After a series of resounding performances in multiple venues in Greece before enthusiastic audiences and critics, the play “Granny Nettle Pickers” (https://dipethekavalas.gr/en/latest-news/the-old-women-who-pick-nettles-secret-stories-of-the-women-of-thessaly/) by Konstantinos Dellas, playwright and director, is coming to Paxos.

The play is inspired by the magical rituals of rural Greece. Three old women guide us on a mystical journey in which they incarnate age-old archetypes, from the harmless granny to the dangerous healer. They talk about their lives, what their own grandmothers taught them, their sufferings as women and what they wish to transmit to their daughters.

Having remained invisible for decades, these rural women and their rituals of witchcraft, religion and cooking have only recently been rediscovered by Konstantinos Dellas whose play is an extraordinary fusion of theater and anthropology. The script keeps evolving along with the playwright’s ongoing research and discoveries. The audience is asked to participate in the research by contributing their own grandmothers’ tales and traditions in an attempt at preservation of the folk history of every part of Greece where the play is staged.

The roles of the three old women are performed, as in ancient Greece, by male actors in disguise and wearing masks in an extraordinary performance combining acting, storytelling, and in many cases audience participation.