AGLAONIKI
HYBRID SOLO PERFORMANCE / 2024 / 50 MINUTES / GREECE
“The performance you are about to see, hear and feel is inspired by the life of Aglaonice, the first Greek woman astronomer. Very little is known about her life. First, that she came from a town somewhere in Thessaly. And second, that the people of her time and place never accepted her as an astronomer, only as a witch.
The story we are about to tell, then, is about an imagined life. Or perhaps not. A life divided into different lives, different leaves and different eras. Or perhaps not.”
Aglaoniki is a hybrid stage performance directed and performed by Nalia Ziku, based on a text by Sofia Gourgouliani and inspired by Aglaonice, an ancient Thessalian figure whose astronomical knowledge became intertwined with legends of witchcraft.
The performance imagines a life that may or may not have existed, unfolding across different bodies, identities, and eras. Moving between historical fragments, myth, and fiction, Aglaoniki explores the boundaries between what is remembered, what is imagined, and what has been erased.
Through live sound manipulation, electronic music, and video mapping, Nalia Ziku creates a theatrical “non-place” where theatre intersects with installation art and experimental sound.
Drawing on the aesthetics of Berlin's avant-garde and the Balkan underground, the performance explores new forms of storytelling in which sound becomes an essential part of the dramaturgy.
Rather than reconstructing a forgotten biography, Aglaoniki offers a speculative journey through the lives a woman might have lived.
CREDITS
Written by: Sofia Gourgouliani
Direction & Performance: Nalia Ziku
Costume Design: Archontoula Tsatsoulaki
Music Composition & Editing: Nalia Ziku
Video Mapping Design: Apostolis Koutsianikoulis
Premiere: April 6, 2024
Venue: Studio Evrychoros, Athens, Greece
First Presentation: June 11, 2023
The Healing Process Is Over — Adapt Festival 3, Competition Programme
Venue: Tempus Verum – En Athinais, Athens, Greece
