If you are not familiar with the wider Piraeus, Vourla was a swampy area in Drapetsona, a few meters from the cemetery of Saint Dionysius. In 1875, the municipal council of Piraeus decided to move a large number of married women into a large building, which at that time was outside the city plan. Thus, part of the criminal world will shift outside the city. As for the prostitutes imprisoned there, they will practice their profession and at the same time be under elementary medical supervision.

Wurla was divided into three “courts”: first-class prostitutes lived in private houses, second-class prostitutes in brothels, and third-class prostitutes in brothels. Thus, Vourla removed most of the foreign crews from the developing urban Piraeus, as well as local employees of the port authority and the navy. For decades, hundreds of women were held there as prostitutes until Vourla was turned into a prison by the Germans in 1940-1941.

Eleni Filini and Katerina Angelica bring these women to life and open their hearts with elements of fiction and real evidence. They tell us about everything they went through before they arrived in Wurla, about their life in the “girls’ house”, as they said, about what hurts them, and about the dreams that they never stopped seeing. And, of course, they sing to us. They sing to us a lot. How else can they tell their soul the inexpressible?

Efi Reumata staged and designed the lighting in the musical and theatrical performance “The Girl from Vurla”. For 20 performances at Studio Mavromichalis (Mavromichalis 134), every Wednesday and Thursday at 21:00. Musicians on stage: Dana Giacumelo (piano, keyboards) and Giorgos Fragkakis (guitar, bouzouki).