Sirenos'26: Namas

THE HOUSE (Greece)

Premiere: 20 September 2023
Commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi 

Written and Directed: By Dimitris Karantzas
Concept: Dimitris Karantzas, Geli Kalampaka, Tassos Karachalios
Video: Geli Kalampaka
Set: Clio Boboti
Costume Design: Ioanna Tsami
Movement: Tasos Karachalios
Music: George Ramantanis
Lights: Dimitris Kasimatis
Assistant To Direction: Kelly Papadopoulou
Set Designer Assistant: Angeliki Vassilopoulou Kampitsi
Line Production Rena Andreadaki, Zoe Mouschi
Surtitles’ Translation In English Memi Katsoni
With Alexia Kaltsiki, Fidel Talampoukas
Tour Technical Manager (Onassis Stegi) Stavros Kariotoglou

All The Above Contributed To The Play’s Dramaturgy

“The tiles always looked ready to burst, as if behind the walls were the hands and lips and feet of those who lived there previously, but they never did so; they remained there as a diary of which year we did what we did and the lives of those people.”

The House is a performance-parable about violence, addiction to images and the abolition of illusions or, in other words, about a reality that, no matter how much you try to avoid it, will catch up to you sooner or later.

Our house. Our little corner of the world. Our definitive retreat. Where we are safe. Or perhaps not? An original work—elliptical and revolving mainly around action in silence—comprises the textual material of the parable forged by Dimitris Karantzas and his team, featuring scarce dialogue, relentless tension, and two actors—Alexia Kaltsiki and Fidel Talampoukas—carrying out the daily housekeeping ritual at their home until the world’s violence breaks in and uproots all.

In "The House", two figures, a woman and a man (Siblings? Flatmates? Partners?) spend a typical day in their home, which may be in Athens, Tokyo, London, Madrid, Amsterdam, or Vilnius. In any metropolis where people live in cell-houses, bereft of identity and where everything looks alike. The two figures perform their chores, arrange the shopping, pay the bills, fold the clothes, and tidy up the space and their structure. The art of doing nothing substantial is elevated to a poetic parable, with the daily routine seizing the hinges of the heroes’ thoughts and conquering the stage. Both of them entrench themselves to avoid confronting reality and soothe the nooses that the outside world has in store for them.

Yet, a window feeds and is fed by them. A window of the house faces a quiet street in which, from time to time, passers-by stroll. As their day moves on, the window transforms into a funnel, a hellish kaleidoscope, in which various manifestations of our era’s violence parade. 

Dimitris Karantzas

Dimitris Karantzas was born in Athens in 1987. He studied at Embros Higher Drama School and at the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Athens. He has worked with the National Theatre, Onassis Stegi, the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, the Greek National Opera, Theatro tou Notou at the Amore Theater, the Karolos Koun Greek Art Theater, Odos Kykladon Theater, etc. He has directed works from both the Greek and international repertoires, including: Dimitris Dimitriadis’s “Phaethon” and “The Circle of the Square”, Euripides's “Helen” and “Medea”, Thomas Bernhard's “Heroes' Square”, Virginia Woolf's “The Waves”, Harold Pinter's “Ashes to Ashes”, Aristophanes's “The Clouds”, Anton Chekhov's “Three Sisters” and “Uncle Vanya”, Marina Tsvetaeva's “Phaedra”, Aeschylus's “Persians”, William Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet”, etc.

His performances have been presented internationally at the Avignon Festival (68th edition), the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Le Lieu Unique in Nantes, and the Oslo Nationaltheatret. He participated in the KunstenFestivalDesArts in Brussels, as a guest artist for its “Residence & Reflections” project. He was nominated for the European Theatre Prize (XVI edition) in the "New Theatrical Realities" category. He has been serving as Artistic Director of the theatre Proskinio in Athens since 2020.

Supported By The Onassis Stegi Touring Program