Elena Penga

Elena Penga (Greek: ‘Ελενα Πέγκα; born c. 1966) is a Greek playwright, poet, fiction writer, and stage director.[1]

Elena Penga

Penga attended college and graduate school in the United States and staged her first plays in New York’s off-off Broadway scene before returning to Greece in the 1990s. Her plays have been produced at the National Theatre of Greece, National Theatre of Northern Greece, the Athens Festival and Delphi among many other theaters. Her work has been widely translated and performed in the US, Europe and the middle east. Her book Tight Belts and Other Skin (Agra, 2012) received the Ourani Prize of The Greek Academy of Letters and has been translated into Swedish and English.[2] She is a co-author of the screenplay for the 2001 film adaptation of The Only Journey of His Life, about the Greek short-story writer Giorgios Vizyenos, which won the best film award in the Greek State Film Awards.[3][4]

Early life

Penga was born in Thessaloniki. She attended college in the United States, earning a bachelor's degree in philosophy and theater at Wesleyan University[5] and a master's degree in scriptwriting at the University of Southern California.[6] She returned to Greece in the early 1990s.[7]

Style and themes

Penga's work was described as dark and poetic by Cosmopoliti.[8] Penga writes about the everyday aspects of politics and explores how individuals feel the repercussions of violence on a large scale. Her dramatic writing investigates issues of human existence, and explores the metaphysical and philosophical dimensions that present themselves in the dull, sometimes mundane lives of ordinary people.[9] Her writing reflects contemporary Greek influences.

David Wallace of The New Yorker, in his review of the anthology Austerity Measures- The New Greek Poetry, writes:

Greece’s debt is a different kind of catastrophe, one that occurs in slow motion: its mechanisms are abstract and impersonal, although the consequences are very real for those who rely on government institutions. These strictures insinuate themselves into the ambience of everyday life and language, something that poets can observe with careful attention. Here, for instance, is the poet Elena Penga (in Van Dyck’s translation) describing a menace in plain sight:  

The cherry trees in the neighbor’s yard haven’t had fruit for years. Four men enter carrying sticks. They enter the neighbor’s yard along with the rain. They’ve come to discipline the trees and chop them down if they don’t blossom. I watch the men hit the trees. I watch the rain hit the men.

A few unadorned sentences weave together several ideas: the sense of failed growth, the coercion that upholds the rule of efficiency, the passivity of the onlooker. Are the men from the government or from a corporation? It seems appropriate that we don’t know. This ordinary violence doesn’t need to be spelled out, it seems to say—it’s right in front of us if we’re merely observant enough to record it.[10]

Plays

Most of her plays have been published in Greek.

Fiction and poetry
  • ΑΘΗΝΑ-ΔΕΛΧΙ-ΑΘΗΝΑ (Athens-Delhi-Athens), novel (Agra, 2019)[12]
  • ΣΦΙΧΤΕΣ ΖΩΝΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΑΛΛΑ ΔΕΡΜΑΤΑ (Tight Belts and Other Skins), novella (Agra, 2011)[13][14] (2012 Literary Award of the Kostas and Eleni Ouranis Foundation)
  • ΣΚΟΥΩΣ - ΣΤΙΓΜΕΣ ΑΝΤΡΙΚΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΓΥΝΑΙΚΕΙΕΣ (Squash - Moments Male and Female), novella (1997)[15]
  • ΑΥΤΗ ΘΕΡΙΝΗ (She Summer Like), novella (Agra, 1986)

Penga's poetry has been anthologized in, among others, Austerity Measures, translated into English by Karen Van Dyck.[16][17] Austerity Measures also includes short prose from her collection Tight Belts and Other Skin, published by Penguin, 2016,[18] and also published by New York Review of Books, 2017[19] She is also included in the English anthology The Penguin Book of The Prose Poem: From Baudelaire to Anne Carson, Penguin UK, 2018[20]

Her short story, "The Untrodden" ("Το Αβατον"), Dalkey Archive Press (2016), translated into English by Karen Van Dyck, won the award for Best European Fiction (2017)[21]

References
  1. Anne Fliotsos; Wendy Vierow (15 October 2013). International Women Stage Directors. University of Illinois Press. pp. 220–. ISBN 978-0-252-09585-6. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
  2. "Penga Elena", The Greek Play Project, 2014, accessed June 12, 2020
  3. "The Only Journey of His Life". homepages.gold.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  4. "award 2001". Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 16 January 2017. Retrieved 4 January 2014.
  5. "National Theatre of Northern Greece - Contributors". www.ntng.gr. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  6. "Πέγκα Έλενα". The Greek Play Project (in Greek). Retrieved 2019-03-09.
  7. Pizoy, Αναστασια (2018-06-13). "Έλενα Πέγκα: Το ανθρώπινο σώμα βρίσκεται στο επίκεντρο του ενδιαφέροντός μου". CultureNow (in Greek). Retrieved 2019-03-09.
  8. Papvasiliou, Vasilis (22 March 2017). "H Έλενα Πέγκα από το Α ως το Ω: "Το όνομά μας κουβαλάει τις ρίζες και τον ξεριζωμό μας"". Cosmopoliti (in Greek). Retrieved 2019-03-09.
  9. Τσατσούλης, Δημήτρης. "Δι-υφαίνοντας τις τέχνες-η ανοιχτή γραφή της Ελενας Πέγκα". hartis.gr. Check date values in: |archive-date= (help)
  10. Wallace, David (June 27, 2017). "Greek Poetry in the Shadow of Austerity". The New Yorker.
  11. Παρίδης, Χρήστος. "Ενα παραμύθι για ενήλικους".
  12. Ανδρεαδάκης, Ορέστης (Ιανουάριος 2020). "ΑΘΗΝΑ-ΔΕΛΧΙ-ΑΘΗΝΑ- η γυναίκα που ταξιδεύει". Check date values in: |date= and |archive-date= (help)
  13. Κλικάτση, Μαίρη. "Ελενα Πέγκα: Σφιχτές Ζώνες Και Αλλα Δέρματα".
  14. Dyck, by Elena Penga, translated from the Greek by Karen Van (2014-05-06). "Six stories from Tight Belts and Other Skin (Agra, 2011)". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  15. Papageorgiou, Vasilis. "Elena Penga Syros".
  16. Wallace, David. "Greek Poetry in the Shadow of Austerity", The New Yorker, June 27, 2017, accessed June 12, 2020
  17. Bausells, Marta and Elani Stefanou. "Meet the Greek writers revolutionising poetry in the age of austerity", The Guardian, May 11, 2016, accessed June 12, 2020
  18. Kolosa-Sikieridi, Kerry. "In their own words: Greek austerity revolutionizing poetry".
  19. "Readings from 'Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry'". New York Review Books. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  20. "The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem by Jeremy Noel-Tod". www.penguin.com.au. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  21. "Best European Fiction 2017 | Dalkey Archive Press". Retrieved 2019-06-01.
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