HOTEL APOCALYPSE
Created by Alexander Raptotasios
Bageion Hotel Foundation, Athens 2018
Hotel Apocalypse is an immersive play that takes place at the 19th C. hotel BAGEION in Athens and celebrates the human race a few hours before its final extinction. It is an exploration of what brings us together and tears us apart, it is a sensory journey through secret rooms alongside hosts, and it is a party celebrating anyone that accepts the invitation. Until the very End.
Drawing upon the cross-cultural archetype of the 'Hero Journey' and religious motifs of self-fulfillment and sacrifice, this theatrical experience aims to create a new kind of church that is made up only of each night's audience, their stories, their fears, their dreams and their unfulfilled potential.
A group of Hosts take the audience through a series of self-exploratory rituals, ceremonies of the mundane, cathartic challenges and explosive celebrations of everything that is pop, universal and absurdly human. The journey starts with the audience receiving an invitation to the spend their last hours 'alive' at Hotel Apocalypse dressed in their favourite outfit. At arrival they are separated from their friends and checked in by the receptionist who asks them some questions. The play has already started. Then they meet their host for the night that will take them to a room reserved for them. Each audience is the 'hero' that will have to start their journey in isolation, dive deep into their 'origin story' and their childhood until they can emerge from the hotel bedrooms and seek the people that will help them progress their 'myth'.
The play was first developed in LAMDA studios in London in 2016 but it took the form it currently has after we collaborated with the Bageion Foundation in Athens which made a 19thC. hotel available to us to present the show in. The building was situated on the central square of Omonia and it had a majestic neoclassical architectural design while being in a decaying condition that fitted the concept of the show perfectly. Over 14 different spaces were used across 4 floors and over 1600 audience members crossed the doors of the listed building to become guests of Hotel Apocalypse.
CREATIVES
Directed & Written by Alexander Raptotasios / Actors: Vicky Kyriakoulakou, Michalis OOikonomou, Danae Loukaki, Kosmas Xatzis, Chara Kolaiti, Apollon Bollas / Designed by Dimos Klimenof & Marco Turcich / Dramaturgy by Isabella Margara / Soundscape Design by Nikos Nikolakopoulos / Costume Design by Marie-Cecile Inglesi / Special Advisor: Julieta Kilgelman