Following her last creation “Oedipus: Sex with Mum Was Blinding” presented at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) New York City which received raving reviews (included in the Observer‘s and the OperaWIRE‘s must-see list), the unconventional director Elli Papakonstantinou walks off the beaten path. This time, to create a new interactive digital performance: a new way to direct, produce and promote theatre.
 
The SOLD OUT performance “Τraces of Antigone”, written by the acclaimed contemporary swedish playwright Christina Ouzounidis, is a digital online cinematic concert in English, Greek and Swedish with the participation of an international cast of performers.  The show that received raving reviews from viewers from all around the globe, is designed specifically for the ZOOM platform used here as an alternative “stage”. 
 
“Traces of Antigone”,  an overpainting of Antigone’s ancient myth, came as an immediate response to the coronavirus global lock downs and the ongoing dialogue on what presence (and absence) is all about. For the first time in recent history, seclusion is no longer a feminine condition. This marked a good time for the company ODC Ensemble to move out of its safety zone and explore in a circle of women a completely new performative language that we have come to call: “theatre of seclusion”.
 
 
What is “theatre of seclusion”?
[© Elli Papakonstantinou/ODC Ensemble, 28 March 2020, Athens, All rights reserved]
It is a live-streamed performance developed, designed and executed in seclusion in the many different homes of the artists, who join forces to create one unique audiovisual experience, a cinematic concert in synchronicity.
“Theatre of seclusion” comes with a set of rules and restrictions:
1-We rehearse, develop and execute the whole piece in quarantine with the help of digital platforms.
2-We are allowed to make use only of the props, musical instruments, set environment, costumes and technical means that were made available to us when quarantined; no add-ons later on! Our home is the set.
3-Public space and home space merge into one. The tagged names on our windows name us and reconfigure anonymity and objectification, always already “singular-plural”, in the elsewhere and otherwise
4-We work in seclusion from our homes like women before us. Are we trapped, safe or emancipated? It is up to our viewers to tell, as we grant them permission to invade our most intimate world. Zoom in to details, zoom out to the galaxies.
5-We all use the same basic technology to weave in synchronicity this new age audiovisual embroidering.
6-We invite viewers to interact with the performance, thus propelled to the public agora.
 
This is a LIVE performance! Not recorded!

DIRECTOR ’S NOTE
 
“Theatre is an art form that requires physical presence - we all know that well. I had just started rehearsing for “Traces of Antigone” when the quarantine started. We decided to keep on working with the help of technology and we kept meeting on a daily basis. 
As a director, I was stunned when I realized that the containment of the physical bodies in digital windows, opened a direct dialogue with the theme of the piece, which is the entrapment in gender identity and the relation of womanhood and domesticity. I began to experiment with the new tools of Zoom platform which, as I discovered, provided some aesthetic challenges and a new aesthetic language. Therefore, the shift of a part of our activities to the internet was not the only reason for this concept. My objective here is to create a whole new aesthetic language using means that we hadn’t experimented with before thinking that theatre is regenerated by any dramaturgical approach that supports its live and ephemeral nature.”
 
Elli Papakonstantinou


What they said about the show:
 
"I loved that piece and am most grateful to you for bringing it into English and other languages.  It is socially powerful and wonderfully experimental.  It moved me and allowed me to feel most grateful for feminist art projects that link our rage with solidarity. A million thanks!"
Judith Butler, writer of Double Gender, Precarious Life, Bodies That Matter,  Undoing Gender and more
 
 “That was extraordinary. A fascinating visual kaleidoscope and a very compelling examination of female identity. Bravo!”
Douglas Kennedy, writer of the international bestsellers The Big Picture, The Pursuit of Happiness, Leaving the World and more; ex director of the Peacock Theatre in London UK
 
“So intense and suggestive. It’s like a weird hotel! And I would love to stay there.  You created a magical and mystical universe.”
 Christina Ouzounidis, playwright
 
“It blew my mind - Elli has figured out a way to make theater on zoom, complete with music which is sometimes foreground and sometimes background. I found this performance gripping. Be forewarned - it’s about sexual violence towards women, aka Antigone… I never imagined this as possible.  Congratulations - I think you're inventing a new art form!”
Sara Jobin, conductor and art director of the Center for Contemporary Opera, NY, US
 
“You are breaking open some walls, my dear! Respect! Pipilotti Rist comes to me. Bright colours, close-ups!” 
Mieke Renders, director of Trans Europe Halles Network, Sweden
 
“These days, what is touching, for me, it's to see how theatre, again and again, is able to reinvent itself, and your performance is the proof of it.  I think that flexibility is a form of beautiness and your flexibility has generated Beauty. [...] I really enjoyed the vision, especially for the atmosphere you create that is  mesmerizing. I like how you reinvented spaces and objects, making me forget where you all were (and we all were!), that's to say in our private houses. You are able to create another space, like theatre always does. Moreover, the pace/rhythm changes make me feel involved all the time.”
Lucia Franchi, director of Kilowatt Festival and CapoTrave company
 
“I thought the show was extraordinary.  Much the most dynamic and "live" use I've seen of the Zoom medium so far.  I do think we've got to look for new ways of generating theatrical intimacy and solidarity that go beyond spacing out conventional auditoria or sticking old shows on YouTube...” 
Michael Walling, UK, theatre director, academic and artistic director of BorderCrossings
 
“Even though it is a time-synchronous performance, it is a different beast than live performance in a full sense of the word. The entire project is very timely, and it offers a take on this whole situation that is sorely missing from the public discourse, at least here in the US.” 
Prof. Branislav Jakovljevic, Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University, USA
 
"I don't know how to thank you. I was immersed in a very intense experience;  you managed to get into the woman and gender themes by abandoning all stereotypes and any form of conditioning to get to the deep sense of the human being beyond gender, digging into the language that defines us but at the same time can also destroy us, if used without intelligence. [...] Technically I think it is a really complex work, you have done an incredible job pushing the potential that the video has made available to you with sensitivity and intelligence, without being crushed by the medium but looking for a new one!" 
Tamara Malleo, journalist, Teatromania - Telelombardia, Italy
 
“Great queer show on the internet. A real tour de force by Elli Papakonstantinou who reshapes her means of expression for Christina Ouzounidou's Antigone [...] The great reward of incorporeal transformations. That high art could emerge through a general rehearsal of a work on Zoom, that the decomposition of a play into a logic of fragmentation could function as pure theater, only Deleuze could predict (in Logic of sensation, 4.32). And only a creator of Elli Papakonstantinou's caliber could imagine and invent it. Antigone, like a little girl who keeps all her options open, does not go down to the grave, but rises to the virtual horizon of freedom and autonomy. It was night in Pelion and I hoped for this great rehearsal to never end... For me, one of the top performances of the year, including the ones performed on stage before the coronavirus. Bliss!” 
Chloe Kolyri, psychoanalyst
 
“Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to watch your interesting work! I watched the rehearsal through a special condition of lack of sleep and the loss of a friend. As I move away from that night, the images and words become stronger instead of fading. The strange thing is that they have already been placed in a special space-time that did not exist before. And when I want to, it's very easy for me to recall them. I think this new dimension is very worthwhile. It makes me happy. Thanks again!” 
Polly Vlachou, artist and documentarist


 


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Traces of Antigone