Be prepared for a theatrical experience unlike any other as the ODC Ensemble presents its new work Viciousness in the Kitchen at the ARTos Foundation tomorrow and Thursday.
The performance is part of Third X-Dream Festival, which offers the possibility of dialogue and exchange between artists of various art forms. As the final event planned in the festival’s agenda it at first may seem more like a dinner invitation than theatre performance.
The performance is based on a rarely performed work from the revered poet/writer Sylvia Plath.
In 1962, Plath wrote her first and only drama of a sort: a radio play for the BBC’s Third Programme entitled Three Women.
It intimately traces the experience of pregnancy and childbirth including the painful emotions of miscarriage and of giving up a baby for adoption. The poem is fraught with the ache of an individual, travelling through emotion and questioning the nature of existence.
A handful of stage productions of Three Women have been presented since the 60s, and this unconventional upcoming production, while never quite escaping the static origins of the source material, presents to the public experiences one sees and hears so rarely.
The radio-play is starting point for this unusual piece of theatre. Director Ellie Papakonstantinou and actors Athina Maximou, Adrian Friling and Eleftheria Gerofoka meet in the unpredictable space of a kitchen and discover the free relation among Plath’s poetry with music, gothic illustration, female stereotypes and… cooking.
Plath’s most suicidal episodes of her life took place in a kitchen. So, at the base of this event there is a very simple action: dinning. The performers cook for their audience while acting out Plath’s words and at the end of the show, they serve and join the audience for dinner.
Since the group works with very specific visual references and the performance takes place within an installation, it’s more of a visual arts performance. At the same time it’s a musical performance, a live concert with a musician composing ad-hoc soundscapes with domestic appliances that are interwoven dynamically with the spoken word.
The actors speak in English, German and Greek while Plath’s play is also project on the set. This performance sprung out of a feeling of displacement. Recent political situation in Greece, anger and oppression forces us to reconsider theatre and to invent a new narrative that would transcend traditional theatrical codes: a narrative that succeeds to speak of the unspeakable changes that take place in ourselves and in our society.
Founded in 2001, ODC ensemble is registered charity company based in Athens. It is a creative team of performers, dancers, musicians and visual artists. This cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary group is constantly evolving with a core of Greek performers, collaborating with artists from Britain, Germany and France.
Through their work they aim to develop cultural exchange between artists from diverse backgrounds. ODC Ensemble’s work has received rave reviews and they have presented their work at the Edinburgh Festival, Princeton University, the Opera House of Cairo, the National Theatre of Greece, the inauguration Ceremony of the Library of Alexandria etc.
ODC Ensemble presents interactive new work based on Sylvia Plath’s radio-play Three Women. Within the framework of the 3rd X-Dream Festival. December 14 & 15. ARTos Cultural and Research Foundation, 64 Ayion Omoloyiton Avenue, Nicosia. 8.30pm. €12. In Greek, English and German. Tel: 22-445455
