With the slowness of divers
The performance “With the slowness of divers” is a silent music theatre performance for two musicians and one actress.
Its starting point is Darius Milhaud‘s Le Bœuf sur le Toit (1919) — a composition with intense irony and theatricality, which Jean Cocteau framed with a scenario of absurd theater, where the heroes resemble puppets and the scenes challenge the boundaries between music and action.
Having in their hands Cocteau’s surrealistic scenario, the duo tessera kappa set out to find the true ending to the story.
After years of research and sessions with psychologists and bartenders, political analysts, journalists and fortunetellers, it was revealed that a hundred years later a silent person and two musicians meet at the bar where Ligeti and Pasopoulos get their revenge on Milhaud.
The story continues at KET on Tuesday, November 18.
With the support of the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation.
🔷 Aris Troupakis was born in Athens in 1976 and is a graduate of the Drama School of the Art Theater, the National Theater’s Directing Workshop, and a member of the Director’s Lab at Lincoln Center Theater in New York. He has directed at the National Theatre of Greece, the Art Theatre, Theatro Kefallinias, Metaxourgeio Theatre, Theatre of Cycladon Street, Neos Kosmos Theatre, Aplo Theatro, Faust, Eler, Skrow Theater, and others. As an actor, he has participated in performances at the National Theater, the Art Theater, the Kefallinias Street Theater, the Athens Festival, the Acropolis, the Kykladon Street Theater, and others. He has also taught acting at the Drama School of the National Theater, the Athens Conservatoire, the Delos Drama School, the Praxi Epta Drama School, and the Peiraikos Syndesmos.
🔶 Amalia Tsekoura is a graduate of the Drama School of the National Theatre. As an actor, she has collaborated with directors Lefteris Voyatzis, Stathis Livathinos, Vangelis Theodoropoulos, Marianna Kalbari, Thodoris Abazis, Vasilis Mavrogeorgiou, Sofia Vgenopoulou, Stratis Panourios, Fenia Papadodima, Aris Troupakis, Nikos Mastorakis, Roula Pateraki, Takis Tzamaria, Lydia Koniordou, Eleni Georgopoulou, Dimos Avdeliotis, Giannis Paraskevopoulos, and others. She has participated in performances at the National Theater, the National Theatre of Northern Greece, the Neos Kosmos Theatre, the Art Theater, the Benaki Museum, the Megaron Athens Concert Hall, the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, the Greek National Opera, and others. As an assistant director, she has collaborated with S. Vgenopoulou, M. Kalbari, and G. Chouvardas.
🔷 Eleni Choumou is a graduate of the Department of Photography and Audiovisual Arts of the University of West Attica and of the Drama School/Faculty of Fine Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, specializing in directing and theatre lighting, and of the postgraduate program “Lighting Design” at the Hellenic Open University. She has collaborated as a lighting designer with directors and artistic groups in organizations such as the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, the Greek National Opera, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Neon Foundation, the Onassis Cultural Center, the National Theater of Northern Greece (KTHBE), the National Theater, the Thessaloniki and Athens Concert Halls, the Thessaloniki State Orchestra, the Kalamaria Municipal Theatre “Melina Merkouri,” the Nikos Kazantzakis Theatre (Heraklion), and others.
🔶 The duo tessera kappa consists of accordionist Konstantinos Raptis and pianist Katerina Konstantourou. In 2023 they began searching the repertoire for the unusual combination of the two polyphonic instruments: concert accordion (free bass accordion) and piano. The duo explores the diversity of the instruments’ backgrounds through the interpretation of contemporary works, in which the composers use elements from folk music. At the same time, it seeks to interact with other art disciplines.