ATHENS (AFP) — In many European capitals and perhaps more so in the United States, a performance glorifying the joys of smoking may have been ill-advised.
But in Athens, one of Europe's last bastions of smoker freedom, the show felt right at home.
'I am a mistake', the latest work by controversial Flemish Belgian visual artist Jan Fabre whose performers chain-smoke on stage as images of female smokers are projected in the background, had its world premiere in a packed Athens Concert Hall on Thursday.
"It is fortunate that this script was first played in Greece where the culture of smoking is ever-present," Fabre told AFP in an interview.
"I am even permitted to smoke in the concert hall while having this interview, which is very pleasant," added the 49-year-old multidisciplinary artist, playwright, stage director, choreographer and designer.
On stage, four cigarette-toting female dancers tear out cosmetic ads and fashion photographs out of magazines, using their stubs to set them on fire.
They also deface posters of US President George W. Bush, Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden and Filip Dewinter, a leading member of the extreme-right Flemish independence party Vlaams Belang, gleefully scribbling fake moustaches and vampire fangs on them.
Meanwhile, the performance's sole actress, her own cigarette to her lips, exclaims: "I am faithful to the pleasure that's trying to kill me."
The play has been scored by prominent German composer Wolfgang Rihm whose music is played onstage by an orchestra, while the background images were shot by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman.
Fabre says the project took off following an offer from Rihm.
"When I wrote the play in 1988, it was a combined homage to (legendary Spanish filmmaker) Luis Bunuel and (French poet and playwright) Antonin Artaud, but also a piece on the joys of smoking," he explained.
"It was designed as a manifesto of sorts from an artist who is himself a heavy smoker, and who dies in the end from throat cancer...but the play now seems to have more relevance, with the whole world at war against cigarettes and smokers becoming a little like society's new negroes," he says.
In smoking, Fabre sees an act of individuality against the established social order, but says he is also interested in the aesthetic and sensual aspects associated with smoking.
"There are so many key scenes in the history of cinema where a man and a woman smoke, exchange a light, it's extremely erotic," he noted.
"I was very shocked by this incident in the United States, where a company employee was fired for testing positive to nicotine after smoking at home."
"How far will they go? I condemn this entire control-oriented society that envisages a sort of dictatorship of well-being where everyone must go the gym, stay in good health, and be young, pretty and productive," he said.
Fabre was referring to the case of a 31-year-old lawncare company employee from Massachusetts, who was fired in early November after a test showed he had high levels of nicotine in his blood.
The opposite is frequently true in Athens, where anti-smoking regulations enacted years ago are still flouted, even in childcare centres and hospitals.
Over 45 percent of Greeks smoke an average 3,000 cigarettes per person a year, compared to a European average consumption of 1,700.
Nevertheless, the play was received with timid applause by Thursday's audience in Athens, while there was also coughing in the front rows from the billows of smoke onstage.
Fabre was guest of honour in 2005 at the Avignon festival, one of Europe's top arts events, when angry audiences booed and stormed out of performances denounced by some critics as pretentious nonsense.
'I am a mistake' next travels to Vienna on Saturday, followed by stops in Amsterdam, Birmingham, Luxembourg, Brussels and Cologne for shows in venues operated by the European Concert Hall Organisation (Echo).
Its final performance will be held in Paris on December 19.
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