With merely four full days remain­ing, every­thing has become a count­down. Four group break­fasts under the orange groves, three morn­ing rehearsals, two tav­erna (tra­di­tional Greek) din­ners, one day until our class pre­sen­ta­tion in the ancient theatre.

When we left Athens it didn’t feel like an end, it felt like a new begin­ning: new town, new per­for­mance spaces, new (extremely gen­er­ous) land­lords, new home. We said good­bye but it wasn’t a depar­ture. It divided our six weeks, it was merely a continuation.

When we moved to Epi­dau­rus it didn’t feel like the pro­gram was near­ing a close, it felt like a new pro­gram entirely: new tav­er­nas to sam­ple, new dis­cov­er­ies in our mono­logues, new are­nas to rehearse in, new under­stand­ings of the plays. Now we’re say­ing good­bye again, but this time it is a departure.

In four days we leave Greece. Returns will no doubt be in our future but we won’t ever return as a group or with the same pur­pose. Our group has become a fam­ily and we’ve grown fond of our daily rit­ual: each day we wake up and have a leisure break­fast together, then we rehearse for a few hours and present in the late after­noon and evening. We work on group cho­rus pieces, we present indi­vid­ual or small group scenes, and we respond to these scenes. At this point we are all work­ing on a few pieces. Each of us has one main piece which we’ve shown in class two or three times and devel­oped along the way. These main pieces have devel­oped tremen­dously; my class­mates are all very tal­ented, but I’m con­stantly floored by the work they all put into their pieces to strengthen them, exceed­ing expec­ta­tions with each new draft.  Six weeks spent study­ing these plays intensely and exten­sively has been quite a jour­ney for us all as we make them come to life.

About eight weeks ago we were told to read a dozen plays to pre­pare our­selves for what was to come. To be hon­est I found the plays a bit intim­i­dat­ing and even for­eign at times. It was dif­fi­cult to imag­ine putting cer­tain scenes on their feet, to con­nect to some of the lan­guage and char­ac­ters, and to under­stand the con­text in which these plays were writ­ten and per­formed. But now we can imag­ine, we have con­nected, we do under­stand, and that’s spe­cial. Now we’ve read them, reread them, mem­o­rized snip­pets, staged them, and per­haps the most impor­tantly, we’ve been able to con­tex­tu­al­ize them by rehears­ing at the sites where they were first staged and tour­ing the towns in which they were based.

These texts, being 2,500 years old, might not be the eas­i­est to access right away, but through trial and error, ded­i­ca­tion, focus, and time, we’ve each taken a mono­logue or scene apart and sewn it back together with our own nuanced under­stand­ing of the char­ac­ter, sit­u­a­tion, and play at large. Besides my class­mates gen­eral awe­some­ness, I think the main rea­son we’ve been able to sink our teeth so deeply in these texts is time.

For five weeks we didn’t have to jug­gle labs, finals, dance recitals, prob­lem sets, a capella arch sings, rehearsals, col­lege coun­cil meet­ings, and the read­ing load of three or four other classes.
For five weeks, we have focused solely on the forty or so extant Greek come­dies and tragedies and the his­tory sur­round­ing them.
For five weeks we were instructed in and out­side the class­room by two bril­liant pro­fes­sors who mas­ter the bal­ance of theatre’s aca­d­e­mic and prac­ti­cal sides and who are ever-encouraging us to push our­selves and our under­stand­ing of the plays.
For five weeks we’ve seen our class­mates become Medea, Cas­san­dra, Diony­sus, Antigone, Clytemnes­tra, Oedi­pus, and oth­ers. We’ve made Agamemnon’s watch­man a slam poet, Tecmessa a Span­ish slave, Menelaus a British explorer, Helen a real house­wife of Argos, the furies a 90s girl band, Lysis­trata char­ac­ters shadow pup­pets among many, many, many other orig­i­nal inter­pre­ta­tions. We’ve adapted the story of Helen and Menelaus twice–both in ways untried and imag­i­na­tive, Aristo­phanes’ Frogs to pro­vide com­men­tary on the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Prometheus and Io’s story to make it a mod­ern radio drama, and Aristo­phanes’ Knights to roast every­one in our group.
For five weeks we’ve felt Diony­sus enter our class­room.
For five weeks we’ve waged agons (com­pe­ti­tions) over mat­ters big and small, just as the Greeks did.
For five weeks we’ve immersed our­self in Greek cul­ture, ancient and mod­ern, which has greatly improved our under­stand­ing of how, why, and where the­atre began.
For five weeks we’ve seen roughly ten shows in three dif­fer­ent lan­guages and learned from them all.
For five weeks we’ve spo­ken to and worked with Greek actors, direc­tors, and pro­fes­sors all of whom stress how the­atre was a part of soci­ety in a way we can no longer fathom. How the the­atre was a place for every­one — men’s atten­dance was manda­tory — and a place where soci­ety could be crit­i­cized, where sto­ries that moved masses could be shared, where mutual expe­ri­ences were had and appre­ci­ated by all.
For five weeks we’ve won­dered why this is no longer the case.

And now we have four days.

For­tu­nately, I’m cer­tain that the lessons, the thoughts, the progress, the won­der­ing, the curios­ity, and the dis­cov­er­ies will con­tinue far beyond these four days. We’ll make the most of these remain­ing four and carry what we’ve learned back to Prince­ton and far beyond.

Yasas! Hello there!

This blog has been less than active the past week, but that hardly reflects our level of activ­ity. In fact, they oper­ate quite inversely. The past seven days have likely been the busiest we’ve had yet and our blog, unfor­tu­nately, suf­fered slightly.

The biggest news of late is our loca­tion change. We spent the first four weeks of our pro­gram in Athens with day trips to towns and islands in the area. On Fri­day we said good­bye to Athens and ven­tured to Myce­nae, an archae­o­log­i­cal site south­west of Athens. Myce­nae was fas­ci­nat­ing but it wasn’t our final destination.

From there we moved to Naf­plion, a gor­geous sea­side town, where we explored cas­tles and fortresses, dined at gela­te­rias and tav­er­nas, and shopped for kom­boloi (worry beads).

The main square in Nafplion.

On Sun­day we moved to Epi­dau­rus, famed for its ancient the­atre. We moved just in time for the start of the Epi­dau­rus fes­ti­val. Epi­dau­rus is divided into an old and new town and we’ll actu­ally be spend­ing most of our time at our apart­ment com­plex about 20 min­utes by bus from Ancient Epi­dau­rus.  These pho­tos show why there’s not a com­plaint to be had about our new home:

Upon arriv­ing at the beach

We’re pretty con­tent with our new residence

Monday’s sun­rise around 6:45am. How breath­tak­ing is that?!

Though it’s dif­fi­cult to believe that we’re approach­ing sin­gle dig­its with only ten days left in the pro­gram, we’re all thrilled to be spend­ing them in Epi­dau­rus and we’re sure to make the most of them.

These are some ran­dom but mem­o­rable moments from our four weeks in Athens.

National Archae­o­log­i­cal Museum of Athens. Our wise and won­der­ful tour guide, Sofia, toured us through this museum for nearly three hours.  We’ve seen many stat­ues that resem­ble this one, which are called kouros (if male) and kore (if female).

This sculp­ture depicts Aphrodite rais­ing her san­dal to ward off Pan, with her child Eros hov­er­ing between them. If you look close enough, you can make out three holes on the bot­tom of her san­dal which hold her straps in place.

The old Par­lia­ment build­ing turned into the National His­tor­i­cal Museum.

Acad­emy of Athens with stat­ues of Athena and Apollo.

The infor­ma­tive and per­sua­sive rug mer­chant who told us the his­tory of rug mak­ing then pro­ceeded to con­vince nearly all of us to buy her rugs.

Tem­ple of Posei­don at Cape Sounio.

These two are from our day trip to Del­phi, most known for the Del­phic Ora­cle. It’s also a major site of wor­ship for Apollo, the god of the sun and prophecy. An inter­est­ing aspect of the cult at Del­phi is that Apollo shared the site with Diony­sus. Every year at the onset of win­ter, Apollo aban­doned Del­phi and left it to Dionysus.

Our class from afar in the ancient the­atre at Delphi.

From our day excur­sion to Agistri, a small island in the Saronic Gulf. Only about 1,000 peo­ple live there and it’s not an espe­cially com­mon stop for tourists so we enjoyed the quiet and easy­go­ing pace of the island. We had a blast bik­ing along the road which con­nects the two set­tle­ments on oppo­site sides of the island.

Thorikos, the ancient city we vis­ited writ­ten about here. These were taken at the site of the sec­ond old­est the­atre in the world, dat­ing from the 6th cen­tury BC, where we sang Old Nas­sau!

Chang­ing of guards is def­i­nitely not some­thing we’re accus­tomed to in the States, but in Greece (and many Euro­pean coun­tries) it hap­pens every morn­ing with a more elab­o­rate pro­ces­sion on Sun­days. The guards, called Evzones, change their posts in front of Par­lia­ment in Syn­tagma Square. Syn­tagma, mean­ing con­sti­tu­tion, is the square where most of the riots have taken place the last few months.

Though their cos­tumes are tra­di­tional and beau­ti­ful, it seemed unbear­able to be wear­ing so many lay­ers in 90˚F.

Though we haven’t run into many other crit­ters, dogs roamed every­where in Athens. Once in a while they would even roam with us. Here there are a cou­ple walk­ing to the metro with us:

We climbed Mount Lyca­bet­tus at sun­set one evening and though the hill was steep, the view was worth it.  It’s about 275 meters above sea level; the high­est point in Athens.

The Athens metro is the most beau­ti­ful metro we’ve ever seen.  It is clean and it runs smoothly which makes it easy to like, but the true gems are built into the metro as mini-museums that take you back thou­sands of years.

The metro has one line which dates back to the late 1800s. Two other lines were added when the metro went through major ren­o­va­tions in the 1990s and, if I’m not mis­taken, this ren­o­va­tion was par­tially inspired to bol­ster their 1996 Sum­mer Olympics bid.  Though the attempt proved futile, the metro is absolutely strik­ing.  The ren­o­va­tion ended around 2000 and was quite the expen­di­ture which some Greeks say con­tributed to their cur­rent eco­nomic state.

Work on the metro was slow because of all the antiq­ui­ties dis­cov­ered along the way. The main prob­lem con­struc­tion work­ers faced was not hav­ing to dig through rock but hav­ing to sift through his­tory.  Every time they dug a new hole they would find an ancient grave or a wall or road so they would put down their picks and shov­els and call in the archae­ol­o­gists who would do their dig­ging with tooth­brushes.  This time was well worth it, how­ever, because this metro is no typ­i­cal trans­porta­tion net­work, it is a series of mini exhibitions.

Walk­ing down mar­ble steps into the sta­tion, you find your­self in a mod­ern uni­verse with ticket machines and esca­la­tors.  But as you descend to a track, you pass all sorts of arti­facts from dif­fer­ent peri­ods of Athen­ian civ­i­liza­tion.  Encased in glass is strat­i­fied exca­va­tion where you see ancient pots, oil lamps, mosaic floors, columns, por­tions of walls and roads, cis­terns, bur­ial remains, clay drainage pipes, and more.  These arti­facts range from the 6^th cen­tury BC through Byzan­tine times.  There are also plas­ter casts of fig­ures from the Parthenon.

On top of being cul­tural and edu­ca­tional, the metro is untar­nished which is a feat for any pub­lic trans­porta­tion unit.  The cars them­selves are clean and oper­ate smoothly. The sta­tions are spa­cious and well-lit with hardly a mark of graf­fito or piece of garbage to be seen.  Most plat­forms even have a mon­i­tor which indi­cates when the next metro is arriv­ing.The only unfor­tu­nate aspect of all this free and espe­cially avail­able his­tory is the fact that it is over­looked due to the inevitable quick pace demanded by its milieu.  Peo­ple gen­er­ally treat pub­lic trans­port as a means to an end and there­fore wouldn’t stop to look at a vase.

How­ever, I’ve been pleas­antly sur­prised by the num­ber of peo­ple who do stop and think about arti­facts.  Quite a few peo­ple do gaze at the 2,500 year-old ceramic vase, more prop­erly called amphora, which was once given to the win­ner of the Pana­thenaic games.  Many appre­ci­ate the fact this vase was once filled with first-class olive oil—a pre­cious and expen­sive del­i­cacy.  And that this olive oil was a prize for one of four sports fes­ti­vals held in ancient Greece col­lec­tively called the Pan­hel­lenic games.  And that one of the other three sports fes­ti­vals held every four years in Olympia is still cel­e­brated.  Very soon in fact, in Lon­don.  All of this his­tory is con­tained in one vase, in one mini-museum of one metro sta­tion. For­tu­nately for us, we pass through these sta­tions daily and take it in as we scurry through.

In Athens, his­tory truly is every­where to be found.  Even underground.

Greece’s cur­rency has recently been in the spot­light with polit­i­cal pun­dits every­where ques­tion­ing the drachma’s reap­pear­ance. But not much has been said about a revi­tal­ized sys­tem already in place in one Greek town.

Volos, a port city in cen­tral Greece, has formed an alter­na­tive local cur­rency.  Cit­i­zens of Volos found them­selves strug­gling to afford items in euros so they turned to TEM.  TEM stands for top­iki enal­lak­tiki mon­ada which trans­lates to alter­na­tive local cur­rency.  In effect, it is a highly-organized barter econ­omy. Mem­bers sign up online to acti­vate their own TEM account which starts at zero.  For their goods and ser­vices, they take pay­ment in TEMs and use TEMs given to them to buy the goods and ser­vices of others.

The rules are sim­ple: one TEM unit is equal to one euro. No one may hoard more than 1,200 TEMs and no one may owe more than 300.  This ini­tia­tive is still based in a cur­rency, but hag­gling and trad­ing are inte­gral to its survival.

Though it’s rem­i­nis­cent of an ancient sys­tem of bar­ter­ing, this is no sim­ple rever­sion.  Peo­ple can now pay for their pur­chases via text mes­sages and check their online account at any point to see their TEM bal­ance and the trans­ac­tions they’ve made.

This cur­rency began func­tion­ing in 2010 and has been embraced by nearly 1,000 res­i­dents of Volos.  Each Sat­ur­day, the TEM-users of Volos gather at a large cen­tral mar­ket venue and barter away.  Euros are nowhere to be found.  Among the par­tic­i­pants are unem­ployed locals who put their skills to work again as baby-sitters, gar­den­ers, tutors, mechan­ics, hair­dressers, and tech­ni­cians.  And locals have added incen­tives for TEM-users.  Some restau­rants and cafes, for instance, offer dis­counted meals for TEM-diners.

The euro is not being forced out by Volosians, but the TEM is unde­ni­ably being let in as a means to man­age their bur­dens in this time of strife.

Thought it might be good to let read­ers know what our daily/weekly sched­ule looks like.

Three days a week we have lan­guage class from 9–10:30. Our Greek pro­fes­sor, Ange­liki (pro­nounced ahn gel eee KEE), is won­der­ful. From the first class she under­stood that we were there to learn con­ver­sa­tional Greek that would best help us immerse our­selves in Greece dur­ing this six-week pro­gram. She says she’s like the bride’s father from “My Big Fat Greek Wed­ding” because she never misses a chance to point out how Eng­lish words have Greek ori­gins. On Tues­day she showed how the root of the word tech­nol­ogy is techni mean­ing art, which I don’t nat­u­rally pair together.

For­tu­nately Ange­liki has taken to our row­di­ness so she is always up for jok­ing around or trans­lat­ing the ran­dom phrases that suit our indi­vid­ual needs, espe­cially when it comes to food. Monday’s trip to the open mar­ket was event­ful for those who par­took because we hadn’t yet learned most food vocab­u­lary, so find­ing and describ­ing what was needed was a chal­lenge. There may have been some acci­den­tal cucum­bers pur­chased in place of zucchini…

The walk from the apart­ment to class is only about 15 min­utes, and directly in our route is a lovely bak­ery which gets daily busi­ness from this band of stu­dents. Usu­ally they have just taken the bread out of the oven when we arrive (a large loaf is only .60€!), so we are treated with that warm, fresh bread as we make our way to class. The bak­ers have been pleased with their new and devoted cus­tomers so they often let us sam­ple their cook­ies and bis­cuits, as well.

After Greek we have act­ing class for a few hours. Act­ing class is loads of fun as we per­form, adapt, revise, rework, and rewrite the come­dies and tragedies from the 5th cen­tury BC. There are fewer than fifty extant Greek tragedies and come­dies from comic play­wright Aristo­phanes and trage­di­ans Aeschy­lus, Euripi­des, and Sopho­cles. They are all rather short, so we are look­ing at the entire body of work over the six weeks. It’s amaz­ing to think that what we’re restag­ing is 2,500 years old, yet it is ever-accessible.

Most of us have mas­tered the after­noon siesta, an inte­gral part of the Greek day. Also in the after­noon and evening we like explor­ing dif­fer­ent parts of Athens on foot or by metro, bus, and trol­ley. The beach is just twenty min­utes away so we’ve been sure to make use of the warm Mediter­ranean. Though we’ve found some favorite bak­eries, creperies, mar­kets, and gyro and other food stands, we often try new places to sam­ple as much Greek food as we can. There are shops, mar­kets, gar­dens, hills, churches, the­atres, muse­ums, ancient ruins, and mod­ern struc­tures every­where in sight, so new adven­tures are to be had each day.

Just to give you a glimpse of what we have com­ing up this week in addi­tion to lan­guage and act­ing class:
Tonight we’re going to see Greek folk danc­ing (more info: http://www.grdance.org/en/), tomor­row we have an all-day trip to Sounion and Thorikos, on Sun­day we’re going to see a show from Berlin’s Schaubuhne — one of Europe’s lead­ing the­atres, based on Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses (more info: http://www.schaubuehne.de/en_EN/program/repertoire/577991), on Tues­day after­noon we’re speak­ing to a Greek rug-maker about his craft, then on Tues­day evening we’re off to the the­atre again to see the Apol­ogy of Socrates, and on Thurs­day we have a day trip to Del­phi. So much to look for­ward to!

Kalimera, paidia! Good morn­ing, pals!

While it may not be morn­ing, Greeks use this phrase up until the early after­noon. Then there isn’t a defined greet­ing from the after­noon until around six pm. From six til ten, you’d say kalispera (with a soft d or slight rolling r) which trans­lates to good after­noon. Then from ten pm on it’s kalivravi: good evening.

Just last night, Michael ordered dessert for our group din­ner at Tim’s apart­ment, and the bak­ery told him to pick it up “in the after­noon… at seven”.

So what hap­pens in those hours the sun beats down the hard­est? Greeks sleep. They siesta. And, not want­ing to be cul­tur­ally insen­si­tive, most of us have taken up this rit­ual. There’s essen­tially an insti­tu­tion­al­ized nap time in Greece, and it’s lovely. The heat is great­est then, and some days that great heat has meant sim­ply step­ping foot out­side at three pm brings such dis­com­fort that one is tempted to get a few min­utes, or even hours, of slumber.

By the late after­noon the tem­per­a­ture drops ever so slightly and after some good shut­eye Greeks are ready to resume the day refreshed. At eight pm, there’s still plenty of sun to take in as we wish pleas­ant after­noon tid­ings to one another. Accord­ingly, Greek din­ner is usu­ally at nine or ten, as the sun sets.

So, dear read­ers, kalimera! And kala evdo­mada ~ have a good week!

Kather­ine

Sun­day, June 17th was a his­toric day. Even Google doo­dled about it:

On the 17th, Greece held a sec­ond set of elec­tions, six weeks after the pre­vi­ous set in which no party received a majority.

So here’s what hap­pened as I under­stand it. All this infor­ma­tion comes from peo­ple we’ve spo­ken to and arti­cles I’ve read. Please note I have sim­pli­fied some aspects of this, but my hope is that in doing so I have not detracted from the essence of the particulars.

In Novem­ber 2011, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter George Papan­dreou called for a ref­er­en­dum to be held over Greece’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment the euro. Papan­dreou later called off the ref­er­en­dum due to polit­i­cal pres­sure and as a result he resigned. This ush­ered in an interim gov­ern­ment headed by Lucas Papademos which lasted until elec­tions in May 2012.

The May elec­tions resulted in no polit­i­cal party win­ning the major­ity of seats in Par­lia­ment, which is required by the Greek con­sti­tu­tion to form a gov­ern­ment. The three largest par­ties had an oppor­tu­nity to form a sim­ple major­ity by align­ing but they did not do so. The con­sti­tu­tion called for Par­lia­ment to be dis­solved and new elec­tions sched­uled, and these elec­tions hap­pened on June 17^th.

This elec­tion, as Greeks described it, put to vote the public’s com­mit­ment to the euro. Vot­ers had a hard choice between con­tin­u­ing with harsh aus­ter­ity mea­sures or the unknowns of return­ing to the drachma. Regard­less of their votes, social unrest and eco­nomic insta­bil­ity are here to stay.

The three main polit­i­cal par­ties:
New Democ­racy is a pro-bailout/austerity con­ser­v­a­tive party.
Syriza is a rad­i­cal left, anti-bailout/austerity party. The word “syriza” ref­er­ences a Greek word mean­ing “back to the roots”.
Pasok is a social­ist party, which had long ruled Greece.

In the May elec­tion, New Democ­racy received 19%, Syriza received 17%, and Pasok received 13%.

In Sunday’s elec­tion, New Democ­racy received 30%, Syriza received 27%, and Pasok received 12%.

Both elec­tions reflect a minor­ity vic­tory for New Democ­racy, which is a party notion­ally com­mit­ted to keep­ing Greece in the euro by sus­tain­ing a national aus­ter­ity pro­gram.  This pro­gram has reduced the nation’s econ­omy by 20% since 2007, and promises to cut wages and pen­sions by another 15% next year.

A Greek polit­i­cal pun­dit said that for Syriza, this was the best pos­si­ble out­come. They didn’t win which means they won’t have to run the coun­try, but they proved that they are a viable oppo­nent to ND. Syriza, founded in 2004, was not taken seri­ously until a cou­ple of years ago, and now their pop­u­lar­ity is undeniable.

If Syriza had won an out­right major­ity, Greece would have likely exited the euro zone and defaulted on its loans. Aban­don­ing the euro surely sounds dra­matic and it would have likely sent the world finan­cial sys­tem into tur­moil, but it’s impor­tant to note that Greece has a his­tory of cor­rup­tion and tax-evasion that seems to have bur­dened its EU partners.

We’ve been told that Greece will run out of money by the end of July. Can’t quite wrap my mind around that. Sunday’s elec­tions added to their debt, and if a third set of elec­tions is called for, that will surely run them dry. Let alone all other costs that are, you know, nec­es­sary to run a country.

Since no party won a major­ity, no sin­gle party will have enough seats to gov­ern by itself and New Democ­racy must now form a coali­tion. On Sun­day evening, Pasok (social­ist party) announced that they would not join a coali­tion with ND (center-right) unless Syriza (rad­i­cal left) did so. This coali­tion, if I’m not mis­taken, is sup­posed to be formed by tomor­row, Wednes­day the 20^th. If they do not form a coali­tion, they will sched­ule a third set of elec­tions in six weeks.

For­tu­nately for us (and pri­mar­ily our wor­ried par­ents) this means that at least for the next 35 days in this global sem­i­nar, the euro will remain Greece’s cur­rency and the drachma will not make a come­back. Greece’s trou­bles are cer­tainly still present but they are not being dealt with until they have a func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment again and it’s not clear whether that will hap­pen dur­ing our time here.

Per­haps the strangest part of being in Athens dur­ing tumul­tuous times is the fact that we’re simul­ta­ne­ously learn­ing about Greek his­tory, simul­ta­ne­ously vis­it­ing the Acrop­o­lis, simul­ta­ne­ously (and con­stantly) hear­ing from Greeks how there’s was the city that fash­ioned democ­racy. It seems an unfor­tu­nate para­dox that we can so praise their ori­gins and treat their cur­rent state as a cancer.

Hope­fully this served as a clear, inof­fen­sive, and rel­a­tively con­cise expla­na­tion of the Greek polit­i­cal climate.

Over and out,
Katherine