Nostalghia Theater Co. in Athens, Greece is presenting a stage adaptation of You Animal Machine, a work by poet Eleni Sikelianos from 16 February through 21 April 2024. dives into the exuberant universe of Eleni Sikelianos. 

In You Animal Machine (Coffee House Press, 2014, Greek Edition Ekdosis Patakis, translated by Katerina Schina, 2022), Sikelianos writes the story of her grandmother, a burlesque dancer who went by the stage name "Melena, The Leopard Girl," who was "the toughest, hardest-assed woman to ever eat wood and bite nails on the face of the earth."

The play features transformations on a theater stage where tradition meets digital technology, unfolding a multi-layered narrative within a psychedelic world, a place where ancestors take on three-dimensional texture and reveal their most unexpected thoughts.

Eleni Sikelianos is professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.

Photo: Nadia Margariti as Melena, photo credit: Ansastasia Giannaki.