The last months before joining infopeka were quite strange for me but also a time period where I passed through different stages of adapting and getting used to my upcoming reality, moving from excitement and impatience for discovering a country that I hadn’t actually thought I would live in before, to sadness and melancholy for leaving Athens, the place where I have been living during the last 6 years and the place that felt so intimate, which will always hold a unique spot in my heart, but also sad for leaving my friends and family...and then back to excitement and anticipation for new adventures and experiences. Admittedly an emotional rollercoaster!
What happened during these 37 days? My fellow EVS partner, Coline has already given a quite detailed impression of the organization and our commitment to its different activities, so I will not get to it extensively. But I will just have to stress once more the really warm and hosting environment and atmosphere that infopeka and its members saved for us, trying to make us feel as comfortable and as integrated as possible, because it would be a pity if i didn’t mention that.
I found it really great that during this time we will have to deal with a plurality and variety of different activities and be exposed and collaborate with people from different age groups and needs, but I will have to stand on something that made me quite excited and looking forward for my future involvement in it, which is theater of the oppressed.
I already knew about the method before coming, but unfortunately, apart from a short involvement with theater with my university theater group, I didn’t have the chance to be engaged in it till now.
And what I realized is that social theater and theater of the oppressed are the types of theatrical expression that I want to focus on and develop. It is a process of endeavouring something new that you didn’t know or you didn’t expect you could do, but also reflecting on why you are doing it at the same time. The idea that there is no right or wrong, that each performance, each little piece of actions and choices you make can influence the development of the moment; the fact that a single movement, an image, an expression of your body can tell more than a hundred pages, the feeling that through your dedication in that you’ll have the possibility to reflect on your own actions socially and politically and realize what you can actually make real changes around you, the preparation of what comes in real world and what we all see and do without reflecting on, without really understanding why; it involves everything else that goes beyond the narrowness of executing and adjusting yourself on a written text (of course I am not saying that I don’t appreciate “conventional theater”, I think that it is something quite hard and demanding and admittedly something that has offered me a lot, from attending theater performances but also from participating, although in a really amateur way, in a group myself. And that in all these types of theater i can find something really intriguing, they all engulf something artistic within them, although serving quite different purposes. The first one awakening emotions, from giving you the pleasure and happiness of attending a fine and well-done performance to allowing you make your personal associations from attending a single performance and the second one, asking you to really be a part of the change that you and every single of us can do.
I could go on and talk more about my impressions of that but just leave it like this for the moment.
Exciting moment: Maribor has really beautiful sky colours and is amazing how different sunsets can be every single day! Maybe it is normal for Slovenians to watch such skies, but really for me, it’s not so granted..probably air pollution in Athens keeps away some impressive sunsets, so i have to enjoy it while I have it.
till next time,
Sofia
Sofia
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