In the context of her wider, ongoing research on historiographical representations of/in modernity through literature and the arts, Angeliki Spiropoulou proposes to briefly look at examples of theatre performances produced in Greece in 2021-22, on the occasion of the Bicentennial of the 1821 Revolution and the subsequent birth of the modern Greek nation-state. The selected performances resulted from primarily institutional initiatives to address the occasion but go beyond the logic of mere celebration, by sharing a critical spirit and an experimental form which is broadly associated with the ‘postdramatic.‘ Sampled performances include: Kolokotronis Contemplating the Future; Women Preparing for the Revolution; I’ll Be Thinking of Something (Michail Marmarinos and Akillas Karazisis, dirs), National Défilé (Pantelis Flatsoutsis, dir.), A Country Two Hundred Years After’ (written by playwright Andreas Flourakis), and Reading the Constitution 1821 (curated by Angeliki Spiropoulou). It is argued that, despite their differences, what these performances are found to share, is a focus not on the historic event itself but rather the reception of the occasion of its bicentenary in contemporary Greece. Such ‘occasional’ performances can be shown to have an historiographical function in the present beyond didactic reconstructions of historical events. Not only do they form part of the historical event’s afterlife, as Walter Benjamin would note, but also they bring into relief dominant narratives that make up national tradition and show up the impossibility of an unmediated and unitary approach to a putatively originary past.

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Image credit: Kolokotronis Gazes at the Future. Errika Zacharopoulou, Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera (2021)