The Pre-Last of the Monikins, a play by Paris Takopoulos, will be performed by the Aigina Nursery Garden Theatre in Larissa, on the 30^th and the 31^st of October. The play is a monologue with no apparent beginning or ending and the performance is directed by Nikos Kalamos.

The performance will be presented as part of the 2015 Autumn Theatrical meetings organized by the Theatre of Thessaly and the municipality of Larissa.

The author, Paris Takopoulos, will also participate in this new version of the play. Instead of a prologue, the author will deliver a small excerpt of the unpublished third volume of the New Testament, the true offspring of Monikin, along with a sample writing of the first volume.

The Pre-Last of the Monikins (a variation of the title The Last of the Mohicans) features the myth of Monikin, a man of Greek and Roman descent, a hopeless young man who recounts his trials, old and new, even going back to the ones experienced by his ancestors, while contemplating the hopelessness of human experience; feeling lonely and abandoned by his loved ones, he is looking for a meaningful end to his meaningless existence.

His sense of humor, Greek cognac and Scottish whiskey are initially the only weapons of Monikin, the ones that manage to keep him alive. He doesn’t show any particular desire to rush into ending his life and keeps postponing it all the time. But is he going to postpone it this time? In the end, the author leaves that decision to the audience.

The monologue is a humorous recital of life and despair that foreshadows an ominous yet brave future. It is a Modern Greek tragicomedy of a man who fears life more than death, while still maintaining a faint hope.

Based on what a theatre critic wrote about the play, at the 2005 annual Edinburgh festival, Monikin is a lovely anti-hero, written by an author whose plays resemble the writing style of James Joyce, in the way that he manipulates the language and the vast use of puns.

The first performance of the play was in 1978, at the Karolos Koun Art Theatre, with Dimitris Oikonomou in the role of Monikin, and was performed again in 2006 at Giorgos Armenis’s Modern theatre with Nikos Kalamos as Monikin. Another performance took place at the Entropy Theatre with Andreas Marianos. In the summer of 2005, Nikos Kalamos, who was one of the students of Stella Adler, resumed his role as Monikin and also as the director of the play, at the annual Edinburgh Festival, where the play was performed in an English translation by Paris Takopoulos.

At Mylos Theatre, Larissa

Phone number: 2410-533417

Start Time: 21:00

Tickets: 10 € (General Admission), 8 € (Students, Unemployed People & Disabled People)