Euripides Laskaridis // OSMOSIS-Athens, Greece

Elenit  

direction, choreography: Euripides Laskaridis
original music, sound design: Giorgos Poulios
costume design: Angelos Mentis
set design: Loukas Bakas
lighting design: Eliza Alexandropoulou
dramaturgy consultant: Alexandros Mistriotis
associate movement director: Nikos Dragonas
assistant director: Geli Kalampaka
assistant to the composer: Jeph Vanger
assistants to the costume designer, special construction: Ioanna Plessa, Filanthi Bougatsou, Olga Vlassi
artistic collaborator, special constructions: Anna Papathanasiou
assistant to the costume designer: Aella Tsilikopoulou
assistant to the set designer: Filanthi Bougatsou, Dinos Nikolaou
stage managers: Dinos Nikolaou, Giorgos Antonopoulos
technical director: Konstantinos Margas
lighting technicians: Vasilis Zindros, Tzanos Mazis & Giorgos Antonopoulos
lighting console programmers: Giorgos Melissaropoulos, Vaggelis Mountrichas
sound engineers: Kostis Pavlopoulos, Kostas Michopoulos
production manager: Rena Andreadaki
project & tour manager: Simona Fremder
operations co-ordination: TooFarEast Productions
photography: Elina Giounanli, Geli Kalampaka, Julian Mommert, Andreas Simopoulos
video trailer: Euripides Laskaridis

performers: Amalia Kosma//Chrysanthi Fytiza, Chara Kotsali//Eirini Boudali, Manos Kotsaris, Euripides Laskaridis, Thanos Lekkas//Konstantinos Georgopoulos, Dimitris Matsoukas, Efthimios Moschopoulos, Giorgos Poulios, Michalis Valasoglou//Nikos Dragonas, Fay Xhuma (original cast listed first)

duration: 90’
premiere: Onassis Stegi, 2019.

project by: Euripides Laskaridis & OSMOSIS
production: Onassis Stegi, Athens  
co-production: Théâtre de la Ville, Paris; Teatro della Pergola, Florence; Pôle européen de création – Ministry of Culture / Lyon Dance Biennale 2020; Municipal Theater of Porto; Festival TransAmériques, Montreal; Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Brussels; Teatre Lliure, Barcelona; Malraux – Scène nationale Chambéry Savoie; Théâtre de Liège; Julidans, Amsterdam; Bonlieu Scène Nationale Annecy
in collaboration with: ICI—National Choreographic Center Montpellier – Occitanie, EdM Productions – Rial & Eshelman
funded by: Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports

special thanks to: Dimitris Papaioannou, Claire Verlet, Tina Papanikolaou, Nikos Dragonas, Kyriacos Karseras,, Rena Laskaridou, Fani Harvalia, Tatiana Bre, Simos Patieridis, Konstantinos Kapsimalis, Drossos Skotis, Konstantinos Kounellas, Elina Giounanli, Julian Mommert, Natasha Sarantopoulou and Petros Chytiris.

…Everyday images and situations which become increasingly absurd, mysterious, and disturbing. “Elenit” is a journey through an unknown landscape; devastated and ruined, but at the same time irresistibly fascinating.  A brilliant attempt to understand a monstrous world.

Euripides Laskaridis is one of those rare creators who develop a theatre of visions, an ethereal theatre that, like dreams, explores reality and what it does to us by deforming it, exaggerating it under the magnifying glass of the stage. Since “Relic” (2015), this unconventional artist has been orchestrating an absurd, grotesque, phantasmagorical and fun theatre. “Elenit” is a baroque and Dadaist celebration in which human batrachians and technocrats in suits, icons of western art and a red banner bustle around all kinds of peculiar and different creatures. To a crazy tempo of techno music performed live, they break, let go, beat, throw, gesture, dance, alone or together, in a world that falls, explodes, disintegrates and unravels, slowly or brutally. “Elenit” is a labyrinth of situations populated by strange characters, fluttering between despondency and overexcitement, a disjointed tale that goes from catastrophes to bursts of energy. After all this, “life and the world remain an enigma”. One you need to be convinced of to be able to laugh about it.

Euripides Laskaridis is a director and performer. Two dominant themes run through his artistic identity: ridicule and transformation. He studied acting in Athens at the Karolos Koun Art Theatre, and directing in New York at Brooklyn College on an Onassis Foundation Scholarship. He has been performing since 1995, working with such directors as Dimitris Papaioannou and Robert Wilson. He began directing his own work in 2000 – both stage works and, later, award-winning short films. In 2009, Euripides founded the OSMOSIS company and began presenting site-specific works at the Athens Festival, the Greek National Theatre, the artist-occupied Embros Theatre, and elsewhere in Greece. In 2013, OSMOSIS also began to undertake workshops and community projects.  

Founded by Euripides Laskaridis in 2009, the OSMOSIS performing arts company is a supportive pool of artists who come together in differing combinations from project to project.

This performance – neurotic and comic, tragic and sarcastic – continues to add words to the vocabulary and language created by Laskaridis, a language that is obscure yet familiar, remote yet moving. It gifts audiences with the freedom of distance, allowing them to draw the line and observe, then cross the line and connect. The heroes of this world stand way over there, calling on you to explore, to desire, to feel the inexplicable… “Elenit” is a magnificent gesture towards the understanding of a monstrous world, another bright light in the creative development of this important contemporary Greek artist.

© El Culture

This irrational world – fuelled by painting and opera, musicals and ancient tragedy, as well as club culture and film – is born out of simple materials. Everyday images and situations are subjected to constant transformations that render them dense and unfamiliar. The work is an absurd journey: phantasmagoric and ridiculous, enigmatic and disquieting. A journey through landscapes that bleed one into another without explanation, in a world made of ruins that nevertheless still stands – and captivates.

© Kathimerini