We Are In The Army Now
Four wannabe superheroes. Cyberspace(s). Video games. Smart- phones. New realities. A camp, personal army. Will you put your trust in them? The time has come – this is a call to arms.
Everything here sparkles with an ultrapop cyberspace aura. The four performers are reminiscent of Power Ranger superheroes, Pokemon, and the sexy being that is Cardi B. Everything unfolds in a camp atmo- sphere, filled with snapshots from the lives of borderline millennials, TikTok-style choreographies, and Britney Spears music videos, all set alongside deeply confessional selfies and memes on the controversial relationships between socio-environmental justice and social media plat- forms. Except that what’s posted here is the collective rage and urgency of an entire generation, coupled with the fierce humor that pervades it.
Might we all in fact be superheroes, ready to do battle? Can Steve Jobs and working-class people from the Athenian Nikea neighborhood sit side-by-side in the same selfie? Are homophobic Greek fathers and religiously devout Greek mothers just another work in progress? Can ideology be explained through the use of emojis? In a time that seems to lack doers, where things are fluid and seem incomprehensible, who exactly will our heroes fight?
Generation Z take up weapons and welcome us into a new world where emojis and Pokemon coexist with extreme sensitivity and dissident activism, and all inside a theater form as digital as is it incurably physical.
We Are In The Army Now was commissioned and produced by Stegi Onassis in 2020 - 2021. The play premiered in Onassis Stegi Youtube Channel in April, 2021.
Following its online premiere We are in the Army Now met its live audience in January of 2022. Through the "Outward Turn" program of Onassis Stegi, the four wannabe superheroes offered up a call to arms, this time in Madrid, at Teatros Del Canal.
After Teatros Del Canal, the play was shown at the Ringlokschuppen Ruhr theater, Müllheim an der Ruhr, in April 2022 and found its greece audience at Onassis Stegi, Athens in May 2022. In June 2022 the play was invited at the Radikal Jung Festival at Müncher Volkstheater, Germany.
