ΝΥΞ
2024
NYX – Los Istorias Perieras (Strange Stories) is an experimental theater production directed and written by Yiannis Niarros, in collaboration with Hara-Mata Giannatou. Inspired by the surreal writings of Panos Koutroubousis and Julio Cortázar, the play weaves together dreamlike fragments of narrative into a hypnotic sequence of scenes that blur the lines between reality and imagination. Through stream-of-consciousness storytelling, absurd humor, and poetic depth, NYX explores the inner theater of the human mind—a stage where the trivial and the profound, the comic and the tragic, coexist in perpetual motion.
Performed at Theatro Simeio in Athens, the piece features Niarros on stage alongside musicians Yannis Papadopoulos (keys) and Dimitris Klonis (drums), who improvise and interact live with the performance, creating an immersive sonic environment. Sound design is handled by Giorgos Mizithras, while set and costume design are created by Gina Iliopoulou and Lina Stavropoulou. Visual sketches from Panos Koutroubousis add to the surreal tone of the production.
For this production, I was responsible for the real-time video and projection mapping, designing a reactive visual system that unfolded live during each story.
The style of the play is based on Dadaism. Dadaism was an art movement born from the absurdity of war, embracing chaos, irrationality, and anti-logic as forms of protest. The vision of the play draws directly from this spirit—non-linear, surreal, and often nonsensical—creating a collage of sound, image, and text that resists interpretation and embraces poetic disorder.
The Stories
Μαινάδες
A classical concert spirals into ecstatic madness as the audience, intoxicated by sound, devours the maestro in a ritual of collective catharsis.
Καφές
An avalanche of beverage desires becomes a frantic hymn to consumption, absurdity, and late-capitalist cravings.
Ειδήσεις 1: Δολοφονίες ή Ύπνος
A detective dreams his way through a grotesque investigation, where logic melts and meaning slips through the cracks of consciousness.
Μπάνιο
A series of disjointed voices wrestle with identity, mortality, and the need to cry in structured exercises of controlled collapse.
Μια Βόλτα με Ιπτάμενο Δίσκο
Extraterrestrial teenagers crash into ancient Greece, folding time, space, and philosophy into a cosmic slapstick tragedy.
Πλήξη
The ultimate enemy is boredom, battled with theatrical nonsense, sonic assaults, and anti-meaning as resistance.
Πατατάκια
Childlike hunger becomes ritual, repetition becomes music, and snacks transform into symbols of comfort and absurd devotion.
Λιλιάνα
Grief drips slowly through silence and memory, unfolding into a tender transformation shaped by absence and small gestures.
This visual system functioned almost like a fourth performer, improvising in sync with the others, and helping to bridge the inner world of the play with the external perception of the audience.
