The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Greek Plays

My back yard has looked desolate for so many years now. Untrodden. There is just a tiny, tired stream flowing through it, crimson and thin, like blood trickling down the temple of a man who was killed by his own noble hand: it is the blood that I was talking about just a moment ago...

No, no, he didn’t mean any harm. He simply wanted to prove how grave and fatal an accidental handshake could be – or, a fleeting touch in the curve of the palm. Then came the kiss, on the cut of the neck, on the breast or the shoulder... (Long pause.)

Have you ever asked yourself exactly what it is that we fall in love with in another person? Have you ever turned this riddle in your mind? What is it about this person that raises the dormant armies of our senses and throws us unarmed into a battle already lost? Where exactly lies the power of the other – the power that pushes us naked into the minefield of a yet unknown embrace? Oh, come, poke into your past and try to remember – if, of course, you can recall such a rare memory. What did that mortal dagger that hit you look like?

Was it liquid like a blue gaze, or solid like a firm step, or ethereal like desirous arms closing in a deep embrace which reaches down to the roots?...

Oh, you are wasting your time. You will never find an answer to this. Whoever has tried to interpret love has never been in love. Only deafening silence can match the absolute nature of such a gift, a silence strewn with the unspeakable particles of the universe that spark for just a second – which is precisely the duration of a gasping embrace.

and maybe in the end that’s the real reason for the survival of the human race, not the instinct to reproduce, not the instinct to survive, but the simple stupidity of the species, the stupidity of the arrogance of believing that everything is in our power. And our folk culture, in its wisdom, our [Greek] tradition with all its wise proverbs never explains what these manageable things are.

idiot and thinking everything was great, so I can’t see much of a future for myself, and I don’t much like that idea. I don’t much like this discount store display of answers to the question ‘How are you?’ Okay man, sort of well, plugging away, it’s going, well enough, can’t complain, health, so long as we have our heath all other things can be managed.

I’m screaming on the inside and on the outside I’m yawning, I’m sick of myself, then again not completely, I’m a little bit sick of myself, I feel a bit okay, things are a bit alright, my life seems a bit balls, most people are a bit jerk-offs, our country’s a bit of a toss-off, but not completely because of the good weather and the islands, and because no place is perfect, the work I’ve got to do this year I like a bit, I don’t like myself much, but sometimes I do, and overall, this whole Checkhovian mediocrity of a mediocre human being is busting my balls a bit, but then again not completely, because I also find it moving, I like the truth of this sort-of-blahness and in the end I think I sort of like it that I realize, I mean I prefer it to me being a complete

where are you, and even more beloved cause of my misery, come back, rough seas of my youth, bring some change to this flat calm of maturity and gratitude for every tiny little ant I see before me, for every ray of sunlight, and every fucking day that dawns, send me someone I can call an asshole, take from me the knowledge that no-one is to blame for the way they are, take these doldrums from my spirit, take the compassion from my condescending little smile, take Jung and [Irvin] Yallom, take this bestseller they call balance, take this filthy film of positive energy, take the beautiful sunsets, and your organic products and stick them up your ass, please, shove them right up your ass, and give me back a reason to paint a bomb on the wall, give me cause to write FUCK YOU ALL in black marker on my desk, leave me to my narcissistic funk and not my artistic ability, o funk, where are you?

curity shutters are down, don’t fret yourself dollbabie, fuck Stavros, cross yourself [and thank God] that you found a Stavros to cross your ankles behind, go out for a walk, see some friends, go on a little holiday, and it’s over, that’s it, there’s nothing more. Bang. My finger pistol fires an invisible bullet into my brain. And why should there be anything more? Other people don’t have even that. There are people who have no legs, who have nothing at all below the waist. Bang. Okay you cunts. I’ll say thank you, too. All right. I don’t know if this condition of mine is subject to improvement, and I’m very much afraid it doesn’t even have a course to run, not even downhill, not even to rock bottom, sacred rock bott

considered to be a depiction of society and the incredible maturity of this painter, that at sixty he’s painted a dot that says it all, and no longer needs brooks or bridges, portraits, tits, trees, this whole project of being born and dying alone, and I don’t mean alone ‘deserted’ but alone with your just deserts, is it going to be in fashion long? Is it a bit like jeans, which will never go out of fashion? Because if that’s how it is wall of mine, and picture, and curtain of mine, please tell me, so I’m not just sitting here pointlessly looking at you, and if, darling furniture, you’re not going to find your voices and speak to me, at least give me a sign, something, Morse code, something to indicate the end of hope, we’re closed, the se

make me cry over the fate of all flesh, and so over my own fate? Thank you very much, I was deeply moved, I don’t want any more, though – I won’t have more, thanks. So, now, what else can I do? Have you got anything else to offer, or was that it? Have you got anything else, besides useless knowledge, or do we just keep singing the same old song ‘til the end, the whole cyclical nature of everything? This whole concept, this birth-death, happy-sad, black-white business, is it going to go on much longer, this process of subtraction, what I’m asking is, this postmodern one tiny dot on a white background where the painter spent his whole life painting realistically in order to finally arrive at that dot and the dot is

What did Euripides and Sophocles teach me in the end? Where did all these splendid people get me, all these great ideas and lofty sentiments, what did they have to offer beyond that moment where they moved me deeply? Nothing. So, what was the point, in the end? To move me? To