The memories of A Thousand Murdered Girls returns to the Unity Theatre in Liverpool after successful performances in 2012 between Thursday 4th and Saturday 6th July.
Did you know that thousands of anti-fascists who had fought long and hard against German Nazis had been imprisoned for years after the Second World War in concentration camps? Their crime, ‘fighting fascism’.
A Thousand Murdered Girls is based on the diaries and last testaments of Greek Women Resistance Fighters, from 1944 through to 1949. From fighting fascists in the towns and villages of Greece through to island concentration camps. This beautiful and harrowing play challenges perceptions of the Second World War and British involvement in Greece.
An all Liverpool cast from the drama group ‘Insurrection’ perform A Thousand Murdered Girls. Compiled by Darren Guy and based on the last testaments of resistance fighters in the 1940s and the hidden diaries of woman who where imprisoned in camps on the Greek island of Trikeri between 1949 and 1953 the play uses drama, film, music and poetry to tell the tales of the women.
Five thousand women and hundreds of children had been imprisoned in the camp in 1949, when Nazi collaborators took over the running of Greece after the Second World War. They began arresting anyone who had opposed the Third Reich. It was 30 years later that the women returned to find their diaries still intact, buried aside a tree on the grounds where the camp use to be.
The diaries give testament to both the harrowing and tortuous experience of the women but also the resilience. warmth and beauty that comes through such times. A Thousand Murdered Girls tells the stories of women who had resisted the German occupation and then resisted home grown fascism, during a turbulent 40 years of modern Greek history, one that ended with the fall of the generals in 1974.
The play uses authentic materials based on the work of Greek writers and poets Eleni Fourtounia and Rita Boumi Pappas and is a collaboration between Liverpool based writer and poet Darren Guy and a number of Greek researchers and translators he met whilst living in Greece in the 1990s.
Tickets for A Thousand Murdered Girls can be purchased from the Unity Theatre Box office on Hope Street, online at unitytheatre.co.uk and by telephone on 0844 8732888. Tickets are priced at £10 with concessions available at £7.