The wedding, more reminiscent of a funeral, takes place at the end of the performance of Marios Pontikas (1942-2022), whose memory is dedicated to the performance of the Nama group, at the Kolonos Theater. The Wedding was first staged in 1980 at the Arts Theater directed by Karolos Kuhn. The case of the rape of a fifteen-year-old girl is placed at the center of dramatic interest, and around this terrible event, the trial of the guilty and the family tragedy are gradually intertwined with chilling ramifications of internal and interpersonal conflicts, after the rape, he deprived the girl of the “only dowry” that he possessed, “spoiled” him, “dishonored” it, abolished it as a human value, and eventually disbanded it.

Marios Pontikas, although he painted realistic theater and was considered a “photographer” of speech, treated speech as a “monosigo”, on which various thrusts of silence and voice occur, fully aware that the speech of his dramatic figures has finite boundaries between a cry, a whisper, a glance and silence. He draws his material from the real event of the suicide of a girl who could not stand the shame of rape, newspaper reports of the late 70s. He wrote The Marriage almost ten years before the advent of the “facial” direction, the aesthetic codes of which Eleni Skoti followed in conveying the stage meaning of the play. The show acts as a multi-prismatic mirror of this rapist trial and the complications of losing a woman’s greatest “honorable” asset: her virginity. The direction revealed sharp realism and soared dramatic figures into a performative ensemble of fragile balances. The main thematic materials of the drama: daily terror, painful guilt, humiliating compromise, victimization of a girl. His self-immolation. The director, who practiced in the stream of raw realism, is faced with a dilemma: to preserve the atmosphere of the time of the late 70s or to transfer the action to the present? She makes the difficult choice of turning to a naturalistic depiction of “then” with costumes from the 70s and 80s (edited by Maria Anamateru), while at the same time trying to timelessly reduce the meaning of physical and emotional abuse of women because of her multiple rapes . However, there is one important difference: the authoritarian position of the father was expected, and according to modern data, cannot be the norm. The social environment has always been against violence, but it has a different attitude towards the victim. And today society is against violence, it takes a clear position in relation to the rapist, not in the slightest degree incriminating the victim.

Maggie Sally in the role of a silent victim stands out for her inner strength, physical expressiveness, and direct gaze. She sits mute in a worn chair of a gynecological clinic, bound by straps around her arms and legs, and articulates cries, groans, indistinct voices of anguish with her pulsing body. Offended from everywhere, abandoned, weak and insecure, she is overwhelmed with guilt. He feels crushed by the act itself, but also by the unjust social protest. Her self-destruction is clearly at the root of her self-destructive behavior, as she sets herself on fire in an attempt to avoid marriage with her rapist and redeem herself in the eyes of her own people. She silently endures the torture to the end, with her burnt body completely wrapped in bandages, refusing to succumb to the nonentity.

Stelios Dimopoulos plays eight different roles with the same person: the groom, two witnesses for the prosecution, a witness for the defense, a medical examiner, a prosecutor, a defender and a rapist. He moves in and out of roles with ease and impressive flexibility.

One mind, one thought behind eight different faces. The director’s intent is clever. Ilias Valassis, as the monster father and dynast of the female trio, dominates with the abundance of his movements and vocal impulses, however, risking, however, his realistic acting to turn into mannerism and fall into the suffocating limits of lightness. standardization techniques and interpretative literalism.

Eleni Skoti follows the aesthetic codes of the direct current to convey the stage meaning of the work.

Afanasia Kurkaki, in the role of a hysterical sister, a comrade-in-arms of an authoritarian father, follows the interpretive line of a realistic game and successfully overcomes it at the key moments of the action.

Maria Katsenu, in the role of an offended and oppressed mother, saves all the grains of maternal love and follows the path, guided by maternal instinct as a protective filter over a child who suffers and is subjected to systematic violence.

Exceptional lighting by Antonis Panagiotopoulos closes the scenographic gaps left by the abstract landscapes of Giorgos Hatzinikolaus.

Postscript: A raped girl is forced to marry her rapist after a financial settlement in order for the brute to avoid years of jail time demanded by a variety court prosecutor.

Ms. Rhea Grigoriou holds a PhD in History and Drama from AUTH and is Professor of Greek Culture at EAP.