Intolerance by Io Voulgaraki

Intolerance (noun, uncountable): Hatred of people with different beliefs from yourself.

“Human coexistence on Earth is conveyed as ongoing civil strife”, notes Io Voulgaraki, a creator of supremely atmospheric, fiercely passionate spectacles with tragi-comic tones.

For her “Intolerance”, Voulgaraki stages only the last of the film’s four sections, in which an innocent man is condemned for a crime he did not commit. Set against the puritanism and unbridled capitalism of the US in 1914–15, the production uses a contemporary theatrical idiom to compose a silent music-theatre epic which tackles the issue of ‘intolerance versus solidarity’.

A cast of ten and a quartet playing original music by Thodoris Abazis join her in this keenly-awaited spectacle which—promising political, social and existential self-knowledge—poses the question: ‘Us’ or ‘them’ forever. But why ‘forever’?