GKIAK, Dimosthenis Papamarkos | 2024-2025
“Gkiak” in the Arvanitic dialect means blood, blood kinship, blood crime, revenge killing, vendetta, clan.
“No one will tell you what he did over there.
Sometimes I see the ones who came back from our unit on the street
and I think
of all I’ve seen each of them do with my own eyes
and I shiver.
But then again, didn’t I do things too?”
The clay-made world of masculine honor in Dimosthenis Papamarkos’s short stories comes alive on the stage of Stathmos Theater and confronts the notions of heroism, the male face of violence, and the post-traumatic dimension of war.
The heroes of GKIAK, veterans of the Asia Minor Campaign, coexist scenically in a surreal world carved out of bones, teetering on the edge of a spacetime continuum—sometimes as figures of older eras, sometimes as modern-day men, shattered by the weight of the normative image of masculinity that has spanned generations up to today.
Captive to the role assigned to them as guardians of the homeland, religion, and family, the once proud evzones of the Asia Minor Campaign survive forgotten after fulfilling their duty, trying to find their identity, to tame their impulses, and to hide their fractures—even from one another.
The only thing that nourishes them is the memory of a childhood steeped in the models of old masculine archetypes, and the conviction of a heroic alibi that decorates mass deaths and war crimes with medals.
CONTRIBUTORS
Author: Dimosthenis Papamarkos
Direction, research, dramaturgy: Konstantinos Ntellas
Sound design & music: Alexandros Ktistakis
Movement coaching: Mariza Tsigka
Costumes: Konstantina Mardiki
Lighting design: Panagiotis Lampis
Masks: Martha Foka
Scenic environment: Konstantinos Ntellas
Assistant director: Artemis Leptokaropoulou
Performed by: Thekla Gaiti, Dimosthenis Xylardistos, Giorgos Syrmas, Efthimis Chalkidis, Antonis Christou
Promotional photography: Dimitris Nikolaou
Production: Politismos Stathmos Theater, Experimenta Art Company
LINKS