Etymologies - by Efthimis Filippou (Paperback)

About the Book

A collection of ritual texts, parables, and performances from one of the most singular voices in contemporary theatre.

Book Synopsis

A collection of ritual texts, parables, and performances from one of the most singular voices in contemporary theatre.

A conference where linguists reveal the "true" origins of Greek words.
A midnight rite on the Elefsina waterfront where two siblings graft their parents' bodies onto their own.
A laboratory of mourning that turns letters to the dead into perfume.
A cool, lethal tale about a man forewarned--by machine and committee--that he will be stabbed.

In Etymologies and Other Rites, language, family, and fate are laid bare on the slab. Efthimis Filippou--acclaimed screenwriter of Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer--moves between lecture, cabaret, and liturgy with a poker face that leaves space for awe. His stage world is one of rituals disguised as bureaucracies, where saints and civil servants coexist, where grief becomes procedure and humour a form of prayer. Songs flare, knives appear, miracles are audited like minutes from a meeting.

The result is hilarious, brutal, and unexpectedly tender--a theatre of reason and revelation, where etymology proves to be another form of storytelling, and where the stories we tell about words, parents, and gods are the stories that make us. Taken together, these four works form a darkly luminous cycle about belief and substitution--of tongues, bodies, and meanings--played out between the sacred and the absurd.

Includes: Etymologies (a play), Big and Small Ships (a ritual performance), Eau de Cologne (a choral device), and George (a narrative).

About the Author

Efthimis Filippou is a Greek writer, playwright, and screenwriter known for his audacious blending of the bureaucratic with the mythic. He has gained broad international recognition through his collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos, co-writing the scripts for Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and, more recently, Kinds of Kindness. His work is characterized by a dry, deadpan voice that fuses satire, ritual, and emotional violence. In Etymologies and Other Rites, he extends that sensibility into a hybrid territory of lecture, cabaret, and liturgy.