Three by Three: Guest Artists in Focus

QUESTION 2.    Pieces like NEKYIA and I SEE YOU engage directly with descent, trauma, and women’s historical suffering. How do you hold space for darkness without allowing it to eclipse the possibility of transformation?

• ANSWER 2.     As women, we already carry a large part of humanity's trauma in our hearts, and on top of that, we carry our own wounds. We are very strong, and it is precisely this sensitivity and vulnerability that is our strength.

  As humans, it is always these two extremes that define our nature: Dionysus and Apollo, Death and Eros (Love). Through the creative, alchemical process of theater, I fell in love with my darkness at a very young age and scratched my wounds in order to dive deeper into my soul. That's how I believed my work gained substance. It was an almost mystical process. Until I burned like a moth in the light and realized that the path of self-destruction was leading me nowhere.

  When I reached a dead end, I found refuge in nature. It taught me how to leave my wounds open to fill with light and that the source of healing lies within the wound itself. Now darkness is for me the womb, the bosom of the earth, the abyss, where I go to cry, to confess, to seek therapy and answers. The truth is that we will always carry our wounds. Nature simply teaches us how to love and understand them because through them we can understand others. It is the source of empathy. And that creates a sense of equilibrium.

  "I SEE YOU"

  I saw you running naked to survive
  I saw you with a pen writing in the darkness
  I saw all of your writings on fire
  by Madmen
  I saw you giving birth to those Madmen
  I saw you raising them
  I saw you crying in desperation, isolation, humiliation
  I saw all of your philosophies and poems stolen,
  broken, renamed
  I saw you naked running to survive
  I saw all of your children taking your rapist's name, surname, nickname
  I saw all of your life in slavery
  your voice in silence
  your name destined to be buried in history
  in their books, in their files, in their libraries
  I saw all of your discoveries stolen and stolen again and stolen again
  - and, yes, I will scream it loud - by Madmen!
  I saw your life broken a thousand times a billion times a trillion times
  and I shall repeat those words forever and ever
  until I see you free

  Until I see you Free

  Standing on your feet
  taking back your Life

  You, woman, you, girl
  Recall your Name
  Revoice your Voice
  Relive your Life
  Revive your Work
  Reborn the Human
  Reborn the Man

  'Cause you are the Womb
  The Womb of Life
  The Wo ~ Man

  © Alkistis Voulgari

Alkistis Voulgari
Performer / Filmmaker / Writer

MEDIUM:    theater, dance, film, poetry

BIO:    Alkistis Voulgari was born in Athens, Greece. She is an actress and dancer, specialising in the dance technique of Isadora Duncan. For the last five years she has been experimenting with her own film and performance creations, incorporating theatre, poetry, literature, dance and radio art. Her work has been presented internationally. She is gradually visualising and working on the reconnection of theatre with its natural roots through improvisation and exploration of the primitive idea in an open natural space where the film camera becomes the 'director's eye' and an eternal narrative of theatrical, performative, human and life experience.

WEBSITE:    AlkistisVoulgari

QUESTION 3.    You speak of art as resistance to brutality and a pathway to reconnection. After an audience experiences one of your performances, what inner shift do you hope quietly continues long after the work ends?

• ANSWER 3.     I feel that art, all kinds of art, must resist everything that is rotten, decayed, and irrational. This is especially true today, when we live in an almost upside-down world where ideas and virtues have lost their true meaning. Bukowski says it all in the "Genius of the Crowd".

  The only thing that remains standing is the person with their mistakes, their passions, and their cracks. The one who at some point finds the strength and begins their personal, private revolution. Very few can bear to carry their ideas to the end without compromise.

  Through my work, I would like to inspire these feelings in the audience. To light a spark. To convey a light. To share. To share something of myself that may speak to someone else. This eternal creative force is a kind of magic that moves souls. And as long as the soul moves, we are alive. Life. Real life. The essence.

QUESTION 1.    Your performances emerge from an “emptying–receiving” practice rooted in body, breath, and intuition. How do you recognize the moment when preparation ends and true presence begins on stage or in nature?

• ANSWER 1.    That's a very good question. Before I begin any artistic creation related to nature, I live in that particular place, exploring its light, sounds, colors, and energy. For example, for "Healing Landscapes," which is purely a physical performance in a natural landscape, I had already been living in Samothrace for three months. Every day, I would go to the waterfall, walk in the forest, and literally cross rivers and mountains. Nature creates a powerful energy on its own, and it is always nature that opens up to you and determines the place, the moment, even the movement. It is a ritual. I bring the same experience to the stage, to a, let's say, "unnatural" place. I enter as a blank slate and let myself go in each moment so that it can be born on its own. The landscape in nature is there, the inner landscape on stage is there, but each time the wind blows from a different direction, a leaf falls, and you can discover a lot through its movement. I like to experience the birth of things, not to impose myself on them but to let them pass through me. In both places, in nature and on stage, the state of open "presence" requires months of preparation so that the body, soul, and mind have expanded and united with what Peter Brook calls "The Poetic Body": a sensitive and powerful physical presence that transcends the "human," ready to transform matter into soul.

"Ophelia's Lament" (2024), experimental short film

I SEE YOU (2022), performance & poetry

"Aulūs" (2025), Poetry N' Motion film

All copyright and reproduction rights are reserved by Alkistis Voulgari.
Artwork may not be reproduced in any form without the artist's express written permission.

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