SLEEP, STELLA BY YANNIS ECONOMIDES

Award-winning film director Yannis Economides, creator of ‘The Matchbox’ and acclaimed films ‘Soul Kicking’, ‘Knifer’ and ‘Stratos’, the voice of young Greek cinema that surgically incises petit bourgeois behaviours and dark spots in Greek society, has written and is directing his first work exclusively for the theatre. ‘Sleep, Stella’ leads us through the luxurious villa of a nouveau riche Greek, where affluence coexists with vulgarity and relationships have the colour of money. In a family where the father-master’s law is enforced through Mafia-style methods, Stella refuses to marry the man imposed on her by her environment, and insists on her self-evident right of personal choice. However, love, and any other expression of individual liberty, becomes null and void in the face of material interest, which compels submission to any decisions made. Dignity, morality and emotions are considered luxuries in the stifling universe of ‘Sleep, Stella’. Drawing on a forbidden love, the work records present day reality and decodes a world established on lies, money, vulgarity and crime. The dream of social advancement and material affluence neutralises every value, and corrodes behaviours and consciences.

NATIONAL THEATRE