The play

The characters in the play raise the issue of domestic violence and femicide, from their own point of view and their own experiences. True testimony muddled with myth. They suffer for all they have gone through. Then comes acceptance, the discovery of their inner depths and hope for the future.

Rena puts her wedding dress on again and remembers how bad her marriage was.

Ilias gives an interview to a radio station, recounting his family history. The financial straits in which they found themselves, caused by a European Union ruling, made his father kill his mother.

Myrto quickly recognised where the first signs of violence were leading and got out. But the next woman in a relationship with him didn’t make it.

Dimitris’s wife abused him emotionally for years, making him depressed and leading him to overeating. Being jobless was the final blow, but, in the end, he gained back his life.

Excerpt from the play

ILIAS: “After my mother was murdered, the feminist movement demanded that these murders be called ‘femicides’, because, as they said at the time in the newspapers I would read, they weren’t simple tragedies, but deliberate actions against the female gender…, that’s sort of how they explained it. I’m not that much into learning, but they were right. I’d never hit a woman! Never!”

Xenia Tsiouma

Xenia Tsiouma is a graduate of the Neo Elliniko Theatro Drama School run by Yiorgos Armenis and the Royal Academy of Dance.

For a number of years she worked with Carmen Rouggeri. Also with Yiorgos Armenis, Vassilis Douros, Yiorgos Mitsikostas, Athina Kefala, Lakis Karalis.

She has collaborated with the Greek National Opera, the Thessaloniki Concert Hall and Megaron, the corresponding Athens Concert Hall, the Neo Elliniko Theatro, Kivotos, Technopoli, Theatro Vafeio, Thyra Technis, the Municipal Theatre of Pefki, the Municipal Theatre of Palaio Phalero, the Vorres Museum, the Veakeio, the Municipality of Dionysos (for three years).

She has worked in television for MEGA CHANNEL, ANT1 and ALTER and taught theatre education at a private school for a decade. She has also directed productions of children’s theatre.

The wedding dress on the floor is her first play and at the moment she is preparing her second, entitled Athens-Seoul 1-1.

Directorial note

In a harsh world plagued by femicides and domestic violence, with 157 women killed in 10 years in Greece, 16 murders in 2024 and a further 4 murders in 2025 with countless more murders attempted, as well as the silence over the violence that takes place in homes, we start to evaluate these crimes. To pray and cry out for all that remains unsaid. To break the taboos of exceedingly personal details in people’s everyday life. Domestic violence is a silent weapon that leads to the crime. As a director I will seek to make a staged reading that is a testament to save what can still be saved. And for nobody to be left alone. [Eirini Tzavara]

The wedding dress on the floor

Playwright: Xenia Tsiouma

Theatrical text editor: Aikaterini Theodoratou

Director: Eirini Tzavara

Assistant Directors: Evi Patsaki, Maria Voutsina

Music (original song for the performance): Haris Glentzis

Visual Arts Display: Femicide by Konstantina Morou

Photographer: Alkis Dadinopoulos

Rehearsal photographer: Theofilos Koutroumanis

Artistic assistant: Spyros Gerolymatos

Actors (by order of appearance): Xenia Tsiouma, Aris Gertsos, Tzina Dega, Alkmini Tsiaba, Efthymis Toris, Yiorgos Dourgoutis