Titans

What if all of us are TITANS? Euripides Laskaridis revisits a work first presented in 2017 to talk about gods and mortals in the strange year 2021. At the Main Stage of Onassis Stegi, his TITANS lead us on stage from 8 to 12 December to tell us about the dark and the light. What has changed through the years and now resurfaces with fervour in this work? Laskaridis notes about the reboot of the TITANS: "Nothing is the same anymore. Even the subtlest touch is followed by hesitation and a deep exhale can cause awkwardness. We do not come together as we used to, but still, the desire for closeness does not diminish. Since the first presentation of the TITANS in the summer of 2017, we travelled from Canada to Hong Kong, overall in twelve countries. The last performance took place on February 2020 at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid, where for the first time we heard in the news about a virus that called for isolation. Before we even know it, closeness, even the smallest touch, became inappropriate. It now seems like this era has passed and our bodies can now rejoin with not so many restraints. In TITANS, our two heroes - these odd and inseperable gods – try from the beginning to find a way to come across each other’s path. Their embrace in the end is distraught and climactic, seeming as if they accomplished at last to be together once again. Everything around us has significantly changed and we seek from art a guiding light to imagine the next day’s world. Closeness has always been tied with intensity, especially at the point where the transpiring light encounters the receding darkness."

The work of Laskaridis, a constant collaborator of Onassis Stegi for the past years, remains unclassifiable and at the same time is addressed to everyone. “Sacred and profane, ritual and prosaic, divine and infernal. It escapes every classification, every qualification. It is not theater, not dance, not performance, and yet it partakes of all their natures,” as the Italian journalist Enrico Pastore has written.

“Laskaridis is a craftsman of times and atmospheres, a creator of extraordinary characters, capable of connecting the domestic with echoes of the cosmic,” according to “Núvol” (Spain).

In TITANS, the hilarious and the serious are constantly being interchanged, and ideas on how things should be have already been lost. Euripides Laskaridis envisions a universe older than the world, a time of the mind where even shadows are alive and things have no set or stable size. The tiniest of things become enormous. All time and all space can fit on stage, and surprises, excitement, and terror all spring – without warning – from the work’s details. The further back we go, the more we see things switch back and forth: light with dark, the major with the minor.

Centre stage stand two solitary beings playing an endless game with no apparent purpose. Their laughter seems worrying, their worries laughable. And yet, their world is made from the same materials, feelings and thoughts as our own. Their failures are transformed into a defense of our own. Their failures are transformed into a defense of our own. ““In this work – one unique in terms of genre, quite unlike anything else – we find something that resembles the wonderment a child feels when first faced with the transformative, illusory, inventive power of theater. It’s a precious thing,” Catherine Lalonde remarks in “Le Devoir” (France).

There is something that makes this admittedly absurd artistic language win over audiences, wherever it may go. It does so because behind all the ridiculousness and the irony lies an ever steadfast tenderness.

Credits

Direction, Choreography & Set Design: Euripides Laskaridis

Performed by: Euripides Laskaridis & Dimitris Matsoukas

Costume Design: Angelos Mentis

Original Music & Sound Design: Giorgos Poulios

Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou

Dramaturgy Consultant: Alexandros Mistriotis

Artistic Collaborators: Drossos Skotis, Diogenis Skaltsas, Simos Patieridis, Nikos Dragonas, Thanos Lekkas

Sound Design, Programming & Live Operation: Themistocles Pandelopoulos

Sound Installation & Live Operation: Kostis Pavlopoulos

Live Music Operation Trainee: Giorgos Chanos

Lighting Installation & Operation: Konstantinos Margas

Lighting Installation & Operation Trainee: Vangelis Moundrichas

Assistants to the Director: & Dimos Klimenof [2021]

Assistant to the Set & Costume Designers: Ioanna Plessa

Set Assistants on Tour: Tzela Christopoulou, Dinos Nikolaou

Trainee Set Assistant: Konstandinos Chaldeos

Trainee Production Assistants: Lisandra Caires & Samuel Esteves Querido

Coproducers Coordinator: Elisabeth Tsouchtidi

Tour Managers: Simona Fremder [2018-21], Gema Rollon Blanco [2019], Nikos Mavrakis – TooFarEast Productions [2019-2021]

Tour Technical Director: Konstantinos Margas

Photography: Elina Giounanli & Julian Mommert

Video Trailer Edited by: Euripides Laskaridis

Created with the support of Fondation d’entreprise Hermès as part of its New Settings #7 programme

Co-produced by: Athens & Epidaurus Festival [GR, 2017], Théâtre de la Ville [FR], Eleusis 2021 European Capital of Culture [GR], Festival TransAmériques [CA], Julidans [NL], Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall [GR], CCVF Guimarães [PR], OSMOSIS performing arts company

Supported by: O Espaço do Tempo [PR], NEON [GR], Centre Culturel Hellénique [FR], Isadora & Raymond Duncan Dance Research Center [GR], Aegean Airlines [GR]

A few words about Euripides Laskaridis

Director and performer Euripides Laskaridis studied acting at the Karolos Koun Art Theater in Athens and directing at Brooklyn College (NYC) on an Onassis Foundation Scholarship. His artistic identity is inextricably linked to his own research on the themes of transformation and ridicule. As a performer he has worked with directors such as Dimitris Papaioannou and Robert Wilson, among others. Since 2000 he has been directing his own works, both for the stage and award-winning short films. In 2009, he founded the OSMOSIS performing arts company and since then has staged their works at venues and festivals such as Athens and Epidaurus Festival, ‘Embros’ theater, National Theater of Greece, the ancient theater of Hephaestia et al. RELIC (2015), the company’s first stage work on tour, has been performed at more than thirty festivals and venues across the world, including Lyon Biennale de la danse, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Barbican Pit in London, and The Public Theater in New York. The twenty-one international touring stops of his work, TITANS (2017), include Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Festival TransAmériques in Montreal, Tanz im August in Berlin, and Hong Kong Arts Festival. His most-populous work until now, ELENIT (2019) – an international co-production (Belgium, France, Greece, Spain, Italy, Canada, The Netherlands, and Portugal) – had its world premiere at the Onassis Stegi and began its international tour in early 2020, just before the emergence of the pandemic. During lockdown, OSMOSIS, with the creative consultancy provided by Eva Stefani, created the short documentary film HERE NOT HERE, which was screened on online platforms across the globe (Peru, Dublin, Porto, and Paris) during 2021. In 2016 Laskaridis was awarded an inaugural Pina Bausch Fellowship. The works RELIC, TITANS, and ELENIT have been invited to perform at theaters and international festivals for the next two years.

Production Info

Onassis Stegi

107-109 Syngrou Avenue

December 2-12, 2021

Main Stage

Performances: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday | 20:30

Duration: 50 minutes

In accordance with Greek government guidance, and as part of measures combatting the spread of Covid-19, everyone entering the Onassis Stegi venue must present either a vaccination certificate (valid 14 days after final dose) or a recovery certificate (valid for six months after diagnosis).

An ID card or passport must also be presented, for verification purposes. Specially appointed staff will check these certificates by scanning the relevant QR code using the official “CovidFreeGr” app. Read more here.

Here at Onassis Stegi, everyone’s safety is our prime concern.

Tickets
Onassis Stegi Friends presale: November 18, 2021, 17:00

General presale: November 20, 2021, 17:00

Full Price: 14 €

Concessions, Stegi Friends & Groups (5-9 persons): 11 €

Large Groups (10+ persons): 10 €

Local Residents:7 €

People with Disabilities & the Unemployed: 5 €

People with Disabilities’ Carers 10 €

For group bookings, please contact: groupsales@onassis.org

Face masks must be worn everywhere inside Onassis Stegi.

Hand sanitizer stations are provided throughout the building.

Visitors must make their way directly to the auditoria and are not allowed to linger in the venue’s public areas (such as the foyer).

To avoid congestion, visitors will be assigned specific arrival time slots. Tickets must be brought printed out, or presented in digital form.

Tickets are strictly for personal use and are non-transferable.

Performances have no intermission.

The ground floor cloakroom and bar (Liquid Bar) will remain closed.

Audience members must sit in the seats indicated on their tickets – no seating changes are allowed.

Please follow the instructions of our security staff and ushers as you enter and exit the auditoria.

Onassis Stegi reserves the right to eject any ticket holder refusing to follow the rules and regulations set out here.

For Main Stage, Upper Stage, and Exhibition Hall (-1) events, use of the elevators is restricted to two persons at a time. Face masks must be worn.

Access to the underground car park is limited to drivers of vehicles. Face masks must be worn.

The Onassis Stegi ticket office will remain closed. Tickets cannot be printed out on site.

Tickets can be purchased on our website (onassis.org) and via our call center.

Visitors must print out their own tickets before arrival, or present them in digital form.