THE INTERNATIONAL LESBIAN AND GAY ASSOCIATION

Lesbian Blues - The First Lesbian Play in Greece

Lesbian Blues - "Our lives were threatened, some of us lost our jobs and our homes, a bomb scare...."

Christiana Lambrinidis - November 6, 1998

March 16-April 14, 1998 marked the production of Lesbian Blues, the first lesbian play in Greece.

Athens News (the English-speaking newspaper in Greece) under the title "Lesbian Blues: A moral crash test" said about the play "...If you believe that you are a relatively-open minded person without taboos, attend the staging of Lesbian Blues at Technohoros and re-evaluate your socio-sexual tolerance. But be warned, it's not "theatre" in the classic sense of the word. The women on stage are not actresses, they are just being themselves, expressing words not from a script but from their own lives. And it is this factor that makes Lesbian Blues all the more frightening but downright fascinating for both the audience and the women on stage......".

Eleftherotypia (the second largest newspaper in Greece) under the title " The Invisible Spectacle" said,".....For some the theater play Lesbian Blues does not exist. It does not exist for most publications, refusing to even list it under the theatre section. It does not exist for the theater critics, who seem hesitant to even briefly mention it. It does not exist for some women's organizations who either refused their support from the start or broke their promised cooperation and managed to disappear in time. Finally it does not exist for many jounrnalists, who were of the opinion that the threats the women of Lesbian Blues received were not that serious "Since you have no blood to show us....".

Christiana Lambrinidis, the director of the play explains about the play...." We started with writing exercises. The writing workshops are followed by rehearsals to end up on stage....The process aims to empowerment - the women feel through a theater of this kind. This is where the difference lies: the scope is not what the audience sees but deep-rooted changes in the women's lives brought about by this process. Changes that deal with homophobia, personal and social, racism and the unspeakable fear, conflicts - almost battles - between straight and lesbian women of the play. The women's endurance was tested - to fight the unspeakable, to inhabit their sexuality, something deeply oppressed and forbidden generally in women".

The play was followed by the publication of the book of Lesbian Blues. No bookshop in Greece accepts to sell it. The silent ban continues to buy time until the Lesbian Blues women stop. I began a women's press, Gynaikies Ekdosis, to allow for women's writing in print - not censored but of high quality. The ban witnessed but not proven lifted in Sweden, Germany, Scotland, Poland, Slovenia, England. At the recent European meeting of gay and lesbian NGO's ILGA, at Linz, Austria, the book found readers from these countries in translation.

Of course much more work needs to be done both in Greece and abroad regarding Lesbian Blues. But copies of the book can now be found in the Lesbian Archives in Berlin, in Ola-Archive in Poland, in publishing house "Visibilia" in Slovenia.

An award from Tupilak, a northern European cultural organization, with an emphasis in the nordic countries , was given to Lesbian Blues, for the promotion of lesbian and gay culture, at the First World Gay and Lesbian Congress, to be followed by other gay and lesbian congresses in Lisbon, Rome, Sidney, etc., in Stockholm, 1998.

Our lives were threatened, some of us lost our jobs and our homes, a bomb scare at the theatre threatened even the audience who dared to walk the threshold to see us.The theatre was full every night. Gay couples saw the play more than once, they said there was a respect rarely seen in gay theatre, students, women, straight couples, lesbians stayed after the performance at the discussion held by us every night. From the void of bars there was hope. From silence there was lesbian presence in the middle of Athens. They felt free they said. But why did I not show the joy of lesbian relationships? In Greece there is no joy. There is pleasure but no pride, no collective determination. Lesbian Blues is a fighting play. Is an angry play.

When the lesbian women came and found me in 1995 I had just finished Rifts In Silence, a play written in the borders by Greek/Turkish/Gypsy women in Greek and Turkish. If Greek and Turkish could be put on stage they said, lesbian can appear too. They asked me to protect the women of the play and create a performance that commands respect. Seventeen women were at the first writing workshop in 1995.

Five were left at the end. The fear of exposure was too great. Even during the play there was much conflict about newspapers and photographs. Much conflict between the assumed safety of the two straight women and the experienced danger of the three lesbian women.Lesbian Blues does not present an agreed upon point of view. It gives the forum to coalitions to be developed between locations of hatred and fear. It breaks silence from within and maintains the rupture. Maybe that was why Lesbian Blues is so feared in Greece.

Readings and/or performances of Lesbian Blues, can continue to break the enforced systems of silence, reinforce the politics of hope in the gay and lesbian movement, help restore the Greek word lesbian in Greece.

Email address: rdornt@otenet.gr