The 25^TH MGSA SYMPOSIUM

Video courtesy @Cosmosphilly Link

Stones from God. From the Archive to the Stage:
Stories of the Christian community in Cappadocian villages prior to 1923.

Stones From God is an original collaboration of historian, Tom Papademetriou, and playwright, Pamela Hendrick.

Directed by Martha Frintzila, whose credits include the National Theater of Athens, Greece, the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, and Baumstrasse Theater.

Stockton University’s Theater Studies Program in collaboration with the Pappas Center for Hellenic Studies is staging the production of Stones From God, a play based on archival accounts of a people torn from their homeland. The production offers a vision of life of the Christian community in Cappadocian villages, deep in the heart of Turkey prior to the population exchange of 1923.

A collaboration between historian, Professor Tom Papademetriou, and playwright and director, Professor Pamela Hendrick of Stockton University in New Jersey.

Presented in “chamber theatre” style, this original play will be staged by guest director Martha Frintzila, whose credits also include the Greek National Theatre and her own Baumstrasse studio in Athens.

The production presents a forgotten history of villagers’ humor and song, passion and concerns, and deep faith as they navigate life among their fellow Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Muslim neighbors.

The dramatic rendering explores the human condition before the violent rupture of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that uprooted more than a million and a half people.  Greek Orthodox were forced to move to Greece and Muslims were forced to Turkey, in spite of the fact that each community never had a connection to the places they were assigned.

The collaboration between playwright and historian is based on research on Cappadocian churches and communities. Papademetriou’s National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded project worked in Turkey to document Ottoman period churches in Cappadocia left behind, forgotten and now in ruins.   Hendrick expertly adapted for the stage the true human voices gathered by Papademetriou which he researched at the Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, Greece.

Stones From God was previously produced at Stockton University in Galloway, New Jersey, Tarpon Springs, Florida, and internationally in Istanbul, Turkey.