BIRDS OF A KIND
by Wajdi Mouawad

BIRDS OF A KIND

by Wajdi Mouawad

Directed by Odysseas Papaspiliopoulos

From 20 December 2023

The award-winning play Birds of a kind, by the Lebanese-Canadian writer, director and actor Wajdi Mouawad, now being staged for the first time in Greece in a production directed by Odysseas Papaspiliopoulos, explores the concept of identity as an aspect of self-definition but also what it means to be trapped within rigid frameworks imposed on us by lineage, religion, tradition, family and ourselves.
 
Eitan, a German-Jewish genetics student at Columbia University, meets and falls in love with Wahida, an American student of Arab descent. Their relationship is met with hostility by EitanΆs Jewish family. The coupleΆs trip to Israel and a bomb attack that will send Eitan to hospital in a coma will be the starting point for a familyΆs past to be uncovered, for its secrets to come to the surface, and for the playΆs characters to face unexpected and unbearable truths. This is a play about identities, which while ensuring the security of belonging, at the same time create a prison for ourselves.
 
Within this bleak world, Wajdi Mouawad manages to envision a humanity in which ethnic, religious, political or other types of identity do not become a tool for manipulation; a humanity that does not consider it a duty to exterminate that which is other. He envisions human beings who can coexist in harmony with the outside world, but also with their inner contradictions. Beings “burning with desire for the other, the different, and for this desire to be absolute, infinite, spiritual…”.
 
Production team
Translator: Eleni Varopoulou
Director: Odysseas Papaspiliopoulos
Designer: Ilenia Doularidi
Music: Panos Gkinis
Movement: Avgoustinos Koumoulos
Lighting design: Zoi Molyvda-Fameli
Video: Apostolis Koutsianikoulis
Dramaturg: Eva Saraga
Directing assistant: Katerina Louvari Fasoi
Design assistant: Genevieve Athanasopoulou
 
Cast (in alphabetical order):
Babis Alefantis, Anna Mascha, Klearchos Papageorgiou, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Odysseas Petrakis, Melina Polyzoni, Alexandra Sakelaropoulou, Stefania Samara, Penelope Tsilika, Giorgos Ziovas