The play

A group of moths lives in a cave. The sun gets increasingly strong outside their cave and, when they go out in the light of day, it burns their wings, meaning they can’t search for food. They learn that a butterfly found a solution to this problem. She underwent a “procedure”, which made her wings transparent. However they reject this solution and prefer to remain sealed off in their cave, refusing to accept that the world beyond it is changing. The problem gets progressively worse, as the moths get increasingly hungry and the sun gets ever more relentless. They throw out of their group a moth that has undergone the “procedure”. One moth grabs all power. Another moth turns to cannibalism. A violent conflict breaks out. In the end a solution is found based on cooperation.

Excerpt from the play

This is a crisis and it isn’t a simple little crisis, like when it rains and the wind is blowing for two weeks and we are drenched to the bone, when we go out for food. No. This crisis isn’t going to blow over. My antennae are telling me that this crisis will last for a very long time, longer than this summer. […] Moths of the valley, this is something extremely serious. Something has to change.

Margaret Wesseling

Margaret Wesseling is a playwright. She was born in the United States and lives in Greece. She graduated summa cum laude in English Literature from Harvard University and studied Medieval Literature at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands on a Fulbright Scholarship.

She has written eight plays and two collections of poetry, as well as articles in Greek and in English.

Her plays and writing have been staged in Greece, Germany and the United States.

Two of her plays have been published: Sparrow on the roof (Aigokeros Publications, 2019) and They’re digging a tunnel (magazine Voices, vol. 3 [2024]). They’re digging a tunnel was a Eurodram 2021 selection.

Her poems and articles as well as synopses of her plays can be found on her website m2write.com

Directorial Note

I regard Margaret Wesseling’s Butterflies as a contemporary fairy tale for adults, a sensitive yet pointed allegory about change, identity, survival and group spirit. At its core the play has nothing to do with insects and everything to do with people. People in transition, caged in by what was and what they should (or are forced) to do, in order to continue to exist.

The characters live in the valley, an ecosystem that is under threat, which could be a metaphor for the world today, which is in crisis, a crisis that is ecological, social and moral. Their transformation isn’t biological. It is profoundly existential. They embody the terror of facing destruction and the need to adapt – at any cost. The choice to cast the roles without any gender definition is a conscious one. The actors are called upon not to embody gender but a mental condition: anxiety, cancellation, division, hope. The change concerns everyone. And affects each of us differently.

Viewers today recognise in the world of moths and butterflies their own relationships to the sense of belonging, their own debates about change – whether this is social inclusion, environmental fear, or personal evolution. Our work reminds us that evolution isn’t always heroic or clean. It can be painful, contradictory, full of loss. And often is the only way out.

Our performance is an invitation for collective introspection. What do we change in order to survive – and what remains within us unaltered, even if all around us is collapsing? [Chara Lianou]

Butterflies

Playwright: Margaret Wesseling

Translation: Vicky Sonikian

Directed by: Chara Lianou

Performed by actors: Stavros Volkos, Michalis Theodorakis, Chara Lianou, Ilia Pappa, Marita Tzatzadaki