How can a play that seems dull when you’re watching it occupy your waking mind the next morning and leave a lasting impression? What accounts for this disparity? Is it, perhaps, because it is much more powerful than others, than shows that send you floating out of the theater? “I Gi tis Epaggelias” (The Promised Land) falls squarely into this category?
A production (in Greek) by the Municipal and Regional Theater of Kozani that is currently on tour after a stop at the Athens Festival, “The Promised Land” is a piece of documentary theater based on audio interviews with workers at the Public Power Corporation’s (PPC) lignite mines in Amyntaio, north of Kozani, in northern Greece. It offers a glimpse into the distinctive everyday lives of a working community whose profession was effectively wiped out by Greece’s phaseout of lignite. The voices belong to people who spent their entire careers there, in essential but not high-profile roles that nevertheless formed the backbone of the mining operation.
The audience listens to the original recordings while reading the same words projected on a screen in transcript form. Onstage, a spare set evokes the mine through carefully chosen industrial elements: a giant wooden cable reel, chunks of lignite, a small worksite canteen, a table, chairs and other familiar objects.
