Little daily tragedies

Greece is under a big crisis. A lot of people losing their jobs, many becoming homeless, some struggling through the day. The minimum salary is circa 700 euros, I.V.A. is 23%, 1L of milk costs 1,24 euros, 1L of petrol is 1,8 euros. Athens is hanging from some bad politicians' decisions, spurred by fat German and French banks. Somebody is going to crash down. It's just a matter of how and when.

In Epidauros things flow with the rhythms of the last Northern European tourists of the season. It's mainly sunny, just two days of rain; autumn silently shows up as a shivering breeze at dawn and sunset.

I'm working in a workshop with 5 more incredible actresses on the Euripides' Orestes. We're working on Electra's monologue in reaction to the news of the trial: her brother and she are going to die. It's the end of Agamemnon's dynasty, the extinction of his bloody line.

6 hrs of daily psychophysical training and vocal training and structured improvisations conducted by Phillip Zarrilli. In between we work autonomously on the Ancient Greek text, exercising the non-Erasmusian pronunciation and prosody.

It feels weird to be in a place on the edge of a break down. International news of the last months about how Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy risk to be bankrupt echo in my mind. Yet daily reality is different from the macro-economical landscape. I get my amazing Greek yogurt at every breakfast.

These countries have suffered for a long time. Things have always been bad or baddish. Or at least that's what we've always been told. Maybe Italy is the only one that really was better for a few decades, but still I remember that sense of “we could be much better” “we must be in the top 5” when at school we were taught that Italy was the 7^th industrial power in the world. At that time nobody even wandered about WHO was paying the actual cost for such a well being state.

In a world landscape of incertitude and threat of an economical breakdown, everyone goes under their own private tragedy. Compared all together some of them look ridiculous. Like mine. While people are losing their jobs, while some others won't be afford education or paying a rent or purchasing food, my every day little tragedy is not being able of getting a decent coffee, a constant Internet connection, dealing with feelings of missing my family and pizza, not finding a solution for my dry hair and mosquitos bites.

I wonder if feeling guilty for the comfort I've had and making efforts not to waste it is enough...