ATHENS – Broadway actor Gene Gillette is in Greece exclusively to perform the theatrical monologue ‘Artaud/Van Gogh’ under the direction of Ioli Andreadi in the Art Theater Karolos Koun – Basement in Athens Centre. An original play written by Ioli Andreadi and Aris Asproulis, inspired by Antonin Artaud’s essay ‘Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society,’ published in 1947, a year before the author’s death, the show premiered October 31 and is presented in English with Greek subtitles, every Monday and Tuesday at 7 PM until November 22, for eight nights only, as part of ‘The Artaud Trilogy’ project.

Tickets are available online: https://www.viva.gr/tickets/theater/artaud-trilogy.

A few words about Gene Gillette

The American actor became more widely known to theater audiences from his performance as Hamlet at the Denver Civic Theater and more recent work in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ at the Lincoln Center Theater – considered “the most successful American play in Broadway history,” according to 60 Minutes, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ (Broadway, National Theatre), and ‘War Horse’ (Broadway), among many others. Last May, he starred in John Ransom Phillips’ ‘Shooting Celebrities’ at the Flea Theater in New York, directed by Christopher McElroen, portraying Mary Lincoln’s photographer and Abraham Lincoln himself.

Gillette has also appeared in popular series on Netflix, Disney+, NBC, and CBS including: Law & Order, The Blacklist, Punisher, Madam Secretary, Instinct, Quantico, The Good Wife, Elementary, Person of Interest, Ringer, and many more.

A few words about the show ‘Artaud/Van Gogh’:

“We are in Paris, 1947. Antonin Artaud appears in a packed auditorium. He looks calm. He is calm. After nine years of psychiatric confinement and having suffered 51 electric shocks in the last year alone, he seems to have returned to ‘order’.

“The lecture he is going to give is titled ‘Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society’. The environment around him is suffocating. The audience is silent. However, his opinion is high. He has come with proof. He carries them in 406 scribbled notebooks that he never parted with.

“All the good society of Paris has thronged the place to hear him – Gide, Breton, Camus, Lacan. Artaud passionately defends an idea: Vincent Van Gogh’s suicide had its executioners. Initially looking for the reasons for his suicide in the paintings, notes and correspondence of the great painter, he suspects that the real perpetrators are among his audience.

“Artaud identifies, is electrified, enchanted, and suffers. He feels Van Gogh’s pulse and prophesies. He wants to unmask the culprits. He wants to cry out for the innocent. He wants to articulate the last syllable between the great injustice of the world and what it takes to get someone to sleep with a loaded gun in his arms.”

Artaud/Van Gogh was written in 2015 and is the first part of the trilogy of plays (Cenci Family- 2015, Kokkalo- 2022) created by Ioli Andreadi and Aris Asproulis inspired by the life and work of the groundbreaking artist and thinker of the 20th century Antonin Artaud.

The show is made possible with the support of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation.

The work is published by Kapa Publishing House in a bilingual Greek/English edition.