Comedy: A Tragedy in One Act will be performed for the first time in the UK at Sadler’s Wells on 31 May 2014.
The play is being staged by the innovative emerging theatre company The Canting Crew and has been made possible with the support of Kazantzakis Publications, Ethnos Newspaper Group, EdmissionUK and EntertainingTV.
Kazantzakis wrote Comedy in 1909 while he was still young but it already explores some of the challenging and original thinking that was to mark much of his later work. More than 50 years on from his death, Kazantzakis remains a divisive figure and his religious thought continues to resonate in the context of today’s religious debate.
The performance of the play will be followed by a round table discussion chaired by author Dr Lewis Owens with panel guests including Kazantzakis Publications Director Niki Stavrou, Professor of Religion Darren Middleton, Modern Greek Professor Roderick Beaton and the play’s director Stephen Oswald.
Tickets go on sale 6 May 2014, and can be purchased at
www.nikoskazantzakis.org
EntertainingTV are producing a film of the play and a feature length film about the play’s
author Nikos Kazantzakis.
About The Play:
Comedy is a damning critique of Christian salvation and an exploration of the ‘abyss’ in the wake of Nietzsche’s proclaimed ‘death of God’. The existential themes in Comedy antedate by decades Sartre’s Huis Clos and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
As Peter Bien, Kazantzakis’ main translator, writes: “In Comedy the main theme is that
heaven does not exist. For Kazantzakis, the abyss is not hell in an ethical sense, but the
extinction that is our guaranteed end once we no longer believe in Christianity’s afterlife
of eternal bliss.”
Further information is available at http://nikoskazantzakis.org/about-the-play/
About the Organisers and Collaborators:
The Canting Crew formed in 2013. This emerging London based theatre company has
a reputation for bold and ambitious work.
Dr Lewis Owens is the author of ‘Creative Destruction: Nikos Kazantzakis and the
Literature of Responsibility’.
Professor Roderick Beaton, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History,
Language and Literature, Kings College London.
Professor Darren Middleton, Professor of Religion, Texas Christian University
Contact:
The Canting Crew
http://www.thecantingcrew.com/
Stephen Oswald
info@thecantingcrew.com
EdmissionUK
http://www.edmissionuk.co.uk
Dr Lewis Owens
Lewis@edmissionuk.co.uk
EntertainingTV
www.entertainingtv.com
Liz Smith
+44 207 101 0208 liz@entertainingtv.com
Kazantzakis Publications
www.kazantzakispublications.org/
Niki Stavrou
contact@kazantzakispublications.org