The conflict but also the mutual supply of two generations, through two persons who could well be father and son, is at the heart of John Logan’s strong work “Red“ that will raise George Kimoulis, since October, in Theatre Mousouri, with himself as director and protagonist and having at his side Dimitris Gotsopoulos.
The play takes place in the painter's studio Mark Rothko in the late 1950s, at the time when the great representative of abstract expressionism works on ordering his life: a series of large paintings for the walls of a luxury New York restaurant.
The famous painter who believed that art is a place of reflection, is now invited to hang his work over tables of rich people who will eat indifferently. Art has turned into merchandise, and its creator is invited to consent. The amount of the order is huge, and that's exactly why the painter is faced with a great dilemma. To refuse and remain faithful to his principles, or to accept and compromise with the world he despises;
Ken works with him. A young painter who learns art alongside him and, although he admires him indefinitely, has begun to question him. It is the voice of a new generation that comes to overthrow everything, to tear down what was taken for granted and to impose its own terms.
The mature creator feels the threat of a new wave of artists approaching. The youngest, in turn, claims his own space and right to question. It is the perpetual succession that every generation lives it as a reversal and at the same time as a debt to those who preceded it. Rothko teaches in a strict and often violent manner. It does not only deliver rules, but exposes the youngest to the cruelty of creation and requires him to think, see, and resist. But class is not a one-way street. The teacher he teaches is the one who, at some point, is left to be taught himself. The student needs the teacher to stand, but to become himself he must once stand against him. To counter his teacher, to be born as a creator. There is no birth of a creator without this rupture.
"Red" has been recognised internationally as one of the most important contemporary theatrical texts. He premiered in London in 2009, with Alfred Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmain as Ken, directed by Michael Grandage. In March 2010 he was transferred to Broadway with the same distribution and won six awards Tony, among them the Best Project.