The play was presented for the first time at Zeriga Theater in 1986-87. Subsequently, translated into English by Minos Pothos, it was presented at the University of Toronto, Canada, at the Second International Women Playwrights Conference in 1991, directed by Sally Han. It was broadcast on ERT radio in 1987 under the title Red Rose.
Plot
The lost memory, the alienated character, time abolished, the desolation of the mind, are some of the elements that make up this play. Two people, a man and a woman, somewhere in an indefinable interrogation room, search for their lost identity. Painful, incomplete fragments of memory lead them to the same parallel to what could be the lost reality of their life together. Trapped in a relentless, unknown authority, they try to defend themselves with the pain of memory as their single weapon. In the midst of doubting everything, a lost rose will suddenly become the only tangible object in their life. The rose which will fall on their hands, revealing the trauma, is a triumphant proof that: they have existed. That fragments of memory, somewhere put together, lead to a triumphant truth.
A few words about the play
Writing a poem, a novel, a play, I first seek my own intuition about the world. I stand at the edge of this cosmic concept that is our life, our wandering on this earth, and I try to find my relationship with the world and with existence, with fear, with memory - with personal and with cosmic memory, I try to find my relationship with what I have been, with what I seek - the nostalgia for the impossible!
Some people have called my poetry and my novels a theatrical monologue. Some have called my plays dramatic poetry. As the years go by, the older I get, the more I believe that the literary word is a function of existence. And I operate in this existential dimension of literary word which is the resonance of memory, of the dream, of your relationship with the levels of the reality, it is the resonance of your history in the ephemerality of worldly pain. And also, it is the operation of a magic surrealism emerging through the most overwhelming everyday life.
The play Bidding you farewell was originally written with the title The Interrogation. It was left unfinished for a few years until it got to its final form in 1986. Two beings isolated somewhere in the void, without memory, and without an outlet, become aware of the trap placed by Fate. And from this point begins an agonizing search for their identity in the world.
I used this fragile transformative game between two characters to present the abandonment but also the joy of existence. One man and one woman connected by common moments in their life are lost somewhere, in an irrational transformation, a relentless technology, interrogated without mercy.
She does not know if she is his mother, his sister or his lover. And she will go through all these transformations with him, until the final challenge.
I believe that this play reveals levels of "authority" - this unknown authority - that transform to levels of human oppression to the admission of the impossible.
M.L.P. from the play's programm, 1986
Archives
Photos from the play staged at Zeriga Theatre.
