Written in 1929, Stratis Doukas’s A Prisoner of War’s Story recounts the story, and final escape to Greece, of the Asia Minor refugee Nikolas Kazakoglou. It was written by working through his own testimony. Without psychologising, lyricism, abstract reasoning or ideas, the text describes how he escaped certain death. The simplicity, or rather the bareness, of its style makes it unique in the history of modern Greek literature. The performance The Story of a Prisoner remains equally bare, creating an environment that helps, without guiding, the understanding of the text. It provides elements that explain or recall the period and the events, and creates a comfortable space for listening and sharing rather than for representation. The narrator has a table in front of him with all his tools: a visible microphone, papers, soft drinks. He reads the text without pointing out its meanings or pretending to be invisible. He lets the text speak. Historical and factual information is written on a large board beside the narrator during the narration. The sound installation embraces the space evenly, and the sound is heard without needing volume. It is as if we were inside the text, inside a voice that speaks through time and emerges from another space, one that seems lost in the past but lies in wait. It peers at us both from within the text and from within the news we hear every day: we too, once again, are prisoners of History, which crushes our small lives without asking.
Credits
Text: Stratis Doukas
Direction: Alexandros Mistriotis
Dramaturgical advisor: Ilektra Ellinikioti
Performed by Kostantis Mizaras
Set design: Stefania Orfanidou, Grigoris Petropoulos
Sound design: Stamatis Tsimpidis
Production management: “Theros” Theatre Company
Production: Eleusis 2021
The performance The Story of a Prisoner would not have been the same without these particular collaborators.
