The play

An adolescent girl dreams of travelling the world dancing.

A fourteen- year-old immigrant boy dreams of returning to his country a rich man.

A student seeks validation in the eyes of his mother.

What brings these people together and how far would they go to make their wishes come true?

Excerpt from the play

MARIA: Stomach cancer. He’d hide the vomiting from all of us. An entire year and he never shared his pain with anyone. “Just the loan – pay off the loan and have our Eleni finish her studies. Our ASTRA, our star, will save us”. Those were his last words…

Manolis refused to come to terms with the death penalty he had been dealt. He knew the entire extent of his martyred condition as he faded away. His clarity of mind, which had to be a torture, also cultivated his victory.

Long pause.

Today I paid ten thousand into the Bank.

And for his sake, since he died, I got better at cleaning the house. I don’t leave a trace anywhere. Because blood that is spat up, never comes out, like a spirit, like a dream repeated ad infinitum.

Efi Venianaki

Efi Venianaki was born in Sydney and grew up in Athens.

She studied theatre in Athens at the G. Theodosiadis School and film at the Stavrakos School.

She has taken part in theatre, film and television productions as an actor, a director and a producer.

She is an executive at the Aigokeros publishing house.

he has written the novels: Three oceans and a sea (Psychogios Publications, 2010; fourth reprint: Aigokeros Publications, 2018) and The irregular stream (Psychogios Publications, 2016).

She has written the plays: Scream (three theatrical stories, Aigokeros Publications, 2015). Women on the verge of the night (2022); while she has also published the theatrical adaptation Madonna in a fur coat (Aigokeros Publications, 2023), based on the novel of the same name by Sabahattin Ali. The heavenly garden of Karyotakis (2024). Her most recent work is entitled ASTRA (2025).

ASTRA

Playwright: Efi Venianaki

Director: Roubini Moschochoriti

Actors (in alphabetical order in Greek): Alexandros Theodoropoulos, Evgenia Karabesini, Despoina Sarafeidou, Vasilis Triantafyllou.