Chorus presents a theatrical performance by Chara Cosseyan titled O Armenis (“The Armenian”). This dramatization of Cosseyan’s short story from her collection titled The puerperium of Absence (published by Odos Panos) will be staged at the Apollon Theatre in Patras on March 13 and 14, 2017 at 21:00.

The story projects a real person’s microcosm into the wider events surrounding the genocide of the Armenians, the Second World War and the civil war. It explores the ways in which the collective affects the individual. It also underscores the impossibility of escaping the limits imposed on our lives by those who draw lines on a map and establish spheres of influence that disdain people and tatter their dreams.

The adaptation crosses every field of interpretation: it adds words, actors, music and image to the alchemical catalyst of the stage. Once on stage, these elements combine to reveal the deep and hidden emotions that constitute each person’s individual story and taint our memories and our lives.

It should be noted that this year we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.

His name was Karabet. They called him Karabety. Everyone knew him as “the Armenian”….it all began during the Great War, even though I was never able to understand which war is great and which one is small…but genocide is an open market. Everything is out in the field but only certain stalks get uprooted… the curse of those who were born Armenian, Pontic Greek, Kurd, Jew… a sudden departure for Greece in 1915, those who manage to escape the curse of the genocide, a million and a half souls died in the hands of our neighbours during a caravan of death, hunger, thirst and shame…Anything else is the particular story of each person.

Creation team:

Adaptation: Tasos Mplatzios

Director: Tania Kitsou – Tasos Mplatzios

Set designer – lighting: Tania Kitsou

Music composition: traditional Armenian music and songs

Video art: gcl.dp productions Giorgos Symeonidis, Artemis Stathakou

Costume designer – Makeup artist: Lazaros Milios

Audiovisual material: ARMENIKA magazine – Mike Chilingirian, Cristabor Missikian

Performers: Tasos Mplatzios, Voula Pelekanou, Maria Kastani

The performance is under the auspices of the Embassy of Armenia.