Following the solo performance BREATHING EYE [ 2021 ] and the walking performance- video – installation META [2022] both based on Samuel Beckett’s FILM [1965], Arianna Economou continues her interest in Beckett’s 1961 play HAPPY DAYS, in her current theatre performance.
In HAPPY HAPPIER DAYS, she shares with the audience, a look at the past, present and future – what has been, what could be – always seeking and defining the happiest of days. From this artistic position, she finds herself in an ongoing dialogue with the text.
She confronts her choices as an artist from her early career to the present, through her personal memories and thoughts.
Arianna Economou herself notes: ‘HAPPY DAYS – written twenty years after Wold War 11, which ended with the disastrous nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan – had an effect on writers for decades to follow especially on Beckett. He has set his play in a wilderness, a post-apocalyptic landscape where two survivors Winnie and Willie await their own end.
Winnie is seen buried in a mound of dirt up to her waist [in Act I] and up to her neck [in Act II] ritualistically speaking of her daily routine – placing things in and out of her bag – regulating the passage of time between the bell at waking time, and the bell at sleeping time.
Arianna Economou notes that all this takes place within the convention and timelessness of the ephemeral – both the ephemeral nature of the performance and also of life itself. She talks of looking at life in the present, the past and the future, probing a kind of deeper essence, questioning the manner in which we attempt to create meaning in an altogether senseless, free-falling world of today.
“My relationship with Winnie is that at times I am her, at times I am myself, and occasionally we are together as we journey through life, through explorations in search of meaning. I make use of both the English text as well as the translated version in Greek.”
Alongside the performance, a showcase of material from the artist’s archive will be displayed. This exhibit will relate both to the themes of the performance and to a research approach that takes as its starting point the question – what is the life of the archive and in what way do we activate it?
HAPPY HAPPIER DAYS are created within the framework of the Terpsichore programme of the Ministry of Culture.
Friday Saturday Sunday – 5, 6, 7 May 2023
Dancehouse Nicosia
Idea / Direction / Texts/ Music/ Performer : Arianna Economou
Dramaturgy, Collaborating Artist : Elena Agathocleous
Movement Advisor: Petros Konnaris
Sound Design: Yiannis Christofides
Scenography: Natalie Savva
Selections from the Archives of the Artist: Evagoras Vanezis
Video and Promotion : Justyna Atamam
Technical Support : Yiangos Hadjiyiannis
Production Management: Pantelis Georgiou
Production: ECHO ARTS _2023
Booking & Information
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