Julien Gosselin

1993
by Aurélien Bellanger



Announcement: The second performance of 1993 on 8/6 at the Athens Concert Hall (Megaron) was cut short for safety reasons due to a technical issue. Those who have purchased tickets for this specific performance can be refunded at the Athens Festival box offices.

The young French director Julien Gosselin has cast his spell on Athens Festival’s audiences twice already: first with his adaptation of Bolaño’s 2666 (2016) and then with his adaptation of Houellebecq’s Atomised (2017). The 30-year-old artist returns this year with 1993, a play by the emerging French writer Aurélien Bellanger.
This new production tackles contemporary European myths, focusing on two cross-border tunnels that left their mark on Europe at the turn of the millennium. The first ‘tunnel,’ so to speak, can be found on the Franco-Swiss border: CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) operates a huge particle accelerator. The second is the Channel Tunnel, the tunnel linking England and France, thus generating a new, symbolic (trans)continent. Initially, these two constructions were perceived as enormous achievements, whereas in our days they have come to be identified with impasses and failed cooperation. In recent years, the refugee camp in Calais further contributed to a ‘negative’ mythology. Instead of facilitating life, these two constructions further destabilized the flow of human lives and commodities, creating new, chaotic routes and rocking the myth of ‘united Europe’ to its foundations.

With Greek surtitles

Post-performance talk on 7 June.
Moderated by Georgina Kakoudaki, artistic co-curator of Athens & Epidaurus Festival for educational programmes