Online and on stage: performance art from Lia Haraki

While music and theatre shows return to the stage, some performances and installations remain online. Under the title ‘egennisamen’, Cypriot for ‘we gave birth’, the latest collaboration between sound designer Christos Hadjichristou and performer Lia Haraki takes audiences on a journey through the love story of a Cypriot couple.

A journey that begins with the couple’s intimacy and ends with its alienation, all seen from the perspective of a woman. This ten-minute sound piece found online and presented in the Cypriot dialect, is a commentary on Cypriot mentality which often imposes substantial pressure on young couples.

The sound piece is on bandcamp.com under Lia Haraki and collaborators. The choreographer-performer has been collaborating with Hadjichristos since 2013, creating performance works for the stage using electronic sounds and spoken word as their main tools. ‘Egennisamen’ was produced in the framework of the ‘Castle of anti-escape’ programme but it’s not the only performance Lia Haraki is presenting during this period.

Another collaboration is an in-person event. Death by Karaoke is a devised performance by Sakari Laurila and Haraki. It is a performance of karaoke scenes, where identity constructions, fantasies, expectations and a house guitarist all try to survive until the end of the song. A colourful set of characters who all seem to have difficulties mastering the social symbolic matrix, slipping in the no-man’s land between direct emotional expression and socially accepted forms of public behaviour.

The performance will be on at Theatro Polis OPAP in Nicosia starting on April 10 and will continue almost every Saturday until May 28. This too was a performance created in the frame of the ‘Castle of anti-escape’ programme.

Death by Karaoke

Performance by Sakari Laurila and Lia Haraki. April 10, 17, 23 and May 8, 15, 22, 29. Theatro Polis OPAP, Nicosia. 8.30pm. €8, 10. https://www.liaharaki.com/tickets-death-by-karaoke. Tel: 96-791187