ON THE WAY TO COLONUS

Oedipus at Colonus, the last of Sophocles’ Theban plays, recounts how, disgraced and exiled from the city he once ruled, Oedipus seeks refuge in the town of Colonus. Millennia later, the site of Colonus, on the Western fringes of Athens, remains a place of exile, now for Roma communities who live there in deprivation. Initially presented as part of the Greek Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia 2022, Alavanou worked with the area’s Roma residents to produce and film a new participatory performance of, and response to, Sophocles’ play, reflecting the grandeur of Greece’s cultural heritage against the country’s current social inequalities.