Onassis Stegi returns to its House in September

This year’s comprehensive program of the Onassis Stegi, which focuses on social and not only phenomena and includes striking names of the worldwide scene, will be announced in detail in September.

From September, Onassis Stegi returns to its House and launches the 2023/23 season with its long-awaited party on September 26. It is followed by the premiere of Dimitris Karantzas’ new work “The House” at the Upper Stage on September 30, where the director creates his first own work after twelve years and directs Alexia Kaltsiki and Fidel Talampoukas in a performance-parable about violence, image addiction, and the elimination of illusions, or, otherwise, on the reality that sooner or later will come to greet you whatever you do to avoid it.

The Main Stage of Onassis Stegi opens on October 4 with the new production of the iconic UK theatrical group Complicité under the direction of Simon McBurney, who captivated us in 2006 with the spectacle-cum-experience “The Encounter.” Their new play, “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” is a crime thriller, black comedy, and an ecological manifesto at once, as well as a glorification of physical theater and polyphonic storytelling, based on the titular multi-translated novel by Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk.

On October 10, the Exhibition Hall -1 of Onassis Stegi is filled with domes and welcomes Loukia Alavanou’s installation “Oedipus in Search of Colonus,” which represented Greece at the 2022 Venice Biennale with the support of Onassis Culture and was later presented in Stockholm. Through the installation, Loukia Alavanou invites the audience on a journey across time, with a plot revolving around the themes of aging and death, human dignity and universal freedom, artistic vision and the current societal reality. Hemispherical domes and hybrid seats, inspired by architect Takis Zenetos, allow—thanks to their ergonomic design—the visitors to experience unrestrained the 360-degree specter of the VR film. The core of the installation lies in the 15-minute film shot through VR technology, a film that transposes a 2,500-year-old work by the unassailable playwright Sophocles into the present while gazing at the future at the same time. Alavanou attempts a bold fusion of documentary, fiction, drone flights, slapstick, pop-inspired video clips, and crude farce, along with intricate 360-degree VR technology.

On October 13, right after Oslo and the eminent music festival Ultima, the Greek premiere of “Pytheas Travels” will take place, a surrealistic musical cruise from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe, focusing on the journey of Pytheas, the great Greek explorer of antiquity. The production—featuring original music by Norwegian composer and performer Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, four musicians of the Ergon Ensemble as its passengers, and set against the background of the projection of an impressive video by Hypercomf with landscapes of Tinos and northern Norway—comprises an imaginary journey and a critical insight on the mass tourism industry and its consequences on environmental, cultural, and societal structures.