From Antigone to Medea
Description:
A poet of our time meets on stage ten female figures of ancient Greek tragedy and recreates them in their own way. He swears and batters beside them as their brother, their father, their son, their lover, their slayer. Through the successive visits within the work of Antigoni, Iphigenia, Eleni, Clytemnestra, Kassandra, Gaia, Iokastis, Ekka, Electra, Medea reveal different aspects of female psychosis as revealed through the works of the three tragic poets.
The issues that we are dealing with studying these ten characters are: debt, self-sacrifice, beauty, murder, frenzy, incest, embarrassment, mother-in-law, obsession, relationship with the divine element and apparently its position woman in a harsh, patriarchal, rebellious world. It is a work for the woman, but it is also a work for the poet – struggling man who strives to discover through his struggle a little light of knowledge, sensation and human warmth.
Biography
Kostas Gakis is a director, actor and composer who believes in a theatre full of empathy, emotions and deep discoveries, a vibrant, evolving kind of theater that is looking for new paths. The groups he belongs to and works for over a decade are being activated in a way of rehearsal that invents and turns itself off every day, sparking itself to discover ways to bring forth emotional vibrations, warmth of souls and healing into the theater. In his performances he looks for all that spectrum of emotions that makes us human, as well as a direct connection of soul and gaze with the audience. He writes the music for the plays he direct and many times he also performs as an actor.
He graduated from Athens Conservatoire as a classical guitarist in 2013.
He graduated from the National Drama School of Greece in 2004.
He graduated from Athens University of History and Archeology in 2005.
In 2006 he was awarded for the prize of the best young actor in Greece. In 2007 – 2008 he directed his first two pieces. In 2009 he created a play with actors with disabilities and this changed his life because he understood that each one of us is a person with “disabilities” and “special needs” and each of us needs the therapeutic power of art in his or her life.
In 2010-12 he adopted and directed “Love’ s executioner” a psychotherapeutic tale by American psychotherapist Irvin Yalom.
In 2012 he created Idea Theatre Group and now he is the artistic director of Alfa.Idea Theater a well known venue in the center of Athens, a dynamic meeting point of young artists with fresh ideas on theater. (Website: www.alfaidea.gr )
He also is a passionate citizen of the world and one of his strongest beliefs is that art can be a great bridge between cultures and in his work tries to find those archetypical elements which make theatre a universal language. When the words have no powerWe are human beings and when words loose their power we can understand each other through movement, sound, empathy, silence, gazes and other universal tools. He is a member of Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and he participated in this Lab both in 2013 & 2014.
His plays “Romeo and Juliet for 2” (2013-14), “The tree of Oedipus” (2015-16) and “From Antigone to Medea” (2016-17)have travelled all over the globe including Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, France, Serbia, Italy.
The tree of Oedipus: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxVWfvptrmY
Romeo and Juliet for 2: vimeo.com/196029725
From Antigone to Medea: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlRsV6e5esM
Love’ s executioner: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JjD9mfh6jU
Contact: Kostas Gakis
Hellenic Culture in Luxembourg 