Ad artes with their performance “Squirrel seeks Chipmunk” @ Camden
Fringe Festival
We are five young actors who live and
work in Athens, Greece. Each one of us has participated in several theatre
shows, in
theatre festivals and has been on tours around Greece.
When we created ad artes, our theatre
company, the goal was to join our forces and our experience in devised theatre
and create a performance that audience would love. A performance about things
that matter, but given in a funny way because above all we want to make people
laugh.
So we were inspired by David Sedaris’
work and we created a devised theatre dark comedy, in which the protagonists are exclucively animals.
What is “Squirrel seeks Chipmunk”
It is about a hen
that is constantly trying to avoid death. An intellectual grieving owl is
trying to get over his wife’s death by getting new experiences.
A pig victim of
yellow press, a dog with marriage problems, a racist hawk, a cat always bored
at parties, a couple of middle- class warblers tired of immigration, a lonely
hippo, a squirrel, a chipmunk and a love that could never be and many, many
more animals in insane, every day life situations.
Animals that suffer
from all kinds of human foibles as obsession, neurosis, loneliness and they yet
give us a very good laugh.
So we bring more
than thirty of these animals on stage and we present an extremely funny
performance about extremely serious issues!
We want to start
this journey at Camden Fringe Festival, we have already been accepted and we
shall be performing there on the 22nd and 23rd of August
in London Welsh Centre.
Camden Fringe
festival is a big and famous theatre festival that takes place in London every
summer. This year, will be its tenth year and there will be hundreds of
performances from all over the world, in 22 different venues. The festival
lasts for four weeks. We are really excited about our participation because it
will be our first performance abroad.
As artists, we think
that it is extremely important to communicate our work abroad, be there as a
Greek theatre group, expose our work to a different audience and meet artists
from all over the world. That way, we can become better and represent Greek
theatre abroad, despite the difficult financial situation that we are dealing
with.
So we are here to
ask you to join us in making this show successful and our dream come true. Our
goal is to raise 2500€ in order to cover some of our production and travel
costs such as costumes, flying tickets, rights for the show and venue fees.
We would be truly grateful if you would
consider backing our effort or just spread the word to anyone who might be
interested.
Risks
and challenges
Ad artes theatre company is an independent,
non funded company. Being a member of such a company in Greece is already a
challenge! We have to overcome many obstacles every day in order to keep up our
work and we are determined to do so. The only reason for not being able to
fulfil our project is not managing to fund our trip. With your support we can fly our performance
to London and then bring it back to Greece and keep up our work!
The people behind
ad Artes Theatre Company
Artistic Director: Maria Kouvidi
Production Director: Manolis Antoniou
Director: Yiorgos Angellopoulos
Costumes: Katerina Kalfoglou
Stage movement: Evgenia Deliali
Actors: Maria Kouvidi, Fanis Pavlopoulos, Stamatis
Zakolikos, Andonis Gritsis, Aleka Tomprou
Videos: Constantin Pilavios, Fanis Pavlopoulos, Voula
Skounti
Photographs: Katerina Paspaliari
