The Little Girl with Gortsa

Eleftheria's mother, Kiki, is illiterate. Throughout her upbringing, letters remained mysteries — secret curlicues, a boundary between herself and the initiated. But the stories echoing within her needed to come out, to live on, and be told to others. A necessity so undeniable that Kiki invented her own alphabet.

The Little Girl with Gortsa is a personal and poetic play about a mother who grew up in a refugee village in northern Greece, inhabited by Armenians expelled from Turkey. It was a place shaped by stones and tobacco plants, a constrained world for those who were considered neither Greeks nor Turks — a place where survival demanded hard work.

The performance also tells the story of her daughter, who had to leave her home village to pursue her dreams, and how her mother's tales of survival offered her comfort along the way. It's a story about shame and love, class and origin, carried by the need to express oneself and bring inner images to life.
 

Eleftheria Gerofoka is the initiator and the driving force behind the idea of The Little Girl with Gortsa, with Lola Arias serving as artistic mentor.


In English, Greek and Swedish, with German surtitles.


As part of 100 + 10 – Armenian Allegories


© Eleftheria Gerofoka