last three years, the Outside the Onassis Stegi program has included its theatrical productions of "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull" (dir. Paris Mexis), "The Call of the Wild" (dir. Eleni Efthymiou), and the dance production "Dribbles and Triplets" (dir. Menti Mega), which was performed in basketball courts and school and municipal sports halls.
In each of the three years, over 5,000 people saw these productions, which have also been performed at venues ranging from the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center to the village square in Filoti, Naxos, the SOS Children's Villages in Vari to the Special Education Needs Primary School in Keratsini, the OKANA Social Reintegration Unit to the Volos Nursing Home, the Second Chance School in Nigrita Prison to the Hospice for the Disabled.Read more about the show
Stathis Markopoulos studied in the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theater at the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague, and served his apprenticeship in the workshop and street performances of the Spanish Marionétas del Matadero company. He has been active professionally in Greece and abroad since the founding of the Ayusaya! puppet theater in 1992, performing his own productions but also collaborating with other companies.
"Ayusaya" is what Carnival revelers in Arta would shout in days gone by, and means something like “Charge!” or “At them!”.
The puppets in the show were inspired by paintings by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero, traditional Japanese Bunraku puppet theater, and the European Punch and Judy tradition.
The audience can engage with the company after the performance in the form of a free-ranging discussion with members of the company and a hands-on game played with the puppets. The aim is to share the experience, explore the work and its themes, and investigate the animation process, the nature of puppets and their unique relationship with their puppeteers in a fun way.
