TEDx Athens returned on 28 May at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre with the theme "Unleash"... Liberation. A word that means power and freedom, the possibilities that open up when restrictions are shaken off, the expression of the true self away from fears, stereotypes, inhibitions and taboos.
With courage, determination, faith in oneself and love for life, man stands with responsibility and boldness towards himself and the unknown, pursues his dreams, seeks his essence, his truth and opens new possibilities, evolves and develops.
How can you "unlock" your potential?
What "roads" do you need to follow to discover unexplored aspects of yourself?
To this challenge was invited to respond, among other speakers, the director Eleni Efthymiou. Starting with her joining the group "By force", which consists of artists with and without disabilities, spoke about her project to compose the performance "Horses in love" (third part of the theatrical trilogy entitled "The Other the Normal") and raised questions about diversity, opening a dialogue on taboo issues that modern societies cannot yet manage.
- What is love?
- Do we all have access to it?
- Why are we afraid to talk about love?
The speaker referred to the particular challenges she faced in her attempt to direct children with disabilities, talking to them, perhaps for the first time, about what they feel and dare not express. Those common, humanly beautiful things we all feel in the face of love that dominates, drives mad, flames. But also for her collaboration with the parents of these children who agreed to assist her in completing the project.
In a non-inclusive society as is the Greek the theatre comes as a possibility of answering, generating questions, creating conditions of equal living, but also a space for thinking about questions we avoid asking: Is love accessible to all, everyone, everything? Eleni Efthymiou talks to us about the group En Dynami, the performance Love Horses and how a mixed group of people managed to talk about the unspeakable.
Eleni Efthymiou works as a director, writer, performer, soprano and theatre composer. She studied theatre directing and acting at the Theatre Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and lyrical singing as a student of mezzo-soprano Rosica Troeva.
It supports the idea of theatre as a continuous, endless investigation of the connection between the human condition and society. He works primarily with sound, creating acoustic environments connected to the dramaturgy. He moves between the aesthetics of art, film, documentary and fiction, imaginatively inventing a new language of theatre.
In 2014 she became a permanent collaborator of the theatre ensemble En Dynami, a mixed group of artists with and without disabilities, and so far she has created and directed new plays in the trilogy "The Other Normal". The third part of this trilogy, "Horse in Love/The Absurdity of Love," has been recognized as an iconic performance for both its artistic quality and the radical theme it addresses.
In 2022, Eleni Efthymiou was awarded the Eleftheria Sapountzis Prize for the quality and complexity of her artistic work, combined with her moving effort to create bridges between art and social reality. During the 2024-2025 theatre season, she will head the Experimental Stage of the National Theatre. This talk was given at a TEDx event, using the format of TED conferences but was organized independently by a local community.
