“The years of innocence”, a chapter from Doukas Kapantais’ sophisticated pornographic novel The Empress, provides the source for this new venture from the Nova Melancholia theatre company. Having engaged with Georges Bataille’s Dead Man (in a performance included in the Hypnos Project at the OCC, Athens), the company returns to the world of erotic literature with new material structured to reveal multiple facets of human desire and social conventions. Nova Melancholia freely adapted Doukas Kapantais’ tale of sadism and sexual arousal to create a performance which feeds into fantasies literary lust and an erotic utopia.

A strange law of the “New Earth”. An extreme show broadcast live to our television screens, an orgiastic ritual of sexual punishment meted out by a son to his lecherous mother. And with the adults gathered in the living room to watch the incestuous coupling on their sets, the children, peeping silently through the keyhole, are swept up and initiated into an orgy of unprecedented pleasure...

“As decreed by the puritanical nomenklatura of the age, art had to be political art, and everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, went around making this total song and dance about how their art was of the right kind. Especially in times of crisis and unrest, private introspection, or (even worse) an interest in physical pleasures, could even cost you your life”, Kapantais writes in The Empress.

In the words of the Nova Melancholia company: “It’s a game without rules, without an obvious goal, and without references to our conventional socio-political present; the performance engages in the playful and narcissistic pursuit of pleasure, laying claim to the right to a non-political art”.

 

details

Performers: Kostas Koutsolelos, Viky Kyriakoulakou, Alexia Sarantopoulou, Despina Chatzipavlidou
Script: Doukas Kapantais
Directed by: Vasilis Noulas
Set design: Kostas Tzimoulis
Costumes: Nana Sachini
On-stage music: “to koritsi koimatai”
Lighting Design: Tasos Palaioroutas
Assistant Director: Elisavet Xanthopoulou
Surtitles translation: Memi Katsoni
Photographs: Yannis Priftis, Andreas Simopoulos
Production: Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens
 

► ONASSIS CULTURAL CENTRE - ATHENS _ Upper Stage 
11-26 Mar 2017
Duration: 90 minutes
Age guidance: 18+

 

press

5.3.2017 - POPAGANDA.GR
"Vassilis Noulas and Kostas Koutsolelos live the age of innocence through an incest" [gr]
Interview to Lina Rokou

7.3.2017 - ATHINORAMA
"The provocateurs of  Nova Melancholia leave the basements for Onassis Cultural Center" [gr]
by Iliana Dimadi

8.3.2017 - ARTPLAY.GR
"Waiting for the ecstasy at an erotic literary salon" [gr]
comments by Vassilis Noulas and Kostas Tzimoulis

8.3.2017 - ATHENS VOICE
"Kostas Koutsolelos. A serious trol of fb at OCC" [gr]
Kostas Koutsolelos interviewed by Dimitris Mastrogiannitis 

10.3.2017 - TOSPIRTO.NET
"Vassilis Noulas of the Nova Melancholia talks to www.tospirto.net" [gr]
Vassilis Noulas interviewed by Georgia Economou

11.3.2017 - ONASSIS CULTURAL CENTRE
The flyer of the performance [gr]
with the director's note

12.3.2017 - DOCUMENTO
"The Age of Innocence is a dramaturgy of liquids" [gr]
Vassilis Noulas interviewed by Dimitris Georgopoulos

13.3.2017 - POSTMODERN.GR
"A pornographic novel on stage" [gr]
by Dimitris Kalantzis

15.3.2017 - BOOKPRESS.GR
"De Sade in the contemporary salons" [gr]
Review by Nikos Xenios

16.3.2017 - POPAGANDA.GR
"Two texts into the wrong hands: Karantzas - Bernhard, Nova Melancholia - Kapantais" [gr]
Review by Samson Rakas 

19.3.2017 - ELEYTHERIA TOU TYPOU
"Blue Velvet with a scent of pornography" [gr]
Impressions by Sakis Dimitrakopoulos  

19.3.2017 - PROTO THEMA
"Pornography, hypocrisy" [gr]
Impressions by Dimitris Danikas

20.3.2017 - GRAFEIN
"Petit bourgeois fascism in reverse, manihaistic bipolarity, lack of imagination..." [gr]
Review by Konstantinos Bouras

21.3.2017 - TA NEA
"The Age of Innocence: Fake sex" [gr]
Review by Myrto Loverdou

24.3.2017 - IMERODROMOS
"On the Earth of the abominable delights" [gr]
Review by Dimitris Tsatsoulis