60th DIMITRIA:
LEON A. NAR: MADRE SALONICO

Who still speaks “Landino”, the mother tongue of the Jews of Thessaloniki? Who sings Sephardic songs? The successful musical theatre performance Madre Salonico, based on a text by the distinguished writer Leon A. Nar and directed by the experienced Victor Ardittis, is a play in a language that is being lost, invested with the songs of the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean basin, which connects the present with the past as a gesture of memory. The play is presented in a mixture of “Landino” (the Spanish-Jewish language of the Sephardic community) and Greek.
The central characters of the play are Ido, a third-generation immigrant living in New York, and Zana, his grandmother, an old famous singer. The two share their experiences, memories and concerns, with an emphasis on the historical journey of the Jews of Thessaloniki, which is identified with the collective memory of the city. Grandmother and grandson recall memories, Zana reminisces about her successes as a singer, performing Sephardic songs on stage, while at the same time searching for her childhood love who survived death in the Nazi camps.