A 20 year old student from Cretewho studies in Dairy School of Ioannina, disappears. After about 40 days is found dead, with stab wounds. Research shows that for some time before his death, he was experiencing very unpleasant situations at his school, since he was victim of physical and verbal violence from his fellow students, including fellow residents with strong delinquent behavior.

It is about the case of the show “801.5 m” that is coming to Thessaloniki, while any similarity with persons and situations is not coincidental at all. In reality, the story of Vangelis Giakoumakis is dramatized and mixed with elements of fiction, in a documentary theater performance.

“I have been involved for several years with the theatrical genre called “documentary theater”, which are performances that are inspired by a contemporary social or political issue and essentially thematize it,” says Haris Pehlivanidis to the Athens/Macedonian News Agency, signing the direction, but also the conception of the idea for the specific performance.

The Thessaloniki actor and director, from 2021 who assumed the duties of the Artistic Director of DIPETHE Ioannina and settled in this city of Epirus, identified even more with the case of the tragic death that shocked the country in 2015.

“Coming to Ioannina, I felt it like a duty to deal with the subject of Vangelis Giakoumakis, with this man who left life so unjustly and for nothing. In the meantime, because his body was found on the lakeside road, at a point where people constantly pass and a route that was part of my daily life, kept coming back to my mind,” says Mr. Pehlivanidis.

theater

He emphasizes that the residents of the area, from the announcement of the disappearance of the unfortunate student, went directly to the streets, started searching and are generally very connected to the case. He admits, however, that “anyway, it is a case that we have left behind, we have hidden it under the rug”. “So because the theater has the ability to bring things to the surface again, we decided to deal with the case and keep the memory of Vangelis alive. Essentially, though, through this, we are also addressing a huge issue, that of bullying, that is bullying, whether it is social or school, since we constantly have new incidents of attacks between young people and this never stops”, he underlined.

The Artistic Director of DIPETHE Ioannina actually spoke by phone with the parents of the deceased young man, who thanked the team for keeping their son’s memory alive. He called this communication “one of the most important moments of my professional life”.

In the show, the viewers will see five actors, who have taken on the role of Vangelis, the role of a journalist and three…”friends” of the victim – “within many quotation marks”, as Mr. Pehlivanidis said. “The show has quite a bit of fictional elements and quite a bit of documentary elements, so it’s not all purely factual. So we invented roles to build a new story, in which there is the story of Vangelis”, explained the director.

After a series of 20 shows that were given in Ioannina with a very positive response from the audience, the documentary theater show “801.5 m” of the Central Stage of DIPETHE Ioannina, comes at the end of the month at the AVLAIA theater and specifically from Wednesday 31/5 to Friday 2/6 at 21:15, while on Sunday 4/6 there will be two shows at 19:00 & 21:15.