What Reality?
Dreams, memories and work schedules
The play
Phoebe and Panos love each other deeply but they are unemployed, up to their necks in debt, and threatened with eviction. Extreme measures are required. The absurd is lurking. People introduced: a mental health controller, a phone-sex line customer, a debt negotiator interested in unexpected trade-offs…
When it comes down to it, how do you resist, when it all goes wrong?
Excerpt from the play
PANOS: I can’t any longer.
PHOEBE: How do we figure a way out?
PANOS: My ideas are all black.
PHOEBE: Mine aren’t.
PANOS: This is why we’re together.
PHOEBE: Fine, then I’m in charge now.
PANOS: Let’s go.
Nina Rapi
Nina Rapi writes plays, short stories and essays. Her plays have been staged/presented and/or were published in London, Athens, New York, Slovakia, Italy, Poland, India. They include: Angelstate, Splinters, Wild Beats, Did Persephone have the Stockholm Syndrome, Kiss the Shadow, Edgewise, Reasons to Hide, Ithaka. She taught at London University and Greenwich University. Her latest short story collection Field of Flow has been published by Kappa Publications, while her previous collection, State of Fugue, was published by Kedros. Her essays have been published by the Cambridge University Press, Routledge and many more. She was the founder and editor-in-chief of the ground breaking Brand Literary Magazine.
Directorial note
Nina Rapi’s new play What reality? reveals a new aspect of her theatrical discourse. She turns with ease from the fragmented speech, realistic cynicism, poetic writing and symbolism, elements that featured in her previous work, to black comedy. She doesn’t swerve, however, from her ideological imperatives, which leave a strong political imprint, targeting a socio-political and conscious transition towards another reality. The purpose of the direction is to shed light on Rapi’s indicting writing and to highlight her main theme, which is the attempt to impose upon and control human existence by powerful centres of control. The main directorial axis will move between polar opposites such as acquired needs and inherent desires, true love and unfeeling exploitation, humanity and ferocity. The direction will attempt to convey to the public the question that exists in the play’s title and to query: Which reality do we choose? Are there others besides the ones that they are forcing upon us? Are we allowed to choose freely? If not, can we choose to flee and build our own reality? [Katerina Bilali]
Katerina Bilali
Katerina Bilali is an actor, theatrologist, theatrical translator, drama coach. She graduated the Drama School of the Athens Conservatory (1999) and the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Patras (2021), where she is a doctoral candidate.
She has taken part in more than 40 performances, working with the National Theatre, the Municipal Regional Theatres of Roumeli and Ioannina, as well as many other private theatre companies. She is a founding member of the group TheArtes (2020-the present day), artistic representative of the theatre group Anima (2014-2019).
She received an honourary mention as an actor from the State Karolos Koun Awards 2024, for the role of Carmela in Ay, Carmela!
She has translated plays, which were published by Iridanos Publications. Her play Does mourning become Electra? has been published by Nikas Publications. Her book The rise of gendered issues through women’s writing for contemporary Greek theatre after the 1990s has been published by Aigokeros. She has published articles in journals on theatrology and literature.
What Reality?
Dreams, memories and work schedules
Playwright: Nina Rapti
Director: Katerina Bilali
Actors: Pericles Lianos, Yiota Tsiotska, Spyridon Xenos