Erotic Postcards from Greece

A performance that leaves nothing standing in its wake, exposing everything to the hot Greek sun. Old habits, pathogens, summertime themes, epidemiological loads, tanned bodies, music hits, the desperate times of 2020, Greek lovers and ’70s-style flirting, fleeting love affairs, pills, empty pockets, and people who hate summer. Which Greek summer myths are we left with after the strangest summer in recent times? Is Greek summer a way of thinking? A way of looking at things? How does it unfold in the midst of a pandemic? What have been the effects on the emotional state and daily lives of today’s Greeks, and on the country’s once roaring tourist trade? At the end of it all, what was it we missed most out of everything summer means?

“Erotic Postcards from Greece” – an episodic musical farce on the myth that is Greek summer – was stopped five days before its premiere in March due to the lockdown. The work is finally to be presented on the Onassis Stegi Upper Stage on 22 October 2020, with the inclusion of additional elements that sprang readily from the new ways life is being lived since March.

Before Lena Kitsopoulou, Kostas Koutsolelos, Ioanna Mavrea, Theano Metaxa, Sofia Priovolou, Gary Salomon, and George Vourdamis bring their winter clothes out from storage, they grab their beach tents and bats, and talk to us about the compulsive notion that is Greek summer, all dreamy and erotic – a thing recognized here as a collective, national and, in part, international fantasy constructed out of various social stereotypes. They also align themselves perfectly with the times, with the situations we currently face, offering lessons on surviving 2020 filled with cutting honesty and caustic humor. Scenes of everyday life in a pandemic are set to famous seaside songs, and threaded through with clichés that equate the touristic with the sexual in Greece’s marketing as a summertime retreat.

In this, their first collaboration, Anestis Azas and Lena Kitsopoulou explore the dark side of Greek summer: a moment for exceptions and relaxation, a point that helps define time itself and the ways in which it is perceived in Greece, and a season filled with expectant hopes and their denial. It is a performance that strikes a balance between autobiographical and fictive elements, exploring a variety of allusions to summertime imagery in order to comment on the patriarchy and national identity, on sexuality and sexism in our society today, and on cancellation and panic in our new post-Covid economic, social, and cultural realities.

Special thanks to Eleana Tsichli for her support and artistic assistance in the performance’s research and preparation.

Special thanks to George Depollas and Penelope Gerasimou for kindly providing us photo and video material.

Thanks also to: Katerina Zouganeli, Stathis Kokkoris, Christina Bonarou, Andriane Koufou, Konstantinos Koukas, Dimosthenis Petrovas, Dimitris Polychronis, Paola Revenioti, Stavros Toubis, Vassilis Toubis, as well as the clothing companies BASEHIT, EMERSON & Sun of a Beach