Luna, is that you? Valerie yelled at her. He turned and they looked at each other. Hair grew back, hunger was satisfied, and two years later his face was unrecognizable. They embraced. Was it autumn 1945 or summer 1946? Behind the embracing women, the visual installation suggests a city bus stop in a “ghost town”. Hanging from the ceiling are black-and-white photographs of the Jews of Thessaloniki in their city, the Holocaust, during the troubled days. Their base is illuminated by a beam of light, like a candle flame, by burning lime for about 80 years since the resettlement and destruction of the Jewish population.

A short scene at the Vafopuleio Spiritual Center shows the show’s passengers in motion on the KTEL bus, which travels with Luna, the heroine of the show, around Thessaloniki in search of the places where she walked and the houses where she lived before and after. Holocaust. There are as many spectators as there are seats on the bus.

His directorial concept Damian Konstantinides to set “Moon” in three successive and different spaces (Vafopoulio, east-west route, Mavili Square) in a text based on the same title, the award-winning historical biographical essay by Ricky Benveniste (published by Polis) was also unprecedented for him and valuable an experience. “The idea came in connection with the pandemic. Since people travel by public transport, why not show the show on the bus? – explains the director “K”.. “The setting and the protagonist, as in the book, is the city itself, I would say reality is the setting. I was almost guided by the exteriors. The biggest part of the show is the movement. Narrators and viewers together search in the modern web for the layers of its history, the true events of a real person. To ask yourself, after all, how much reality the theater can handle.”

Eleni Makisoglu with 60 years of theater experience (actor Zisos Haratsaris, Theatrical Workshop, KTHBE) turned out to be the perfect moon. A demanding role that he says moves on a razor’s edge as “you run the risk of becoming either overdramatic or melodic”. Sitting like the moon on the seat of the bus, she looks into space. Indelible tattoo No. 40077 on her arm. Actors (Alexis Kotsifas, Antigoni Barba, Sotiris Rumeliotis) unfold different periods of the life of a woman who lived for about ninety years (1910-1998) in the 20th century. A Thessalonian Jew, an Auschwitz survivor, a seamstress, illiterate, married to Sam who died in the crematoria, sometimes calm, sometimes angry, as if awakening from a dream or a nightmare, he remembers countless hardships in the empty, wounded city where they returned as refugees. Anesthesiologists. Foreigners. “Well, we left them 50,000 houses and they don’t have 2,000 souls to house,” Luna wonders.

Outside, the city pulsates to modern rhythms on a Saturday night. Television screens behind balcony doors broadcast the tragedy of refugees, the war in Ukraine, the rise of the extreme right in Europe, violence of all kinds. “The stage protects the actors,” Ms. Makisoglu explains. “However, next to the passenger, you need to be “straight”, normal, like talking to a stranger while traveling. The interpretation does not cause exaggerations, but only the truth.

Ricky Benveniste’s “Moon” becomes a theatrical production on the streets of a “ghost town”.

The bus passes by the buildings and quarters where her heroine lived. Many are lost under apartment buildings (Jewish quarters “151” and “Rezi Vardar”, the Jewish cemetery), others crumble in ruins, for example, the Allatini hostel, where she lived for 23 years, crippled mentally and physically after her return. , while some have changed usage. Permanent witnesses, the “Saul Modiano” nursing home that took care of her for the last 15 years of her life, the monastery synagogue where the survivors took refuge to share “entre mozotros” (between us) mourning, fears, dilemmas, claims. We stop for a “moment of silence” at the station, where trains left for the death camps. Sephardic songs electrify the narrative.

The show, following Benveniste’s approach, does not focus on the drama of the Holocaust. He focuses on the Moon, but refers to Jewish workers, invisible Historians, in a world that, if not hostile, remains indifferent. The text and the route activate memory, direct (not direct) the viewer to the perception of the just and the unjust, to the issue of violence and racism that still permeate societies, turn his gaze “to the countless singularities swept away by the cyclone.” I wish it could accommodate more people, I wish the organizers (the production of Angelus Novus and the municipality of Thessaloniki) increased the “routes” not only because the tickets for the show from the very beginning left a long waiting list and therefore little problems in its management, but because it is a unique experience of the awakening of History in the current fabric of the city, with all the associations that modern reality evokes.

The bus reaches the western part of the city, where refugees, economic migrants, Chinese and Pakistani peddlers mingle with the crowd. Thessaloniki is an eternal melting pot. On Mavili Square, in the cafe “Sadan”, near the restored Bread House (the last residence of the Moon with Sam), the third act is similar to a ritual. Like one of Luna’s family get-togethers with Valerie, who shares accurate memories with the sugar brides, the big question “why they were saved and not others”, unjust guilt, permanent mourning. “I’m returning from another world / a world that I didn’t leave / and I don’t know who it really is. […] I think I’m still there…/ and I’m dying again/ The death of all those who died,” repeats Luna (Charlotte Delbo, 1970). So the survivors lived until the end of their lives.

Luna’s performances continue until October 25th.