In the second hour of the second episode of “Take Your Time” for 2025, actress Maria Maltabe and director Francesca Minutoli were guests of Prokopis Agelopoulos at the Voice of Greece studio. They are presenting, every Thursday at 9 p.m., the performance of “The Yellow Wallpaper” at the Alkmini Theatre in Kato Petralona.
The classic gothic short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, written in 1890, is presented in a contemporary adaptation at the Alkmini Theatre, directed by Francesca Minutoli with a theatrical adaptation by Katerina Loukidou. After each performance, there will be a series of discussions around themes of postpartum depression and the trauma of women related to reproduction.
Our guests talked about the work, which was written during a time when feminism existed only as an idea in the minds of a few brave women and, as was natural, it was censored. However, it served as a catalyst for changing some perceptions about the treatment of postpartum depression, which until then had imposed isolation on women and a regime of “calm.”
In the Voice of Greece studio, we discussed the demands of the performance and the role, how it can impact both women and men today, and the importance of staging works like this in the context of the increasing phenomenon of gender-based violence. The work is a tribute to the feminist movement, in which a woman suffering from postpartum depression documents her interaction with the abstract patterns of the yellow wallpaper in her room, which gradually takes hold of her and leads to her liberation.
The play highlights the social aspects of postpartum depression that arise from gender inequalities both within and outside the marital relationship. It sheds light on the invisible and unresolved wounds of women related to reproduction that are overlooked by medical processes and public discourse.