What is the meaning of life and what is it that we lose while looking for it?
The “End and the Beginning” is an account of the story of two people, who unravel the journey of their lives. Sometimes they journey together, at times they drift away from each other, but they always come back to each other.
Bitter humour and strong emotion alternate at every station along this journey. On this route viewers are encouraged to let themselves get carried away by the poetry of the story and to interpret every moment through the freedom that dreams afford us. Our fellow traveller along this journey is none other but the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett.
In his works, Beckett meticulously examines the critical elements of the concept of the end and delineates situations in which the human being experiences its limitations. 'The end is in the beginning and, still, we keep going' confides the Irish playwright in the Endgame and his characters - always in duos, always codependent- are doomed to find themselves in situations where the end is a constant experience. Nobody can get away from this. However, regardless what the beginning of each end is, in each short scene, there is always deafening silence hovering, a silence which the characters are desperate to cover. The words uttered in Beckett's works are nothing but stratagems whose only objective is to fill the void left behind by the acceptance of the end.
The End and the Beginning is a performance in which Beckett's bluffs are swept aside in order to reveal the bare shadows of his characters. Those of them that retain the ability to remember melt into one, they become one single narrator, who remembers, gets lost and forever loses, too.
Because, after all, what really matters is not the meaning of life but all the things that get lost along the way, while we are looking for it.
A descend into our innermost fears, where pretences surrender under the pressing need to exist and coexist. Anyway, the vital force, which Beckett so much entrusted, is both the first and the final act.
The End and the Beginning is a performance that comes to life through body language and is framed by sharp statements. Its basic components are characters, situations, images and symmetries from the works Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Happy Days.
Concept, Direction, Set design: Antonis Koutroumpis
Costume design: Olga Gerogiannaki
Music design / composer: Minas Emmanouil
Lighting design: Christina Thanassoula
Dramaturgy: Miranda Vatikioti, Antonis Koutroumpis
Props: Thenia Koutroumpi, Olga Gerogiannaki
Objects’ manipulation: Miranda Vatikioti
Performers: Antonis Koutroumpis, Olga Gerogiannaki
