Vrykolakas (And Other Beings From Elsewhere)’, at the Etcetera Theatre on 2nd and 3rd November
Award-winning Cypriot author, performer and storyteller Polis Loizou will be returning to London with ‘Vrykolakas (And Other Beings From Elsewhere)’, an evening of spooky stories from his home region and beyond, including a horrible tale about the titular Greek version of the vampire. The show will be on for two nights at Etcetera Theatre’s Camden Horror Festival, a brand new fest dedicated to the dark side.
‘The figure of the vrykolakas goes way back,’ Polis explains. ‘In fact, I was thrilled to discover that the earliest evidence of belief in revenants, people who come back from the dead, was found in my motherland of Cyprus. As I continue to explore my heritage in my work, I find myself increasingly drawn to the aspects of our culture that present a different idea of what tends to be presented.’
While the more Western version of the vampire – a debonair, bloodsucking Byronic aristocrat, such as Anne Rice’s Lestat – has become the almost universal representation even in Greece and Cyprus, the creature developed from ancient tales, and sits somewhere between vampire and zombie.
‘A vrykolakas will come knocking on your door and calling your name,’ Polis expands. ‘And you mustn’t answer. If you do… Instead of sinking its teeth into your neck, the revenant (a bloated, taut, reanimated corpse) will take your liver. To be killed, it must have nails driven into it, have its heart taken out and be set on fire.’
Evidence of belief in vrykolakes was even found in Greek graves in Anatolian cemeteries, where bodies were found with nails driven into them. Similar beliefs were found throughout Europe, and beyond, with bodies weighted down or people presumed to be undead because they hadn’t shown the level of decomposition expected.
‘It fascinates me how fears about tumultuous events, concerns about disease or unexplained phenomena manifested in stories,’ Polis continues. ‘And sometimes, stories were used as a way of explaining something, passing on knowledge. Even in the most outlandish tales, there’ll be a human truth, something possibly inspired by a historical or personal event. In every case, folktales give you a glimpse of the culture they came from. When you see overlap in stories from around the world, it only highlights how similar people are and always have been, regardless of where they’re from. And in the case of Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, the Levant and the Balkans, stories reveal just how much our cultures mixed before more modern partitions and population exchanges. I find that storytelling, even when it’s dark, shines a light on shared human experience.’
