The Old ladies who harvest the nettle

How is the elderly female body connected to folk sorcery, cooking, and ritual practices? Three male performers take on the roles of three women, bringing to life the narrative of the ageing female body, both personal and collective.

The story begins in Thessaly, Greece, a region where tradition portrays women as “witches,” inheritors of secret knowledge passed down from Medea and experts in the practice known as “drawing down the moon” or otherwise “milking the moon.” The three figures of the play recall harmless grandmothers and potent healers, at once familiar and archetypal. They speak of their lives, recounting the hardships they endured, the wisdom they received from their ancestors, and the knowledge they imparted to the next generations. Bearing the triple role of the labourer, housekeeper, and mother, these women contributed actively to their families’ livelihoods and the local community, yet they remained invisible for years—even to researchers who deemed women’s accounts unreliable and unworthy of historical record.

Beginning its journey at the Municipal and Regional Theater of Larissa in Thessaly, the performance is being staged from March 2023 till now in Athens and keeps touring both in Greece and in big festivals abroad (Sarajevo Fest 2025, Nicosia International Festival 2025) for three consecutive seasons garnering a warm reception and already counting more than 200 shows. As a work in progress, it bridges performance art and social anthropology, evolving and redefining itself as it draws material from the bulk of interviews conducted in tandem with the performances. The audience is invited to participate in this research and- if they wish- to contribute to the oral history documentation that has been evolving since the performance began.