Onassis Channel | “Democracy Is Coming” by Christos Sarris
An Onassis Culture production | Duration: 20 min.
“Democracy Is Coming” by Christos Sarris attempts to link the current global state of affairs and political reflection with theater. Based on Simon Critchley’s book “Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us," it arrives from Ancient Greece and Contemporary America straight to the Onassis Channel on YouTube.
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What is the state of democracy today? Can we reinvent it for our era? In May 2018, Onassis Stegi traveled to St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, with the play “Birds,” directed by Nikos Karathanos, initiating a discussion around democracy. A year later, the “Onassis Festival 2019: Democracy Is Coming” deepened those reflections around the concept of democracy and free artistic expression with a diverse program of theater, music, discussions, and other events in a co-production with Public Theater in New York. With the titular festival as its springboard and drawing inspiration from Simon Critchley’s book “Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us," the “Democracy Is Coming” documentary transpires like an oracle, an ancient prophecy, which is interpreted through the triptych “Theater―Politics―Tragedy.”
Like a modern-day Athenian Ecclesia―i.e., Assembly of Citizens―a group of thinkers, artists, and citizens of the world convene to address the concepts of democracy and city-state: actor and writer Michael Imperioli, Dr. Young Richard Kim, philosopher and writer Simon Critchley, curator of “Onassis Festival 2019: Democracy Is Coming” Mark Russell, co-interviewer and curator Paul Holdengräber, and actress, writer, and director Lena Kitsopoulou. Their ruling has yet to be determined.
The true protagonist of ancient tragedy is the city-state.
"When I was a teenager, I loved America. When I was a teenager, I hated America. America was to blame for the junta regime in Greece, for the bombing in Yugoslavia, for capitalism. But America also gave me road movies, the blues, and garage rock. It created the KKK and fostered brutal racism, yet it was in America that people took to the streets in 1969 after the violent events at the Stonewall Inn, sparking the LGBT rights movement. Later, I got to know it up close. Τhe wonders of its big cities -New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston- and the marvels of the culture I love: Highway 66, Joshua Tree, all the way to Slab City, the town of outcasts. America is still the country I both love and hate, and in a twist of fate, ‘Democracy Is Coming,’ the festival organized by the Onassis Foundation in New York in April 2019, has become urgently relevant once again. And finally, as Simon Critchley says, ‘the drama, once again, takes place offstage’ - but maybe this time, we, the audience, won’t sit quietly at home when the lights go down on November 5th."
The script was created based on Simon Critchley's book, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us, published in Greek by Patakis Publishers.
Simon Critchley is member of the Board of Directors of the Onassis Foundation, and part of the curatorial team, while he lent his voice to the narration.
