Brandhaarden 2024: Onassis

Is it a vaudeville show? Α concert? A confessional manifesto? A panel interview around a big table, broadcasted on a public network? An awards ceremony where no one shows up to receive the award? An official premiere that perpetually repeats itself?

It is certainly a bone-shaking, seismic performance, bringing together trans femininities, non-binary people, fat bodies, immigrants, and sex workers on stage so that they can sing the hate speech they’ve suffered just because they are who they are.

A handmade book, read collectively by the audience inside of a sound installation. A response to the archive of the poet Constantine Cavafy, the work is inspired by the blank and torn out pages in Constantinopoliad, an Epic, the journal the teenage Cavafy began when he and his family fled Alexandria; by lost and missing archives through time; and by the ghosts, both erotic and historical, that visit the older Cavafy in his poems.

Goodbye, Lindita is a poetic farewell, a visual meditation on mourning. A family experiences grief in a muted, wordless manner, stupefied by their loss, until a series of uncanny events seems to suspend the boundaries between their world and that of the departed Lindita. Throughout the action, the icon of a Madonna Nera is overlooking the proceedings and a Black woman frequents the house. Trivial house chores are followed by poetic images and rituals originating from Balkan traditions.

Dimitris Karantzas presents a performance-parable about violence, addiction to images and the abolition of illusions or, in other words, about a reality that, no matter how much you try to avoid it, will catch up to you sooner or later.

Giannis Aggelakas, musician, poet and creator of the Greek rock scene, collaborates with established choreographer Christos Papadopoulos on Nekyia, a unique viewing and listening experience of the most arresting rhapsody of the Homeric epic.

Carefree nomads? Great artists? Victims of social structures, or dangerous and delinquent? What, after all, are Roma? And what are they not? Anestis Azas and Prodromos Tsinikoris explore this in a production that walks the line between documentary and fiction about the life of Greek Roma.

Explore the history of Rebetiko, a genre that originated in the cities and ports of Greece, reflecting the lives of refugees and evolving from pre-war tales of delinquency to post-war themes of love and social phenomena. This concert promises to showcase characteristic songs spanning each Rebetiko decade, highlighting different rhythms of a genre deeply ingrained in Greek culture.

Lena Kitsopoulou, born in Athens in 1971, is a versatile artist known for her accomplishments as an actress, award-winning author, and acclaimed playwright.

The fringe programme of Brandhaarden 2024 is all about 'Modern Myths'. The word 'myth' has two meanings today. On the one hand, it denotes stories that contain a certain wisdom, and we speak with wonder about what we then call 'mythological'. On the other hand, we use the word to talk about lies and misconceptions. We invite the audience to reflect on the power of shared stories, but together will also look at how this can turn into widespread ideas that are not necessarily true and can thus further marginalise vulnerable communities.

Brandhaarden is an international theatre festival that brings performances from notable foreign theatre makers to Amsterdam. The festival provides a unique overview of a single creator, house, writer, region, or theme. In previous editions, we highlighted directors such as Katie Mitchell, Milo Rau, and the collective Rimini Protokoll, writer Édouard Louis, the Southern European region (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece), and city theatres such as Münchner Kammerspiele, Volksbühne Berlin, and Peter Brooks Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.