Mataroa on the Horizon

Alternative Stage founding donor

Alternative Stage sponsor

The GNO Alternative Stage presents the original music theatre production Mataroa on the Horizon, with music by Nikos Kypourgos and Theo Abazis. The true story of the ship Mataroa, which transported Greek intellectuals to France after World War II, inspires a new fictional approach to the historical events which comes to life on stage through the directorial vision of Theo Abazis, in co-production with the National Theatre of Greece.

The ship was called Mataroa and departed from Greece at dawn on 22 December 1945. In the most difficult period of modern Greek history, at the outbreak of the Civil War, in a gloomy climate of persecution and fear, the philhellene Octave Merlier, director of the French Institute, in collaboration with deputy director, Roger Milliex, foreseeing the ominous political developments, evacuated the new generation of the intellectual elite of Greece to Paris through the institution of scholarships of the French state. The British ship Mataroa, a word which, according to one version, means “woman with big eyes” in Polynesian and, according to others, suggests insight, restlessness, hope, being alive, took with it 125 young Greek scientists and artists to save them from the “white terror” that began after the Dekemvriana clashes. This restless “precious load” would seek a way of salvation in the French universities and later would change the course of thought, science, letters and arts in the whole of Europe with their works. Since then, however, a lot has changed. Where is the Promised Land today? Does it still exist? If so, who are they who will embark on the liberty ark?

Mataroa on the Horizon projects the fragmented memories of a country with a traumatic past onto the screen of a dystopian present. The legendary ship promises a longed-for escape. An escape necessary for some, uncomfortable and futile for others, and doubtful for all. People in perpetual motion to the point of extinction, fugitives from a rotting world, await the ship for a place that promises justice and allows for dreams. Heirs to defeat and frustration, haunted in the “between” worlds, stuck in the timeless, they await in turn the hope of a journey, the redemptive future, the arrival to the new land of freedom. The field for utopia remains open, only the horizon is empty, sightless.