Insenso

Biography

Alexandra Kazazou

Actress

Description

Insenso is the story of a woman who is insanely in love, with love transcending logic, boundaries and dimensions. Insenso is a total defeat of wisdom, a crippling triumph of feelings. It is an opera without music, where the word and body are separate instruments. The movement in the play is not only the backdrop for the words but is in dialectical conflict with them. This form of theatre seeks to stir the audience mentally and physically.

The piece is dedicated to Greek actress Melina Mercouri, the originator of the European Capital of Culture, a project which embodies her idea of culture that transcends boundaries. Her passion did not stem from ideals or political agendas but from deep love and her belief in the 'meaningfulness' of human nature.

Director ― Petros Sevastikoglou
Text ― Dimitris Dimitriadis, translated by Ilias Vrazas
Performer ― Alexandra Kazazou
Sets ― Bajka Mourier, Petros Sevastikoglou
Costumes ― Bajka Mourier
Sound ― Kostas Georgakopulos, assisted by Dariusz Jackowski
Lighting, photographer ― Karol Jarek
Sets ― built by a team led by Piotr Jacyk
Producer ― Kostas Georgakopulos
Production ― Avant Art, The Grotowski Institute
Project co-ordinator ― Grażyna Górka-Dudek
Premiere ― 15 January 2016

Petros Sevastikoglou (born 1959, Russia) is a theatre and film director and lecturer. He was born in Moscow. He holds a Master’s degree in sociology from the University of Paris X Nanterre. He has directed many theatre plays for the National Theatre of Greece and plays for private venues. He teaches film acting at the Academy of Fine Arts and the drama school of the National Theatre of Greece. Among his films are Wind Over The City (1997), 3 Moments (2008), Attractive Illusion (2012), Electra (2014). His theatre directing credits include Karagioz Vezir (1993), 4.48 Psychosis (2003), The Sharing of the Devil (2004), The Unexpected (2005), Alice in China (France/China, 2014).

Dimitris Dimitriadis (born 1944, Greece) studied theatre and film at INSAS, Brussels, from 1963 to 1968. His first play, The Price of Resistance in The Black Market (1966), was staged in 1968 by director Patrice Chéreau at the Théâtre de la Commune d’Aubervilliers, Paris. After returning to Greece in 1971, has been translating fiction and plays by Kostas Axelos, Honoré de Balzac, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Georges Courteline, Jean Genet, Witold Gombrowicz, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Gérard de Nerval, Molière, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Jean-Paul Sartre, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Euripides’ Phoenician Women, Hippolytus, Helen, Iphigenia in Tauris. His first novel, Dying As a Country, was published in 1978, and his collection of poems, Catalogues 1–4, in 1980. A large number of plays followed: The New Church of Blood (1983), The Stunning of Animals Before the Slaughter (2000), Oblivion and Four Other Monologues (2002), Cassandra’s Annunciation (2009), Civilization: A Cosmic Tragedy (2013) and others.