Emily Louizou

Symptoms of Weightlessness
By Gianni Skaragas

Inspired by Aeschylus’ Eumenides

Is our fate a second chance we were given? Can we escape our character because we were loved dearly? 19 July 1969: Two days before humanity’s first moon landing, the lawyer of a young man who was acquitted for his mother’s murder visits the country house of his client’s family, accompanied by his wife. What initially seemed like a leisure trip escalates into a violent, psychological story, rife with well-hidden secrets and twists…

Inspired by Aeschylus’ Eumenides, the play Symptoms of Weightlessness by internationally acclaimed playwright Gianni Skaragas is a story about the heaviness of traumatic memories and human character, which carries the same, unbearable darkness, regardless of whether it is found in a different planet or era.

Under the helm of Emily Louizou, a young, London-based director, the performance transports us inside a purgatory, where characters arrive in order to be purified. Even though the Areopagus has acquitted Orestes, the actual trial takes place now as a closed-door session. Memory is fluid and the Erinyes are invariably present: no matter how much they are appeased, the scar will remain open, akin to a perpetual injury.