Joining Our Grand Circus

Abstract

The unusual play and production of Our Grand Circus by Iakovos Kambanellis placed history and myth squarely on the Greek stage of 1973. As a mix of dramatized history and historicized drama, the play offered up a critical mirror-image or answer-in-kind to the proliferating military parades, victory festivals, and historical reenactments sponsored by the regime of 1967–1974. The production won over mass audiences that warmly welcomed Kambanellis's presentation of alternative ways of telling and displaying Greek history. The playwright effectively created a leftist ideological genealogy out of historical vignettes of continuing hardship and persistent lack of freedom which became palpable on stage. Kambanellis and his lead actors used an abundance of comic, popular, and folk ingredients to signal, under the restrictions of censorship, that they understood and dared to show Greek history in a new, critical light from below. Especially after November of 1973, the past of their play often erupted into the present in its opposition to the military regime and the regime's treatment of history.