“The project started as a creative and playful escape from the COVID-19 lockdown, allowing us to collaborate remotely and adapt the play for the UpStage online platform.” Christina Papagiannouli

In 1970, absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco wrote Jeux de Massacre (known in English as The Killing Game or Here Comes a Chopper) – a dark comedy in which the plague ravages a small town and everyone dies. As a new pandemic overwhelms the globe and people rush to isolation and internet communication, it seems appropriate and timely to translate this work from the stage to cyberspace. Christina Papagiannouli (UK/Greece) has teamed up with Clara Gomes (Portugal), Helen Varley Jamieson (Germany/Aotearoa NZ), Miljana Perić (Serbia) and Vicki Smith (Aotearoa NZ) to produce Jeux de Massacre in UpStage and adapt it to current crises.

Performances take place on 9 July 2020 at 9am and 9pm UK time. Find your local time here (this is the first performance, add 12 hours for the second).

Live link to the stage: http://live.upstage.org.nz:8081/stages/Jeuxdemassacre

Enter the stage using a standard browser on a laptop or desktop computer. You may need to manually allow Flash in your browser – see this page for information on how to manually enable Flash. We are working on a new platform that will overcome these access problems!

UpStage does NOT work on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, you must use a browser on a laptop or desktop computer.

To receive notifications and reminders about the performance, please sign up via Eventbrite: https://jeuxdemassacre.eventbrite.co.uk