Vitrioli

In 2013, the National Theatre of Greece asked Olivier Py to direct Yannis Mavritsakis's latest play, Vitrioli. The director and the poet had met the year before, when Olivier Py had directed The Blind Spot for the radio station France Culture. Vitrioli is the story of a family, set against the backdrop of a crisis, of an intimate war. It is about the Greece of today, but in an indirect manner; it speaks of humanity, but never in terms of economic and political concepts. It tells of a catastrophe, of a world where nothing is possible anymore, of a sacrificed generation that dies without even trying to rebel anymore. Its main character is a young man who is aware of his inability to do anything, to escape other people's desires (be they a potential girlfriend, his mother, a hermaphrodite, his priest, his doctor, even strangers). He accepts his role as the object of other people's fantasies, of their neurotic projections, of their fears and anxieties... If Mavritsakis's play owes a lot to ancient tragedy, it is also much darker. There is no salvation to be found, not from the heavens, not from within, not from art or from words. And the pessimism of Vitrioli is only equalled by its lucidity, which is completely devoid of cynicism and of moralising posturing. Mavritsakis holds a mirror to his country and to the anxieties of a youth that has lost all spirituality. This is echoed by the bifrontal scenography, which has the audience see themselves watching the catastrophe unfold, like a choir, against a backdrop of mud and light.

Poet, playwright, novelist, director for the theatre and the opera, actor, singer... Olivier Py has lived and breathed the theatre since 1988. In 1995, he made a splash at the Festival d'Avignon with The Servant, An Endless Story, a cycle of plays lasting for 24 hours, before coming back to the Festival time and again, with Apologetic, The Face of Orpheus, The Joyful Apocalypse, Requiem for Srebrenica, The Winners, The Vilar Enigma shown in the Cour d'honneur. He also sang Miss Knife for the OFF festival. In 2006 he wrote his first comedy, Comedy Illusions, before beginning a long work on tragedy with The Children of Saturn, the Oresteia, and Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, and The Persians. His work often includes references to Jean Vilar and to popular forms of theatre. Director of the Centre dramatique national d'Orléans, then of the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, he has been active in the fight for public theatre and has defended several political causes: with Ariane Mnouchkine and François Tanguy against the siege of Sarajevo, supporting undocumented immigrants, raising the Palestinian flag and welcoming the Syrian resistance at the Odéon Theatre, supporting Christiane Taubira and the cause of gay marriage, speaking out against the far right during the 2014 municipal elections... He has been the director of the Festival d'Avignon since September 2013.

Yannis Mavritsakis was born in Montreal in 1964 and has lived in Athens since 1970. A graduate of the National Theatre of Greece Drama School, he worked as an actor until 2003, when he decided to devote himself to writing for the theatre. He has written five plays: The Blind Spot, Wolfgang, Famina, Vitrioli, and Redwards Shift. All his plays have been shown in Athens—at the National Theatre, at the Athens Festival, and at the Poreia Theatre. The Blind Spot won the Karolos Koun award for best Greek play in 2008, Wolfgang the Georgious Hortatsis award in 2008 and 2010. The French translation of the latter received in 2010 a grand from the Commission national d'Aide à la création de textes dramatiques (National Committee for Assistance to the creation of dramatic texts) in Paris.

Laurent Muhleisen, April 2014

Direction Olivier Py
Translation Dimitra Kondylaki
Scenography and costumes Pierre-André Weitz
Lighting Bertrand Killy
Direction assistant  Xenia Themeli
Scenography and costumes assistant  Paul Thanopoulos

With
Maria Kechagioglou Minas Chatzisavvas Nikos Chatzopoulos Dimitris Lalos Periklis Moustakis Kitty Paitazoglou Haris Tzortzakis

Production Théâtre national de Grèce
With the support of Institut français de Grèce dans le cadre du programme Grèce-France Alliance 2014, Fondation Stavros Niarchos