Imagine a Heroic Landscape is an eco-feminist hybrid performance, dealing with modernist aestetics, gender, politics, inclusivity, utopia, national identity.

The performance draws its initial inspiration from the "letters from prison" sent by Rosa Luxemburg to Sonia Liebknecht between 1917 and 1918. The letters touch us with their pure humanity and the incredible sensitivity they exhibit to everything that lives (bird, insect, plant).

In 2019, 100 years have passed since the assassination of the Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg from the right-wing Freikorps militias in Berlin in 1919. Imagine a Heroic Landscape is our own tribute to a lost revolution and a personality that still inspires and exemplifies. The title of the performance comes from a phrase that we have isolated from one of these letters. The five performers come from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, thus enhancing the international character of Rosa’s spirit.   

What is Utopia? What is heroism? How do we fancy a landscape? Rosa seems to find heroism in the humble fight of an overturned beetle with the ants or in a bird’s outburst! How can we deal with the small, seemingly insignificant in heroic terms?  What is worth, for us, fighting for?

In German romanticism, people were searching for the awe of the Sublime in the great natural phenomena (for example, in a storm, in a snow-capped mountain peak). Rosa Luxemburg seems to find heroism in the battle of an upside-down beetle with the ants or in a bird's lyrical outburst! Can I, therefore, deal with the small, seemingly insignificant in terms of heroism?

Let’s create an ephemeral monument, a tribute to Rosa, by using precarious objects and materials just like our bodies and voices!

 

details

Directed by Vassilis Noulas
Set | Costume | Lighting design by Kostas Tzimoulis
Texts by Rosa Luxemburg
Texts transated into Greek by Natascha Siouzouli
Assistant director: Elisavet Xanthopoulou
Duration: 60 min. 

Performers: Ondina Quadri, Alexia Sarandopoulou, Marcus Richter, Kostas Tzimoulis, Vassilis Noulas  

A production by Nova Melancholia, with the support of the Greek Ministry of Culture. 

 

► THE EIGHT
Politechniou Str. 8, Athens
16 March - 23 April 2019

► FESTIVAL PRIMAVERA DEI TEATRI
Castrovillari, Italia
28 May 2019 
info & photos

► SANTARCANGELO FESTIVAL
Winter is locking down 
5 December 2020

► SANTARCANGELO FESTIVAL
Futuro fantastico
15-16 July 2021

► LIMASSOL, POST-DEVELOPMENT? 
landscapetrends
Municipal Workers' Houses, Limassol, Cyprus
21-22 October 2022

 

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"With ingenuity and composition, the performance disrupts and reassembles the familiar, giving it multiple perspectives. Every spectator and new reading. One of the best performances of the team!"
Evi Proussali (PhD inTheatre and Drama - Critic)

"Nova Melancholia embrace their media and thematic complexity and resist categorisation articulating the capacity to blur aesthetic boundaries, unsettling the neoliberal forms of separation and categorization and showing the ability to forge connections."
Panos Giannikopoulos (Art curator)

"This year Nova Melancholia embarked on an extremely difficult task (…). They did it triumphantly, with heartbreaking innocence, true beauty, and their well-known queer aesthetic. A real diamond!" 
Giorgos Voudiklaris (Theatre critic)

 

press

2.4.2019 - ASSODYO
"I Saw Rosa Nodding at Me" [gr]
Response by Iro Kazara   

4.4.2019 - RPROJECT.GR
"Imagine a Heroic Landscape" [gr]
by Alexandros Theodoridis   

6.4.2019 - THE PRESS PROJECT
"An Ambiguous Grace and a Heroic Landscape, Theatre Collective Nova Melancholia"  [gr]
Theatre Review by Evi Proussali (PhD inTheatre and Drama - Critic)

10.4.2019 - THE GREEK PLAY PROJECT
"Imagine a Heroic Landscape, by the theatre collective Nova Melancholia" [gr]
Theatre Review by Dimitris Tsatsoulis (Professor at the Univ. of Patras and Critic)

28.5.2019 - ABMREPORT.IT
"Immagina un paesaggio eroico. Il corpo strumento di narazzione" [it]
Article by Vicenzo Alvaro

29.5.2019 - CONTROSCENA
"Paesaggio eroico con Rosa rossa" [it]
Article by Enrico Fiore

13.6.2019 - SCENECONTEMPORANEE.IT
"Primavera dei Teatri. La rivoluzione, destino di Primavera" [it]
Article by Andrea Zangari

19.06.2019 - ARTIVIST
"An Attempt to Evaluate a Marathon Season" [gr]
By Giorgos Voudiklaris (Theatre critic)

JULY 2020 - ENTERPRISE PROJECT JOURNAL #4
"We Are In This Together" [eng]
By Panos Giannikopoulos (Art curator)