I ask her if during or at the end of his first performance “Marshall Plan”, which premiered on Wednesday at Piraeus 260, drew reactions from viewers. “Surprisingly, no,” the director tells me. Natasha Triantafillis and she understands that I am asking her about possible political, not artistic, objections to the theme of the play.

“For us, this period of time brings with it a strong sense of change,” Ms. Triantafilli explains, referring to her unusual artistic audacity. “The season contains dynamics that, in our opinion, can be framed in the form of a play. The drama was based on the idea of ​​perspective – expectation, anticipation, hopelessness and disappointment. The phrase from the finale is characteristic: Even if two people look at the same place, they will never see the same thing. This is because these two will rarely be in the same position.”

By the term “Marshall Plan” we mean a fundamental component of the post-war US foreign policy, which was associated, on the one hand, with the containment of communist influence through the economic development of certain countries, and on the other hand, with the creation of a world open to the West and American political, cultural and economic influence. The Marshall Plan served as a tool for the reconstruction of Western Europe and Turkey. The countries where it was used included Greece due to the civil war and its proximity to the states associated with the Soviet Union.

In his famous report on Greece in 1947, the US envoy to Greece, Paul Porter, wrote: “There is no state here by Western standards. Instead, there is a loose hierarchy of individualist politicians, some worse than others, who are so preoccupied with their personal power struggles that they have no time to develop economic policy even if they had the ability” (pronounced “Freedom”). ). He described a country mired in “despair, disillusionment and disbelief in the future.”

The transformation planned within the framework of the plan lasted four years and left behind – in addition to infrastructure, agricultural and industrial projects – the imprint of modernization, but also distrust of foreign aid and its real motives.

“The dramaturgy was based on the idea of ​​perspective, on a glimmer of hope and on disappointment,” says director Natasha Triantafilli.

Monthly investigation

The text for the performance was the result of many months of research and a wide historical, sociological, scientific, “but also strictly artistic” search, the director explains. Questions such as “how archival sources are used in a stage performance” or “how one can approach historical events and actions that have defined contemporary reality on the stage” were key areas of interest for Ms. Triantafilli, who studied sociology in addition to theater. Pretending to be an artist’s subjective eye, but also creatively concerned about the credibility of scholarly sources, she and her collaborators ended up studying, synthesizing, and using evidence through a rich and multifaceted bibliography—at least 20 historical research titles. cited as part of the portfolio and assistance of many historians.

One of those who contributed to the formation of the text is Professor of Political Science Statis Kalivas. “I am interested in the topic of storytelling, how we can communicate to the public a sense of a historical event and its multiple nature,” he comments. “In this regard, we understand that the strategic goals of some states and initiatives set in motion a series of events that have a very unexpected outcome in society, although we do not realize this when we experience it.”

Tassos Sakellaropoulos, historian and head of the Historical Archive of the Benaki Museum, who helped in collecting information and searching for sources, talks about the performance based on historical research and with a “democratic” mood of the composition. “In the work,” he tells us, “the history of the urban world of post-war Greece develops without the influence of opponents.”

The Marshall Plan is presented as part of the Athens Festival until June 10th.