The Old Women Who Pick Nettles

How is the elderly female body connected to folk sorcery, cooking, and ritual practices? Three male performers take on the roles of three women, bringing to life the narrative of the ageing female body, both personal and collective.

The story begins in Thessaly, a region where tradition portrays women as “witches,” inheritors of secret knowledge passed down from Medea and experts in the practice known as “drawing down the moon” or otherwise “milking the moon.” The three figures of the play recall harmless grandmothers and potent healers, at once familiar and archetypal. They speak of their lives, recounting the hardships they endured, the wisdom they received from their ancestors, and the knowledge they imparted to the next generations. Bearing the triple role of the labourer, housekeeper, and mother, these women contributed actively to their families’ livelihoods and the local community, yet they remained invisible for years—even to researchers who deemed women’s accounts unreliable and unworthy of historical record.

Beginning its journey at the Experimental Stage of the Thessaliko Theatre in March 2023, the performance was first staged at Stathmos Theatre for two consecutive seasons and then toured across various Greek cities, garnering a warm reception. As a work in progress, it bridges performance art and social anthropology, evolving and redefining itself as it draws material from the bulk of interviews conducted in tandem with the performances. The audience is invited to participate in this research and, if they so wish, contribute to the oral history documentation that has been ongoing since the performances began.