Future N.O.W.

Here we are. Under a melting iceberg. War manuals in hand. Among passionate protectors of the Earth, scientists, and new life forms. With four online premieres, an online international open forum, and an in-depth talk with the festival’s artists about culture and the lack thereof in 2021.

A new theater festival—FUTURE N.O.W.—is being born at Onassis Stegi, FUTURE N.O.W., and is available on the Onassis Channel on YouTube. The first four works to be selected during lockdown for the festival via the FUTURE N.O.W. open call last March offer up new, amusing, and surprising stories that treat the future as the present. Because what do we really want to be in the future? Funnier? Smarter? Richer? Wiser? Tougher? More resilient? One thing is certain: the future is yet to come. And the idea that the future is doomed is by no means established fact. With a wink, this first crop of projects is beating a path for those to come; declaring—boldly, and with cheek—that the future is not unlivable. Quite the opposite.

Since it proved impossible to premiere these productions in front of live audiences (as planned for November 2020) they are now being presented in a new form that flirts with cinema. Award-winning next-generation directors were brought in to work with the festival’s four stage directors and create versions of their works designed specially to live online. Filming took place both on Onassis Stegi’s stages and outdoors to create a hybrid form.

A group of hardcore environmental defenders and social inequality fighters set out to recruit us to their cause (Elias Adam, We Are in the Army Now). An iceberg melts above our heads (Vicky Kyriakoulakou, The Art of War). Four scientists investigate the question: “Where did all the babies go?” (Dimitris Bampilis, Babybird Babybird). The Onassis Stegi Main Stage is transformed into a nightclub for the new species now being born (Eva Giannakopoulou, Kin Baby).

Filmmaker Alkis Papastathopoulos directs Elias Adam’s We Are in the Army Now and Eva Giannakopoulou’s Kin Baby for the Onassis Foundation YouTube Channel. Papastathopoulos has garnered awards for the “Gomenaki” music video, and has won the HBO Europe prize for best television project at the Midpoint TV Launch for Sleepover, which was also selected by the Sundance Institute for its YouTube New Voices Lab. Panagiotis Kostouros, a filmmaker with major short films under his belt who has worked both in Greece and beyond, took on the cinematic version of Vicky Kyriakoulakou’s The Art of War. Christos Sarris, a director who has worked on international projects, is the Head Creative at the Onassis Foundation, directs Dimitris Bampilis’ Babybird Babybird.

Last but not least, FUTURE N.O.W. presents the video documentation of an international online forum and workshop for specialists in, and lovers of new dramaturgical approaches held in November 2020 and titled DRAMATURGY NOW, as well as a disruptive discussion with the festival’s participating directors—titled “Theater Futures as Present Realities”—that gives voice to the thoughts and concerns of young artists. The future is here, now, in Neos Kosmos—the “new world”—and all around the world thanks to the online YouTube platform, in the hope that we will all soon meet again inside theaters.

As curator Iliana Dimadi mentioned: “The works that sprang from this process were written and developed in the midst of the pandemic. We will never know how they would have turned out had Covid-19 not struck. Had it not forced us to kiss the 21st-century we knew goodbye and open ourselves up to this transformative and tumultuous moment in time. The future has become the present. Let us state, here and now, loud and clear: it is not unlivable. And let us decipher it. Just as theater has already begun to do.”