STAGED READINGS 2025/ LITERATURE AND SOCIETY

"Enigmas" by Maro Triandafylloy (Evmaros Editions)

CREATIVE TEAM:

Stage Direction/lighting design: Angeliki Kasola

Scenography: Μary Trakaki

Technical Direction: Stavros Hasiotis

Social Media Manager: Bilio Mourgela

Photography/ Videography: Vassilios Dragoumanos

The short story "Ismene" "Ισμήνη" is read by the writer Maro Triandafylloy

The short story "' 'Αlcestis" is read by the members of RESTART COMMUNITY THEATER LABS: Aimiliani Avraam, Athina Koumarianoy, Mary Trakaki, Dimitra Papadimitriou, Eleni Christopoulou.

In the role of the Man, French theatre director Marc Moreigne

Τhe short story "' 'Philomela" is read and performed by actress Irini Mela.

In the role of the Man, French theatre director Marc Moreigne Chorus of Women the members of RESTART COMMUNITY THEATER LABS: Aimiliani Avraam, Athina Koumarianoy, Mary Trakaki, Dimitra Papadimitriou, Eleni Christopoulou.

The short story "' 'Eve" is read and performed by actress Anastassia Politi. Chorus of Women the members of RESTART COMMUNITY THEATER LABS: Aimiliani Avraam, Athina Koumarianoy, Mary Trakaki, Dimitra Papadimitriou, Eleni Christopoulou.

Exctract from the short story "Peter" is read by the members of RESTART COMMUNITY THEATER LABS: Aimiliani Avraam, Athina Koumarianoy, Mary Trakaki, Dimitra Papadimitriou, Eleni Christopoulou.

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Memorable moments from our rehearsals

How "Enigmas" were written

A conversation with the author Maro Triantafyllou

I like to tell the story of how the first inspiration to write a novel or short story came about. How a sudden flash of light, a mound of mud that from a distance looked like a bird sitting in the middle of the road, the inflection of an actor's voice in a performance, a movement, a look, an attitude, a story I heard, a theatrical performance, started a muse story of my own within me. So I will tell you how the ten stories that make up the short story collection ‘Enigmas’ were written .Evmaros Publications, July 2023)

I really like metaphysical horror stories. Ghosts, vampires, zombies, time travel... I can't resist a horror movie, even if it's a badly made b-movie. On the contrary, I hate splatters. I follow, not fanatically I admit, a few internet sites devoted to the genre, which I don't underestimate at all and don't consider it marginal when it has yielded masterpieces like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. So, one day in the summer of 2019, I read on one such website about a short story contest featuring characters from myth or history and was tempted to enter the contest.

The first person I thought of was Tithonus, whose story had fascinated me when I first read it since my teenage years. This handsome young man who falls in love with Io, the goddess of morning light, who makes him her husband and asks Zeus to grant him eternal life but forgets to give him eternal youth. Thus poor Tithonus grows old incessantly, years and diseases afflict him, he suffers and there is not even the consolation of death. Therefore he begs Zeus himself to grant him the redemption of the end. And Zeus, realizing that his daughter's recklessness is responsible for this evil, turns him into a cicada. I saw him walking down an endless road under a merciless sun, dragging his sleepy body with effort, with only the hope of meeting death. The phrase that burned in my mind was 'is what you ask for and the way you ask for it, what you really want

The first story was finished quickly but I never sent it - I don't like competitions it seems, it didn't fit the mood and style of the website. I worked on it throughout the summer until October, when it took its final form. As I was reading the finished version, the idea came to me to tell the stories of other people from the ancient world in my own way, illuminated from special perspectives. I was mainly interested in persons of ancient Greek myth, but also in figures from the Bible. I had many persons in mind when I began to write, and I left many of the stories out of the book, some finished and ready and others half-written and complaining.

Each person I finally chose to include in the collection is an illustration of a concept, their story is written in response to a question that lurked tyrannically in my mind when I was dealing with that person, a question that was generated by my own reading. Thus the texts in the book are not just retellings of the stories of Ismene, Alceste, Philomela. Neither is Filinion the embodied ghost of Phlegon, nor is Lazarus a resurrected friend of Jesus from the corresponding passage in John's gospel, nor is Eve the first woman to walk in the world. Much more, Job and Cain are not the biblical figures and Peter is not the apostle. All the stories may have a part known from the tradition we know about each, but the final text creates a new person. And that person is a relationship of my own with the imprint his story left on me, with the questions it raised in me. To be clearer, I will tell you about Lazarus, who has returned from death. How was he received by the people who learned of it; how was he treated by those who knew the greatest secret and the solution to man's greatest terror; was there not an uproar; did they not hunt him down to learn the terrible secret? And what became of Lazarus afterwards; how did he live; in whose company did he walk the rest of his years?

I was exclusively concerned with these characters, without being able to write anything else for about two years. The last story was completed in October 2021. It was Peter. His inspiration was a sermon by a priest at St. Sostis in Sygrou, which I heard completely by chance. When I wrote the last sentence of this story "God is not coming. Man alone must make the way, his soul must need the unneeded, the beyond the words that exists. His is the way. And the decision", I knew that the journey was over and the ’Enigmas" was on its way to publication.

this text by Maro Triantafyllou was first published on the website Shortstories.gr

MEET THE AUTHOR MARO TRIANTAFYLLOY

Maro Triantafyllou was born in Athens in 1963. She studied philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens and did postgraduate studies in Paris in semiotics (Paris 7 - Jussieu) and in the philosophy of art (Pqris 1 - Pantheon Sorbonne). She holds a PhD in ancient history from the Department of History and Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Crete (thesis title: ‘Death as a spectacle and the spectacle of death in Late Antiquity’).

Her scholarly interests are centered around ancient folklore and the apocryphal texts of early Christianity. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal ‘Post Augustum’ on the history of Late Antiquity.

She has been engaged in theatre criticism since 1999 as a critic of the newspaper ‘Epochi’ and after leaving the newspaper, she has been reviewing theatre in magazines and online pages, mainly in the magazine of philosophical and theological reflection “Anthropos” and in the literary magazine ‘Antilogos’.

She has also worked in school theatre and has directed two professional productions, Μarguerite Υourcenar‘s Clytemnestra’ (2016) and Broch's Récit de la servante Zerline (2018). She is engaged in prose writing, especially short stories, and has published several books (Daphne and the Mountain, What news from Camp Krissenvelt?, Enigmas, etc.).

She is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers and publishes short stories in literary magazines, print and online. Her short stories have been translated into Italian and Spanish. She translates literature, theatre and historical studies mainly from French.