Christina Ouzounidis (born 1969) is a playwright and director. Some of her most renowned plays are Heterofil (Heterophily, 2008), Vit, rik, fri (White, Rich, Free, 2010), Lagarna (The Laws, 2010) and Spår av Antigone (Traces of Antigone, 2015). Heterophily and The Laws have both been selected to SPAC´s Swedish Biennial of Performing Arts. Her works often refer to the mythical world of Greek drama. The idea of language as both opportunity and abyss plays a powerful role in her work. Her plays have been translated into French, English, German, Greek, Turkish, and Mandarin.

For a number of years she was one of the driving forces behind the independent theater company Teatr Weimar in Malmö. Since then she has had positions as playwright and director both for smaller, independent companies and larger institutions such as the City Theatres of Stockholm and Gothenburg, Radio Sweden, and the Royal Opera.

Ouzounidis studied playwriting at Malmö Theatre Academy, where she has also taught. In 2016 she completed a doctoral degree in artistic research from the same institution. She is also an author and has published five books.

Fleeing Creatures, like many of Ouzounidis’s plays, is to some extent a play with voices, but the lines are strongly driven by (speech) acts and highly concrete attempts. One important driving force for the speakers is portraying one’s true self to oneself as well as to the world outside. The play takes place in some sort of borderland, in a timeless but real state of waiting, a space where nature — trees, roots, insects, and the wild earth — are mirrored in an expectant but impotent humanity. One question recurs throughout the text, a state of anticipation that has to do with an imperative, and perhaps with the difference between the final phase and an awakening. Nature is at times a threat and at times a source of comfort and incredible strength, with its own intents and will comparable to those of the Greek gods.

Read the excerpt here.

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