The Ghost Exists
(2014)
EMST Project Room
Rhetorical Installation and/or Theatrical Experience
Director: Adonis Galeos
Visual Artist: Vassilis Vlastaras
Actress: Alexia Kaltsiki
Actor: Antonis Karistinos
Assistant Director: Yiannis Kokolakis
"The Ghost Exits" is an hybrid work materializing itself in the interstices between the arts of theatre, visual arts, literature and rhetorics.
From March 13 to April 7 2014, for 10 hours weekly (Thursday 17.00 – 21.00 and Friday to Sunday 17.00 – 19.00) at the EMST Project Room, the director Adonis Galeos with the actors Alexia Kaltsiki and Antonis Karistinos, explore the potentials of presentation in dramatic terms of a dialogue from Philip Roth’s novel "Exit Ghost", in front of a live audience. At the same time, the artist Vassilis Vlastaras generates the ever transforming set, which influences the action, while the sound is recorded throughout the whole process.
Proceeding from the controversies around the relationship of theatre with the visual arts, rhetoric, the nature of truth and realism, the artists explore the text based on two contrasting acting methods. Their goal is to underline philosophical and political theses as they can be demonstrated through action and character. The two acting methods correspond to two work cycles: “active analysis,” Stanislavsky’s ultimate Studio, and Rhetorical Acting, the research subject of the director Adonis Galeos.
When the creative crew is absent from the space the set is transformed into an installation, informed through the traces left behind by the creators from their previous rehearsal-performance, its set and props and sound documentation. The maximum number of spectators that may watch the work at the same time is thirty. Each spectator may be part of the process for as long as they desire. After that they are to depart from the space and provide their place to another spectator. Reversing the conventions of presentation in the theatre and visual arts and calling attention to the creative process, "The Ghost Exits" is open for the public all throughout the process of its preparation, the rehearsals-performances and the formulation of the set-installation, and will terminate on April 7th with its opening night.
