Io Voulgaraki – PYR
The Arrival
Βased on the section The Killing of the Suitors from Homer’s Odyssey
The Odyssey is primarily a song of return, hailing from an era when sailors’ long voyages would inspire songs lamenting their absence. Upon his return to Ithaca after twenty years of absence, Odysseus slaughters 108 men who were claiming his wife and throne. In effect, he wipes out the island’s population. His massacre raises the question: What is he coming back to? How is he remembered by his subjects, if at all? Who is he anymore? And why should there be such bloodshed in the first place? The performance will focus on the moment of his return to address the impossibility of homecoming. We can never really return home: time moves relentlessly forward. Reality cannot match what was preserved in memory. Hence, Odysseus returns to his “ghost of a dream.” Moving beyond the confines of conventional theatrical spaces and using Dimitris Maronitis’ remarkable modern Greek translation, Io Voulgaraki and the PYR company – co-founded by Argyris Xafis and Despina Kourti – employ narration rather than realist tropes, shedding light to our psychological connection with one of the bloodiest set pieces in European literature.
With English surtitles
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