Theater / One-winged love comes to save the world

Where do Sappho, Euripides, Plutarch, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Gryparis meet? If nothing else, on one of the most unexpectedly romantic menus a theater stage can offer. The show “Eros monopteros o planis” signed by Gerasimos Gennatas and Maria Floratou and presented every Saturday and Sunday at H.ug Art Space composes a cheerful musical spectacle with all kinds of love, from the lightning to the platonic and from the illegal to the unfulfilled, to occupy the stage covered with well-known Greek and foreign songs. The two artists co-wrote an entertaining variety show with lots of poetry, haute cuisine and magic tricks, about the madness of love, which transforms us, haunts us, intoxicates us and in the end defeats us.

“A wounded one-winged love comes to save the world, to give it love and love for life again” says Gerasimos Gennatas who, in addition to the texts, also signs the direction of the modular show, which draws elements from the variety show, with ballads, lots of music and songs. A sensitive look into our world is cast by this romantic menu, with Maria Floratou, an interpretive multitool, playing 20 different personas, juggling on stage, playing double bass, singing and communicating directly and interactively with the audience.

“Let them make us finish too”

This is where the world is lost, love is what we need now, one might reasonably ask. “I think we need something brighter to tickle us in these dark days we live in. That we have to officially mourn as a country and not just us its citizens. Instead we erased the names of the Tempe dead in front of the Parliament. Fortunately, the students rewrote them” says Gerasimos Gennatas right from the start, commenting on what happened in the previous days with the completion of one year since the tragic accident that still haunts the country. “That’s exactly why we do theater, to honor life, to honor culture, to honor the humanity among us. Let them force us to finish” concludes the talented actor and director, who, apart from his art, does not hesitate to take a stand on the issues that concern society.

On the same wavelength, Maria Floratou points out that “Eros monopteros o planis” is a show “with many comedic elements and very serious reflections about how we live and how we manage human relationships”. Loneliness, apathy, selfishness, issues that enter and leave the door of our homes and together the texts of classical authors become the starting point in this particular performance for a celebration on stage, where music, song and juggling work as an occasion for entertainment and thinking.

“Playing 20 different personas in a row is a very big challenge acting but it’s so much fun because it draws from the stormy pace with which our own thoughts, which are very often conflicting, visit us,” says Maria Floratou. “Our intention is to give a platform to as many different points of view as there are people in the show and how each of them deals with love.” She loves all the characters she plays. “Each one is so outrageous and absurd that I can’t tell them apart. But the audience seems to be more fascinated by Saltaferi, a persona we have inspired by the witches of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, who in our version is a barwoman who specializes in cocktails and claims to have the secret to love”.