Next week at Uni cultural festival

The Nicosia festival continues with more cultural productions this September and October. Coming up on Monday is a performance by The Contemporary Piano Trio. Musicians Miranda Papaneokleus, Nikos Pittas and Drosostalida Moraiti will take over the floor of the Axiothea Mansion to present an evening with works for piano trio by Alfred Schnittke and Astor Piazzolla.

The performance to follow, on Wednesday will be an exciting adaptation of Evan Placey’s play Girls Like That by the Anyhow Theatre Ensemble. Director Maria Ioli Karolidou and a cast that includes three professional actors and seven teenage actors will address the complex world of teenagehood with humour and sensitivity.

Placey’s play is not a comedy though, it highlights with disarming honesty the challenges today’s teenagers face, with a focus on the issues of cyberbullying, misogyny, gender inequality and the growing influence of social media. Placey’s play, which won Best Play for Young Audiences at the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Awards in 2015, asks a crucial question: how did the generation of women who fought for their right to vote, to have equal opportunities and to control their bodies, raise daughters who are so insecure, judgmental, and abusive towards other women?

Then, on September 29, the six-member vocal ensemble Kalesma will present a selection of songs from Cyprus, Greece, and surrounding areas. Accompanied by the virtuoso musician Charalambos Pantelis, the musicians will present the sounds of the Eastern Mediterranean in a dreamy performance.

Finally, on October 1, another music and theatre piece will take the Axiothea floor. Actress Stella Fyrogeni and musician Kleon Antoniou will present a musical performance based on the partly fictional scrapbook/diary of a child who grows up in the 1970s. The primary school readers and the high school textbooks of Modern Greek, children’s and young adult books, fairy tales, comics, popular songs and poems are the source of the material presented in the performance, which is interwoven with the original music of Antoniou, but also with musical pieces of that period, and with a pinch of nostalgia, humour, and love for a seemingly innocent era.

Eight more performances will take place before the festival concludes its 2023 edition in mid-October, as well as one workshop by Dine Donef titled Contemporising Tradition.

26th Cultural Festival of the University of Cyprus

A series of music, theatre, dance and song performances. Until October 16. Axiothea Mansion, Nicosia. 8.30pm. €10. Tel: 22-894531-2