Europe Theatre Prize: Thessaloniki, Greece 2008

I'm just back from Thessaloniki, Greece, a land founded by King Cassander of Macedon back in 315 BC, which was descended upon just last week by theater folks from all over the world. From April 10-13, the small seaside city hosted the honorable likes of Patrice Chéreau, Rimini Protokoll, Krysztof Warlikowski and the Belarus Free Theatre in two theatres.

But many of you Yanks may be wondering (I had been before my Grecian sojourn): Who the hell are those people? Let me start by telling you what the Prize is.

Created in 1986 and presented in '87 as a European Commission pilot program, the Europe Theatre Prize is awarded to artists and theaters whose work is deemed to have contributed to mutual understanding among nations. The European Parliament and the European Council have placed this prize among institutions "presenting a European cultural interest." It has even been awarded to people we know on this side of the Atlantic, like Harold Pinter, Peter Brook, and Robert Wilson.

This year's prize winner was Patrice Chéreau, a French director of theater, opera and film. After accepting the award, he performed a reading of Pierre Guyotat's Coma, a monologue created especially for the Prize ceremony. This 90-minute piece about art, depression and repression was performed in Chéreau's native French with surtitles in Greek and English. With few moments of relief, the piece was a weighty, autobiographical look at Guyotat's own bout with depression in the late 1970s, when he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. Thierry Thieu Niang directed the reading, which had Chereau on a chair facing stage left and a square of light around him.

The Prize festivities also include an award for New Theatrical Realities. That was given to the German ensemble Rimini Protokoll and choreographer Sasha Waltz and Polish director Krysztof Warlikowski. After a letter-writing campaign to the Prize organizers, the Belarus Free Theatre was given a Special Mention.

The landlocked country of Belarus is the last of the European dictatorships, where free speech is still the stuff of a utopian science fiction. Michael Billington of The Guardian wrote of the group, "Everything about the Belarus Free Theatre is astonishing...they have suffered every form of intimidation and harassment. Their members have lost their jobs in Belarus's state theatres. The work at home is effectively banned...In 2007, fifty people were arrested when police special forces raided a performance at a house in a suburb of Minsk. Security forces, still working under the title of KGB, also regularly film members of the public arriving for one of the outlawed performances."

The “Free Theatre” Project began on March 30, 2005 by Natalia Koliada and Nikolai Khalezin and, they say, "will be ended when the situation in Belarus will be changed from dictatorial regime to democracy."

Jet-lagged and bleary-eyed, I saw the Free Theatre's show "Generation Jeans" my first night in Greece at the Center for Macedonian Studies. Performed by Zhalezin himself, this humorous and honest look at life under dictatorship kept me awake. Through English surtitles, the actor explains to us anglophones a bit about life in Belarus in the 1980s: "We used to buy plastic bags for 3 rubels and sell it for 5. That used to be called speculation. Now it's called business." More than plastic bags, the citizens would vie for vinyl records. There were three tiers: Soviet-licensed records, records made in countries of the Communist bloc, and, the most precious of all, albums pressed in the UK and America. More coveted than plastic bags or even a Rolling Stones album were blue jeans. Wearing those acid-washed denim trousers signified freedom and self-expression. The show played at The Public Theatre here in New York this January, as part of the Under the Radar Festival. I didn't see it then, but am glad I was able to glimpse this Soviet-tinged view there on the Mediterranean.


But why go to Greece and not see a Greek tragedy? Euripides' great, The Bacchae, was a fun, folkloric feast. Presented by the National Theater of Northern Greece under the direction of Tasos Ratzos, the strong Greek cast captured the pastoral frenzy of the fantastic tragedy. My first Greek play seen in Greek. That was quite an experience, and while we weren't in any outdoor amphitheater, the Vasiliko Theater was a lovely substitute.

The European Commission is already deep into the planning the Premio Europa 2009. So start planning your trip to the Thermaic Gulf now.


Photos by Nontas Stylianidis.