ARCHIVES 2014 / O kyklismos tou tetragonou

The Circle of the Square is a sprawling and terrifying play, based on the repetition and combination of four initial scenes, of what looks at first glance like four unremarkable romantic situations. First there's Jade, who wants to come back to Green, whatever the cost, but the price set by Green is so high as to be impossible to pay. Then there's Yellow and Red, who wonder which one of them Blue likes the most, and who have to make a decision. There's also Violet, who left Mauve after years of marriage in order to move in with Grey, who isn't quite ready to commit to living with someone else. And then there's Black, who wants to crack the secret of Sky, who can't seem to make Skye come. Infinite variations on those basic events slowly create a frightening maelstrom which builds up momentum and culminates in a headlong rush. None of the characters are able to solve the problems they face. Words never give way to silence but instead turn into a scream that reflects the struggle each character goes through as they try to answer for their own existence and responsibility. It is by causing, then accepting, catastrophe that each character is able to make his or her voice be heard; they all meet death, then escape it by overcoming the banality of their existence. Dimitris Karantzas demands of his actors that they be keenly aware of the situations they are going to be acting out in front of the audience even before they set foot on stage. He has found in this play by fellow Greek writer Dimitris Dimitriadis a work whose stakes are commensurate with his own dramatic practices.

While he was studying to become an actor, Dimitris Karantzas wrote his first play, Snowmouth, which he then was tasked with directing. At 19 he thus discovered both a new trade and an entire world, and started building a core of people with whom he would keep working from then on. A lover of the classics, he directed Chekov's Ivanov and Uncle Vanya, as well as Ibsen's Little Eyolf, while writing another play, A Sitting Woman. In 2013, he directs one of the major plays of contemporary Greek writer Dimitris Dimitriadis, The Circle of the Square, a play produced by the Onassis Cultural Centre, which opened in Athens last October, at the Centre's main stage. Dimitris Karantzas's work is characterised by the extreme attention he pays to dramaturgy. This year he is directing Pirandello's Right You Are (If You Think So) at the National Theatre of Greece in Athens as well as Euripides's Helen for the Athens and Epidaurus Festival.

Born in 1944 in Salonica, where he still lives, Dimitris Dimitriadis studied at the INSAS in Brussels where, in 1966, he wrote his first play, The Price of the Revolt at the Black Market, which would then be directed by Patrice Chéreau in Aubervilliers in 1968. His dramatic work is both rich and powerful and explores the human psyche when faced with extreme situations. He is the author of over forty plays and poetry collections. He has also translated Genet, Blanchot, Duras, Koltès, Bataille, Molière, Beckett, Cioran... During the 2009-2010 season, Olivier Py and the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe paid him homage by having seven of his untranslated plays translated into French and programming three of his works: The Vertigo of the Animals Before the Slaughter (directed by Caterina Gozzi), The Circle of the Square (directed by Giorgio Barberio Corsetti) and Dying Like a Country (directed by Michael Marmarinos).

Laurent Muhleisen, April 2014