Clean City

Who cleans Athens? Why are the majority of Athens’ cleaners women and immigrants? Were they ‘born’ cleaners? How do their CVs differ from yours? Maybe, in the end, we’re all subjects of history? And while we’re at it, why do we use the phrase ‘a clean sweep’ to describe police operations intended to rid public spaces of ‘undesirables’ (immigrants, the homeless, ‘deviants’)?

Following on from “Telemachus—Should I Stay or Should I go?”, Azas and Tsinikoris return to the OCC to explore the racism of ‘cleanliness’ and ‘purity’, the perils of fascism, female immigration to Greece, and the identity of the ‘cleaning lady’.

As a theatre of the real, “Clean City” traces and redefines stereotypes through the gaze and personal accounts of the real experts when it comes to cleanliness: the immigrant cleaning ladies of Athens. At the same time, “Clean City” explores the historical, philosophical and political extensions of ‘clean’ as a normative concept which was adopted by the Nazis and became a central pillar of a racist ideology which sought to exterminate all ‘Others’ to create a ‘pure’ race.

“Clean City” is an Onassis Stegi, Sirenos International Theatre Festival (Vilnius, Lithuania)), Teatro Maria Matos (Lisbon, Portugal) and Tiger Dublin Fringe (Dublin, Ireland) co-production within the framework of ΕUROPOLY, a European Goethe Instituts project. Following its première at the Onassis Stegi, the production will tour European theatres and international festivals.