Oxygen | George Koutlis

“I write for a generation of educated young people who do not go to the theater that often,” the leading spokesman of the New Russian Drama, Ivan Vyrypaev, stated in 2003, now ostracized by the Russian regime and a naturalized Polish citizen. A theatrical manifesto of the 00s generation, "Oxygen" was written as a prose narrated by two characters—a girl and a boy bearing the same name—accompanied by a live dj-set to allow its staging in theatrical venues and clubs equally. Structured in ten chapters, like a transcription of the Ten Commandments and a novel New Testament, it launched from a reversed “Thou shalt not kill” to culminate into a biblical Revelation, all the while permeated by the agonizing question, “What is oxygen to you?”

Twenty years later, the popular Greek director George Koutlis transcribes the work into today in the form of a Generation Z reflection, transforming the stage into a rave party with dj's Reign of Time on the decks and a young troupe that, like a post-dramatic chorus, seeks through the lens of blasphemous poetics the antidote to the psychopolitical suffocation of our times.

A rave party, a bacchanalian non-stop beat, a generational manifesto, beings vibrating to the DJ’s music, searching for a lost religiosity, giving the impression that if they stop dancing, they will stop breathing. They are looking for what oxygen is, what makes us breathe, and what deprives us of air. They try to talk to the audience alongside music, which brings the body into a trance. Two DJs at the decks, 11 actors, and a 12-member chorus of dancers. All of them are members of Generation Z. They dance non-stop, they get drunk, they fall in love, and some of them grab the microphones and talk. Based on Ivan Vyrypayev's play, “Oxygen,” with texts devised by the actors, we will tell the story of Sasha and Sasha, who open their souls―all the dirt, cruelty, and beauty of human nature―trying to answer a primordial, unanswerable question: “What is your oxygen?”

-George Koutlis

-“Oxygen” was first staged in Greece in 2007 at the Amore Theatre, directed by Maria-Louiza Papadopoulou, with Petros Stathakopoulos and Penelope Markopoulou in the leading roles and live music by Alexandros Voulgaris (The Boy).