What changed after the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos?

The decade of the 2000s – which probably begins with the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in 2001 – is the decade in which two historical examples coexist: it is the time when promises of universal peace survive, but also the time of new types of terrorism and wars, new individual and collective fears . And above all, this decade is at the same time a time of abundance, but also the failure of this promise.

THE Central Stage of the Municipal Theater of Piraeus hosts a…. big show: the “Atlas of the 2000s”his new show Panteli Flatsousis. A performance that, with the condition of the show and with extensive use of technology, live video, live music and an excellent group of actors, attempts to recall the years of the 2000s and together with the audience, provide answers to the questions: AThena 2004, September 11, Euro 2004, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Eurovision 2005, Airport El. Venizelos, the assassination of Alexis Grigoropoulos, the global financial crisis, subways, tsunamis……..Do we remember how the world was before these? What happened; Where are we; Where are we going?

“There are many reasons for this performance. The 2000s is on a personal and individual level my adolescence and young adulthood. Also on a more collective level these years is the “emotional education” of a generation, the one born from the mid-to-late 1980s and perhaps the early 1990s. These played a role, but they were not enough. as fuel to take this project forward. The fire, so to speak, enters from everything that this decade represents in multiple fields of our private and public life, both in Greece and internationally” notes Pantelis Flatsousis in NEWS 24/7, explaining what prompted him to do this show.

And it continues “we start, in the show, from the Greek experience, not only because it is the familiar experience for us, but also because we could see the Greek experience as a case study of the internationalization of domestic life at every level.

From the 2004 Olympic Games and the Euros – again the year 2004, of which it is twenty years, an important cycle, which perhaps allows us to begin to process and reflect on our experience – to the global financial crisis of 2008, it happens the following: international events have an unprecedented impact within the country, which until then we considered invulnerable to international developments because it belonged to the periphery, while at the same time domestic events often reflect or even foreshadow global developments, as we clearly see in December of 2008″.

The end of an era…

“We talk about them in the show, yes, and it is our desire not to talk about a generation or a group of people, but to see how a social mosaic is formed, but also how they emerge or better take their purest form then, in the decade of 2000, examples in every field of our lives (economic, social, technological, political, geopolitical etc) that starts then and completely shapes our lives today.

For example that decade is the end of an era or a decade or so where the world was very clearly unipolar. The story of the 2000s from September 11 onwards is also the story of the emergence of a new multipolar and unstable paradigm with developments that clearly have to do with domestic events and our daily lives in Greece and directly affect them. This, of course, is the big picture.

In the show this is the background, but we are not at all interested in a recitation of facts. We are interested in how all this was experienced, how our lives changed. What continuities and discontinuities are there with today?

What did that decade of the distant and near at the same time 2000 change and what did we leave behind forever? When we were creating the text of this show together with the two dramaturgs of the show (s.s. Ioanna Liutsia and Panagiota Konstantinakou) I noticed that she was developing an almost Floberian obsession with the details of our lives at the time, which has probably been lost: from street names and times to the technological devices replaced with new more sophisticated ones.

Although I believe that the theater is a space of redemptive storytelling and shared storytelling and this is what I seek as an artistic form here and in my other performances, these small polaroids from the 2000s were our way to “represent” this decade. To represent it through the act of storytelling, of course, through a unique archive of experienced moments. And for me it is also a way to look for new ways to talk about historicity, its interaction with today and our lives, the lives of each person.

Because I see that artistically, these issues still concern me, but gradually, perhaps even completely, I stop being concerned with pure documentary theater and I want to move to forms of theater that give me the opportunity to process our common experiences in a different way, like here.” concludes Pantelis Flatsousis.

Alexis Grigoropoulos: The murder that remained indelible.

We asked the show’s actors what the show’s actors remember most vividly in “Atlanta of the 2000s” and they all focused on murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos.

Anastasis Georgoulas notes “The truth is that in the 2000s I was young, so I haven’t really experienced these events, I remember them more through other people’s conversations or childhood memories. Nevertheless, the murder of Grigoropoulos is an event that affected me as I experienced its aftermath as a teenager.

I think this event shaped a whole generation politically. It’s an incident that pissed me off as a teenager and continues to shock me even now, I’ll probably never get over it, especially when similar incidents continue to happen and remind us how ruthless some people can be when they have power in their hands and how little our lives count for them”.

George Glastras reveals how “an event that will remain indelible in my memory and that stands out in intensity and importance is what happened in December 2008. We experienced dramatic moments that differed in intensity, mental and emotional involvement from what we had experienced until then.

The murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos and the events that followed, in addition to being shocking events, created a sense of pivotal moment for modern history. A pivotal moment for life in Athens, for life in Greece. There was a deep recognition of an intersection: a carefree before and a terrifying after, expressed in movements of concentrated wonder, fear and rage. I lived it in the middle of the events and I remember sharing it with friends and colleagues in the theater, as the exclusive issue not only of discussion but of life”.

Stefania Zora also focuses on the murder of Grigoropoulos saying “the event I remember most vividly is the murder of Grigoropoulos, in December 2008. It was the year I turned eighteen years old and this event is directly connected to how I experienced the concept of adulthood. That day I was in Thessaloniki, at the Drama School where I was studying. As soon as I found out what had happened, the march was taking place in the street and I went out alone.

I vividly remember, while walking, a feeling of anger and loneliness overwhelming me. As if I felt that something was changing in me and in the world around me. It was an awakening experience in relation to my political consciousness, at the beginning of adulthood. I feel like it violently defined me, realizing that I am not safe, not me, not my friends, not most citizens of this country. I was suddenly confronted with the Greek reality, while growing up in a very protected environment. Like that bubble burst. I feel that in this process, I became an adult”.

Paidi Trauma – whose new unreleased songs are heard in the performance – says that “I remember a point in the show where Anastasis says “these are our lives, that’s all.” It refers to the assassination of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in 2008. It was an event that shocked me in terms of the level of brutality and cynicism.

I was living in Patras at the time and I watched the situation a little dumbfounded. I always hoped that through the spontaneous social uprising of 2008, things would get better and that the Decembers would be the beginning of the end of state violence. Indeed, “it didn’t go any further”. Unfortunately, it went further and is going further. State indecency is everywhere and the Decembers left me with a bittersweet taste of the last rebellion. But they are always there to remind us that if we want something to change we have to demand it”.