The Protagonists

Lemon, venetian vetches; orchis, fritillary. How hard to remember an olive tree when the soul is behind bars…Never before published, written ‘at white-heat in three weeks’ in autumn 1967 after two visits to the detention island of Leros in the Greek Dodecanese, the play is Chamberlain’s response - both heartbreakingly lyrical and disturbingly visceral - to the right-wing Colonels’ Coup of April 1967. A dangerous, dissident text that draws on the conventions of Absurdist theatre, The Protagonists is the dark culmination of Chamberlain’s profound, career-long exploration of individuality, belonging, incarceration, imaginative freedom and the social role of the artist. It is also a startlingly candid articulation of her own emotional and psychological ‘internment’ at this time.