By Heart | Tiago Rodrigues

Περιγραφή στα Αγγλικά

*By Heart* returns to Onassis Stegi a decade after its first presentation here, with Tiago Rodrigues — Portuguese playwright, actor, and director of the Festival d'Avignon — back as actor-narrator. Ten chairs and crates of books wait on a bare stage. Rodrigues calls ten volunteers up from the audience, none of whom have seen the show, none of whom know which text they will be made to memorize. By the end of the night, in Greek, they will all carry one Shakespeare sonnet inside them.

The piece weaves chronicle, anecdote, and instruction — Rodrigues tells stories from his own life and from the lives of others who have made memorization a form of resistance, while the ten volunteers learn line by line. The show is about why people commit poems to memory at all.

If you want a passive evening at the back row, *By Heart* needs the front of the house to participate; even if you do not volunteer, the room rehearses with them. If you want theater that closes the gap between page, performer, and audience inside ninety minutes, this is the canonical staging — and the ten-year return.

Onassis Stegi is on Syngrou Avenue 107 in Neos Kosmos, with a 13-minute walk from Syngrou-Fix metro and a free shuttle bus running every 10 minutes between the station and the building on performance dates. Phase B presale is already sold out; check tickets.onassis.org for remaining availability.