The General is Causing Trouble in the Square
One Act Plays | Kapa Publications | 2022
Ten one-act plays, ten self-contained stories with a common theme.
The General is Causing Trouble in the Square deals with situations from daily life and delivers scathing commentaries on them through the actions of their heroes and heroines, in a particularly lively, smooth, immediate and accessible language.
People of different backgrounds and ages desperately try to communicate through their personal encounters or daily tasks. Sometimes indoors, sometimes outside, they come together with others from their surroundings or with those who just happen to be passing but most of the time they themselves sabotage their own efforts. The one-act plays in the book take up timely questions, related both to interpersonal relationships as well as bridging the gaps in human contact.
Makis Tsitas has edited this volume of one-act plays. most of which have already been performed on the stage (Municipal Theatre of Piraeus, Theatro ton Kairon), directed by Roula Pateraki, Ersi Vasilikioti and Prometheas Aleiferopoulos.
Critical Reviews
Tsitas’ one-act plays are characterized by one enormous, different profile, survey of contemporary Greece – the Greece of apartment blocks but also of village squares, of emotions but also wounded existence. […]Those who did not see them, either because they didn’t find tickets or didn’t hear about these fabulous one-act plays when they were performed, now have the chance to read them in this very elegant edition published by Kapa.
Christos Papageorgiou, Efimerida ton Syntakton, 06/05/23
Tsitas is a multifaceted writer, with imagination and, especially, depth . . . It is always interesting to see how different creative people filter their subject and how they present it to the public so that it involves them, making them reflect and feel it. I think Tsitas succeeds from the moment that we have the feeling that his heroes are ourselves, since we enter into the process of contemplating our own life, its texture and ramifications.
Asimina Xirogianni, booktimes.gr, 09/10/22
Makis Tsitas, justly and rightly awarded the European Prize for Literature in 1914, is among the most important playwrights of our times, worldly within his eminent Greekness. Like Chekhov and with a happy philanthropic disposition, he transforms Christian sorrow into a Bacchic rhythm of joy without losing even an iota of his Olympian calm . . .
His characters range from the surreal to the grotesque, like insects under a researcher’s microscope, wretched creatures caught in the web of an invisible spider.
Konstantinos Bouras, Odos Panos journal, October-December 2022
Special characters, subterranean humour, subjects drawn from daily life, the quest and need for human contact, all in one book, which one can read again and again with great interest, each time with a different reaction.
Giannis Grigorakos, Kifissia newspaper, September 2022
Makis Tsitas weaves his words with sympathy and understanding, he knits dialogue in an inventive way, he builds the right social settings, he creates an atmosphere that permits the presentation of antisocial or incomprehensible behaviour. Like an experienced psychoanalyst and someone deeply acquainted with the human soul, he brings to light obscure reasons, sets up the unpredictable moods that change for no reason, implying that the reason is always there, obscure, invisible, and active.
Anthoula Daniel, Avgi newspaper, 13/08/22
These ten stories could easily become plays. In fact, most of them already have. And when, God willing, they are restaged, I would like to be among the first watch them. To see the magic fly off the paper and become spoken words, hands that gesticulate, faces that change colour and expression. To see the magic become human.
How I admire Mr. Tsitas.
Kostas Koulis, noizy.gr, 30/06/22
Tsitas exercises a clever critique of everything that is wrong with our era, human relationships and the gulf, not only between the generations, but more generally between human beings. With direct language, that is sometimes sarcastic, sometimes cynical, extremely realistic and descriptive, the writer transport us smoothly into the atmosphere of the stories, making us an inseparable part of them.
Kyriaki Ganiti, vivliovamon.blogspot, 07/06/22
With the many beautiful children’s books that Makis Tsitas has written, one has the feeling that he must have exhausted his tenderness and sensitivity. But that’s not true, because one is constantly discovering that under his sternest words, there is a sob, a caress, a tear of sympathy. […]
At the same time, the reader is drawn into the sphere of daily life, where there is no lack of humanity, poetic feeling and humour that at times can be bitter – elements that characterize Makis Tsitas’ writing and make him unique.
Maria Kotopouli, Peri Ou, 04/06/22
Makis Tsitas, once again, surprises us with his beautiful and inventive writing. This time, using the speech of the theatre, he transports us in ten one-act plays that are so immediate and impressive and full of subtle, bittersweet humour about human relationships.
Dimitris Varvarigos, bookpress.gr, 30/05/22