The message
The Message
Anthi Founta, Antonis Kyriakakis
Theatre, Athens
Date: Saturday 12 September 2026
Time: 21:15
Location: SYNERGEIO Culture Space
Entrance: 5€
Pre-sale tickets daily 10am-2 pm and 7 pm-9pm at the venue Economou Εx Economon 22, Larissa (Tel. 2411 812 431) and at the box office before the performance. For better service, please bring cash.
What remains of a person if you take away their beginning and their end?
“They” gave them a message to deliver to “Him.” They were told to go straight ahead, but they got lost and can no longer remember the message. They are two messengers without a message. Two messengers without names. They are A and B, and they have forgotten where they started and where they are going. They walk for weeks, months, years, or even centuries, constantly making up new messages only to forget them again. Will they ever remember the message?
The play is one of only three plays written by Argyris Chionis between 1971 and 1973. According to the author, The Message was inspired by the work of the Renaissance Italian writer Franco Sacchetti, in which he found early elements of the Theatre of the Absurd, especially similarities with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
An existential farce with clear influences from the Theatre of the Absurd. An inventive and deeply human performance that fits entirely within the strict limits of a set that looks like a wooden puzzle toy.
“If I had time, I would be something else.” – B
What, after all, is a messenger without a message?
Director’s Note
“It is like when you cannot stop doing something without really knowing why you are doing it. Better to keep doing something without knowing why than to stop doing anything at all. Right? Who would we be if we did nothing? Better to stay trapped in what we know and trust than to risk not existing. That is how we create the movements that keep us enclosed, the phrases we repeat like a box around us. Like the story of the astronaut toy—yes, Buzz Lightyear—who believed he had travelled across galaxies while still inside the box, only to discover one day that he had not taken a single step.
In The Message by Argyris Chionis, A and B are not people of flesh and blood. They are two sketches, made in a tragicomic way so that they can endure an endless journey that never really moves.”
Text: Argyris Chionis
Dramaturgy: Anthi Founta, Antonis Kyriakakis, Giorgos Paterakis
Direction / Set Design: Anthi Founta
Movement Direction: Efthymis Christou
Set Construction: Stamatis Leontios, Kyriakos Koutserinakis
Costumes: Functional Clothing Lab
Photography: Nontas Michalopoulos
Production: NAIF
Cast: Antonis Kyriakakis, Anthi Founta