Plays Directory

BULGARIA / 2014

Elena Alexieva – Phantom Pain

The Armless Woman has lost both her arms in an accident. After the amputation, she lives in her modest apartment struggling to manage with her new, hopeless life. She is tended by Maria and Maria’s son, the Boy. In an attempt to kill time, the Armless Woman starts to paint with her mouth.

A stranger to art, she is aware that her paintings are weird and poor. However, her case is taken up by a TV journalist, who promotes the Woman and her art, and gradually, the Armless Woman becomes a celebrity artist. The popularity of her works grows. She is even labelled an intellectual. And yet, she cannot sleep at night due to the phantom pain which she tries to fight through painting.

Download an overview of the play and the author below, including an extract in English and the full play in the original language.

CYPRUS / 2020

Antonis Georgiou - In Critical Condition

Written in the contemporary Cypriot dialect, Antonis Georgiou’s play is a sequence of twentytwo
monologues and twelve multi-character scenes, unfolding outside a hospital intensive care
unit. Five characters are going through emotions of expectation and an underlying absence, as
two of their loved ones are confined in the ICU beds in critical condition. One of them is Paris’s
mother, Zoe, while Chrystalla and her two sons (Christos and Andreas) and Elena, are worried
about Marios, their son, brother, and partner. The space of the hospital gradually transforms into
a rink on which an endless battle takes place, a space where suspended sorrow reveals the
characters’ exposure to the fragility of existence. Each one of them fights their own struggle,
experiencing unexpected circumstances and manifesting behaviours revealing their own
vulnerability. Five micro-stories within a familiar, everyday environment; with death as the
epicentre.

Download an overview of the play and the author below, including an extract in English and the full play in the original language.