In addition to the well-known plays of Euripides that have come down to us in their entirety, over a thousand lines of verse have survived on pieces of papyrus, buried in the dry Egyptian soil or found here and there incorporated into other texts. These might be an isolated scene, a few scattered sentences or even a single word from works that are largely unknown to the public, such as his provocative Andromeda, the lyrical Phaeton, the radical Cretans, or the contemplative Polyidus.

In 2022, a papyrus with excerpts from Euripides’ lost plays Polyidus and Ino was found in Philadelphia, Egypt. Taking this discovery as its starting point, FRAGMENTS: Euripides is a poetic approach to this patchwork but highly theatrical and evocative material, engaging with individual excerpts in a richly musical and narratively compelling way while telling the often thrilling story of their discovery. At the same time, it evokes the feeling left by the echo of voices that have not spoken for thousands of years, the intensity of trying to see and describe a vanished world by way of its worn remnants.

A bizzare and existential excavation unfold on stage. The finds yielded are not vases or pieces of architecture, but lines once spoken by ancient actors and now broken into tiny pieces. Five actors/archaeologists, equipped with trowels, brushes, sieves and plumb bobs, dig away beneath the sun, following the almost ritualistic process of an excavation as it unfolds over the course of a day, and revealing glimpses of ancient performances and daily life at the sites where the work is staged.

The performance is a production of the National Theatre of Greece,  within its ‘Introduction to Greece’s Ancient Theatres’ initiative, supported by the Ministry of Culture, in partnership with the Diazoma Association.

FRAGMENTS: Euripides will be tour in the summer of 2025 in a series of peripheral ancient theatres of Attica and the Aegean Islands. It will be hosted in natural afternoon and evening light in the ancient theatres of Milos, Eretria, Thassos, Mytilene, Lemnos, Karthaia (Kea), Trachones (Alimos), and Zea (Piraeus), as well as on the islet of Agios Efstratios.

Credits
Direction & Dramaturgical adaptation: Efthimis Theou
Transcription of fragments & Dramaturgical collaboration: Kyriakos Karseras
Music composition and coaching: Kornilios Selamsis
Set: Loukas Bakas
Costumes: Pavlos Thanopoulos
Movement: Nikoleta Xenariou
Production dramaturg: Eva Saraga
Directing assistant: Vasiliki Sourri
Set design assistant: Vagelis Xenodochidis

Performers: Giorgos Kritharas, Electra Nikolouzou, Katerina Papandreou, Giorgos Syrmas, Efthimis Theou