The new jewel of Euripides Laskaridis: Lapis Lazuli
Waiting
(Onassis Stegi, Athens, 21 April 2024, © Mehmet Kerem Ozel)
In November 2022 Laskaridis was a guest at the Istanbul Theatre Festival with Titans, the second part of his trilogy of which Elenit is the last.
On a rainy evening when Laskaridis first arrived in Istanbul, he took the metro from Mecidiyeköy to Tepebaşı and met Ayşe Draz, my friend Emre and me at the Georgian restaurant Fıccın, where we had dinner and thus met face to face.
I found Titans, which is a duo piece, simpler than Elenit, but more intense and effective, and I went after Relic, a solo piece of Laskaridis and the first and generally most admired part of the trilogy, but I couldn't create a chance for myself to see Relic, neither in Madrid nor in Paris in the 2022-23 season.
In the summer of 2023, as we sat with Ayşe Draz in the stands at the Boulbon Stone Mine near Avignon, waiting for Philippe Quesne's Le jardin des délices to start, we saw Laskaridis looking for his seat, ticket in hand, and we embraced. He had come for a week for the festival with young Greek artists by a organisation of the Onassis Stegi. On one of the following evenings in the festival bar Mahabharata, he met my dramaturgy friends Özlem Hemiş and Aylin Alıveren, with whom we had come for four days to see plays. We chatted and left with the hope of meeting again in Athens in the spring of 2024 for the premiere of his new play.
In late April 2024, the last Athens performances of Papaioannou's last piece (INK) and the premiere performances of Laskaridis' new piece (Lapis Lazuli) coincided again, as in November 2019, and we, the Avignon team, hit the road to Athens with one less (without Ayşe Draz), but this time with my friend Emre, choreographer/dancer Gizem Bilgen and theatre writer/director/actor Murat Mahmutyazıcıoğlu.
With Lapis Lazuli, Laskaridis has created a show that is crazier and freer than Titans and Elenit, with as many things that inspired him as there are associations for the audience.
After the show we sat in one of the bars in the Koukaki neighbourhood, albeit quite late, talking about Lapis Lazuli over beers and margaritas brought to us by a very energetic and pleasant waitress; We talked about everything from the aesthetics of black and white silent cinema to the Cüneyt Arkın films of the 70s (examples of B-type cinema of the 70s, probably influenced Greek films, which are probably similar to these films), from Japanese and Chinese traditional theatre to Robert Wilson, from Balkan motifs to sexual intercourse, birth and marriage traditions, from comic aesthetics to science fiction. Lapis Lazuli was - as Aylin put it - an example of queer art, blending inspiration from many fields. Just as we agreed that the show was quite crowded, even too crowded, in terms of form and content, and that some scenes dragged on unnecessarily, we also agreed that Laskaridis was extremely skilful in his use of materials in an artisanal way, especially - as Özlem pointed out - in creating miracles out of cheap materials.
Applause
(Onassis Stegi, Athens, 21 April 2024, © Mehmet Kerem Ozel)
The Greek audience had a great time and laughed a lot during the evening we attended the performance. I don't know about my friends, we couldn't sit next to each other, but in general I enjoyed the play very much, I even laughed out loud at some scenes.
He had done it again; the absurdity and ridiculousness that pervades all of Laskaridis' work was at its peak.
Perhaps this time he had not created original figures/characters/protagonists as in Titans and Elenit, but he had taken centuries-old characters, played with them, turned them upside down. For example, he had created a character from the well-known werewolf type; a character who gives in to his instincts, but at the same time has a strange naivety, is cute and troubled, so you can't get angry and you can't be afraid, you see yourself in him lying on the psychologist's couch.
As for the antipode of the werewolf, the naive girl, it was hard not to be afraid of her, because Laskaridis brought out the dangerous side in her, of course without neglecting to add humour. Undoubtedly, the brilliantly mesmerizing performance of Maria Bregianni, the performer who portrayed the naive girl on the night we saw the piece, played an important role in the success of this character, with her impressive physical plasticity, as Gizem put it, as well as her virtuosity in mimicry and voice.
Leaving
(Onassis Stegi, Athens, 21 April 2024, © Mehmet Kerem Ozel)
Lapis Lazuli will embark on the first stage of its world tour, which will visit Madrid and Plovdiv from mid-May, Amsterdam Julidans and Barcelona Grec among the summer festivals, and Paris, Turin, Reggio Emilia, Liège, Charleroi, Florence and Espoo-Finland in the autumn, immediately after two additions on 26 and 27 April to the almost sold-out Athens performances from 4 to 20 April. May its path be clear and may it find an audience that will appreciate his sometimes subtle, sometimes crude humour!
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