Chris­to­doulos Panayi­otou has chosen the form of the per­formed lec­ture to deal with the ver­ti­gin­ous ques­tion of death’s rela­tion­ship to the stage. 

How can death be rep­res­en­ted on stage? Chris­to­doulos Panayiotou’s work attempts to answer this ques­tion which under­scores the his­tory of West­ern theatre through a piece which com­bines theatre, a lec­ture and a per­form­ance, archiv­al work and digress­ive intro­spec­tion, where a broad ref­er­en­tial net­work calls upon icons like Pier Paolo Pasolini, Dal­ida, Molière, Amy Wine­house, Michael Jack­son or Rudolf Nureyev.

Using a vari­ety of film and music­al mater­i­al, Panayi­otou ana­tom­izes the concept of tra­gic irony to delve into the enigma of the rela­tion between spec­tat­ors, act­ors and char­ac­ters. Evok­ing urgency, bliss, men­ace, desire, Chris­to­doulos Panayi­otou blurs the lines between high­brow and low­brow to con­front the audi­ence with the many faces of the inev­it­able. By examin­ing the bal­let La Bay­adère staged by Rudolf Nureyev as he was dying from AIDS, Dying on Stage com­poses a mosa­ic, a score where the artist inserts his own sub­jectiv­ity in the flow of the con­tem­por­ary images wash­ing over us – chal­len­ging con­ven­tions, pay­ing homage to the theatre.