The "mother" of all horror movies, "Rosemary Baby" (1968) - a landmark in horror cinema – that seems just as haunted and diabolic even nowadays, 53 years after its first screening.
Rosemary directed by Markos Papadokonstantakis is placed and filmed inside an apartment in downtown Athens.
Due to restrictions caused by the covid-19 pandemic, the director and its creative team initiated a new way of presenting a story in the performing arts. While many theatrical plays have been paused or canceled and others use live-streaming practices, this group of young theater and cinema professionals is doing something unique. Rosemary in the way it is presented constitutes neither a theatrical play nor a cinema movie. It is a “theatre in a single shot” experience, designed and filmed inside an apartment, just like Polansky’s Rosemary apartment.
This project attempts to unite four narrative languages: theatre, cinema, literature, and music. The interaction between musicians and actors through repetitive improvised sound patterns creates the musical realm that involves theatrical drama and vice versa.
The site-specific scenographic design follows the apartment's layout. By adding a few things and making tiny interventions, different environments (atmospheres) are created.
Realism is indicated by the movement of the camera. The camera moves away, zooms in and out, rotates, etc., as the human eye would, watching events up close.
This kind of cinematography (theatre in a single shot) combined with the use of a real apartment instead of a theatrical stage, eliminates the distance by giving an impression that the audience participates, follows the events.
Play Description:
Roman Polanski's movie "Rosemary Baby", Stanley Kubrick's favorite film, is a compelling and terrifying story of satanism and pregnancy.“Rosemary Baby” has multiple readings and manages to touch on so many topics such as psychosis, patriarchy, motherhood, the limit of logic and insanity, feminist study, truth, and reality.
Driven by Polanski’s film, a group of actors creates a new narrative for ‘Rosemary Baby’. A modern Rosemary forced to live, act and react, trapped and compelled to be defined in a breakneck speed changing present. She is trying to survive against this toxic environment.
In both narratives - Polanski’s and ours - the questions remain the same;
This woman, Rosemary, is carrying a seed. Is it the seed of human birth? A new God? An ideology? or a biblical catastrophe?
Ticket link for the online streaming:
https://www.viva.gr/tickets/theater/streaming/rozmari/




Creative team:
Text: Andre Papacosta
Director: Markos Papadokonstantakis
Assistant to the director & movement director: Ivonny Tzatha
Scenography and costumes: Alegia Papageorgiou
Sound design: Karolos Mpertaxas
Lighting design: Markos Papadokonstantakis & Alegia Papageorgiou
Camera & Video: George Athanasiou
Actors:
John Dendrinos, Alex Diamantis, Katerina Maoutsou, Frangiski Moustaki, Kostas Nikouli, Efthalia Papacosta
Musicians:
Karolos Mpertaxas, Dimitris Prokos