Champions

In Champions, Andreas Constantinou sits silently before the audience as voices fill the space—recordings of conversations with his therapist, his father and his mother. The silence of his body contrasts with the emotional force of the audio, slowly revealing a narrative of rejection, vulnerability, identity, and longing. A 30-minute performance blending theatre, live art, video projections, and haunting soundscapes, Champions invites viewers into an unflinching portrait of emotional survival. Themes of family dynamics, grief, loneliness, queer identity, and resilience surface with striking immediacy.

The work unfolds with raw clarity and emotional precision, immersing audiences in a deeply personal story of grief and healing. It is an invitation to witness—not only the pain of abandonment, but the labor of reclaiming one’s voice in the wake of silence.

The process behind Champions began when Constantinou noticed that every time he stopped moving, a deep sadness surfaced. He turned to therapy and proposed a year-long collaboration—with the therapist also acting as dramaturg. Each week, he worked in the studio, then brought his discoveries into the therapy room. All sessions were recorded.

Over time, a core grief emerged: the emotional abandonment he experienced from his homophobic father. These recordings—alongside interviews with his parents—became the foundation of Champions. In the performance, Constantinou sits in silence, listening to an interview with his father about their broken relationship. What unfolds is a direct and unfiltered encounter with loss, honesty, and the struggle to be seen. Champions is both a personal reckoning and a quiet act of resistance—inviting audiences to witness the courage it takes to face what hurts, without turning away.

“Champions” was (together with “Mass Effect” in a double bill) nominated for a Danish National Reumert Theatre Award in the category Best Performance in 2020.