This is the first show of the company ODC Ensemble

“I began researching the Odyssey back in 2002. The first phase of my research (2002-2004) resulted in a series of performances presented in Greece and abroad, each of them featuring a different cast and crew. The common denominator in all these performances was the development of a contemporary rhapsodic method.
I focused on the Odyssey because I was intrigued by the fluidity and diversity of the Homeric epics and especially by the fact that in reality there is no ‘original’ text. In effect, we are talking about different versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey and more specifically about each rhapsodist trying a different take on the Iliad and the Odyssey, improvising in situ before a live audience and introducing variations even on the verses themselves.
This ‘open’ dramaturgy opens a channel to the present. Far from distancing herself from the story she tells, the narrator finds herself within two overlapping circles: the real circle of the audience, and the fictional circle of the story.
This largely improvisational performance was built upon the interplay of three bodies of work: The Odyssey, musical improvisation, and the narrator’s free association. The director spins an ad hoc dramaturgy the ‘seams’ of which are visible to the audience; the audience can then choose the Book of Odyssey they want to listen to while having dinner. This project is open to the idea of Randomness: the interplay of words and musical notes; the flow of commentary through free association; songs.
Music and speech are woven together in a single narrative. The performer’s body vibrates, pushed to unprecedented directions, forced to maximise the smallest structural unit of language—word, syllable, phoneme—going against the flow of rhythm, eschewing the production of meaning for what is left unspoken.”
E.P.

[Extracts from the director’s note]