The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Greek Plays

Lena Kitsopoulou, Nina Rapi, Yannis Mavritsakis, Charalampos Giannou, Akis Dimou

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781783197682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

A diverse selection of plays from the nineties, noughties and 2010's from a range of established and up-and-coming playwrights based in Greece. The collection includes a foreword and introductions to each play by prominent academics in Greek Contemporary Theatre. 1. M.A.I.R.O.U.L.A by Lena Kitsopoulou, translated by Aliki Chapple (2012) 2. Angelstate by Nina Rapi, translated by the author (2015) 3. Wolfgang by Yannis Mavritsakis, translated by Christina Polyhroniou (2008) 4. Hungry by Charalampos Giannou, translated by the author (2016) 5. Juliet by Akis Dimou, translated by Elizabeth Sakellaridou (1995)

ANGELSTATE

by Nina Rapi

Translated by Nina Rapi

docile bodies...

Suppression and Desire in Nina Rapi’s Angelstate

Nina Rapi belongs to a new generation of Greek dramatists, which defends a more politically aware theatre profoundly uninterested in the traditionalist dramatic forms and ideologies. One of the prominent features of this new dramaturgy is the rejection of the so-called “theatre of everyday life”¹ and the micro-problems of daily living, which often adopted a very uncritical stance towards Modern Greek conservatism. Instead of limiting the plays to localized microcosms, many contemporary playwrights have chosen to de-familiarize events, not simply in the Brechtian sense of making them strange², but by expanding situations into paradigmatic dramaturgical conditions which function as dramaturgical diagrams/patterns of living in a hostile and unfamiliar world (most often by removing time, place and social frame), sending thereby a universal message for the need of reconstructing the dominant structures of normality. Heavily influenced by contemporary British theatre, Nina Rapi follows the example of those playwrights, like Martin Crimp or Caryl Churchill, who defy “set norms and typical expectations for dramatic discourse in order to arrive at an unprecedented level of potentiality and signification”³.

Angelstate is a study on the social suppression of desire and the distribution of discipline. In an imaginary space of expiation, punishment and mainly self-punishment six characters under strict surveillance retrace their stories and their ‘misdeeds’, all related to the expression of a desire. It is not coi...