Thanasis Triaridis’ “Laundry” in Thessaloniki at Alte Fablon

The Alte Fablon Art Space in Thessaloniki, announces an extension for the performances “The Laundry” by Thanasis Triaridis, directed by Yannis Paraskevopoulos.

Case:

In a very near future (or even in an even nearer present) two women meet three times in a public laundry.
In their meetings they talk about their children, about the educational documentaries of the Internet, about the awesome power of Evolution.
But soon the viewers also learn about an arena, about public beheadings of girls on live television, about a boy polishing his axe, about the scent of pine scenting freshly laundered clothes.

What, after all, does Evolution mean? And how can an axe coming down be kindness? From what blood do the clothes in the washing machine clean the clothes?

A dystopian thriller about mainstream Eugenics – and the crimes of good people who patiently wait for their laundry to run out.

Note by the author Thanasis Triaridis:

The Laundry started from a fundamental demand that has been with me for many years: How the good enlightened man of the West becomes a receptacle and ultimately a carrier of the worst evil: eugenic murder.

Once, one night, and after many failed attempts, an almost coincidental condition emerged in my mind: Two good women, two mothers, in a public laundry – two women waiting to have their clothes washed of their blood. Around them will spread a pine smell.

Immediately everything was formed, the whole play: The Public Beheadings of the girls, Moe’s axe, the Arena, the Law, Evolution, the noise the Earth makes when it turns, people getting used to everything.

These “good people” who are and will be the agents of evil are us. Let the Laundromat be a distress signal for whatever crimes we are about to commit.

Yannis Paraskevopoulos and Magdalene Bekri and I have had a deep and long-standing friendship and collaboration for three and a half decades – in a sense they were my theatre teachers in the incoherent Thessaloniki of the 1990s.

And the wonderful performance of ZYKLON that Yiannis made in 2015 was seminal for my (anyway limbic) writing endeavour.

I admired Eleni Demopoulou immensely from afar: for what she created and for what she does. And here life now gives me the gift of working with these three wonderful people in my hometown again.

This is for me the goal of art:

To meet together in the dust of time, to deposit our common footprint..
Thanasis Triaridis, November 2023

Credits:

Text: Thanasis Triaridis
Directed by
Set – Costumes: Evangelia Kirkine
Original music – composition: Manos Mylonakis
Lighting design: Athena Banava
Assistant director: Maria Nefeli Paraskevopoulou
Set design: Thanos Karonis
Rehearsal and performance photography: Lefteris Tsinaris
Print design: Marios Kalaitzis
Contact: Apostolos Liapis
Production organization: Apostolos Liapis
Production: Alte Fablon Art Space
On stage: Eleni Demopoulou, Magdalene Bekri
Narrator: Raphael Paraskevopoulos