Constantinopoliad - Wales Millennium Centre / Canolfan Mileniwm Cymru

This experience is part of the Annwn Prize, a new global prize celebrating immersive storytelling from artists around the world. Nominated by an international community of curators and commentators, four shortlisted works come to Wales Millennium Centre, inviting you to step inside the story. Four worlds, one venue.

An expanded cinema work that gathers its audience for an act of collective reading.
Constantinopoliad is not just a work of storytelling; it is an invitation to discovery. It intertwines narrative with action, making us feel as though we are the first to stumble upon this archive, the first to unearth Cavafy’s story, to breathe life into his words. A response to the archive of the poet Constantine Cavafy, the story is inspired by the blank and torn-out pages in Constantinopoliad, an Epic, the journal the teenage Cavafy began when he and his family fled Alexandria; by lost and missing queer archives through time; and by the ghosts, both erotic and historical, that visit the older Cavafy in his poems.

The selection committee commended its use of touch, imagery, sound, and words to create a vivid experience for audiences - inviting you to embark on a journey into the imagination of a young Cavafy as he explores his creative potential and sexuality.

"My favourite response to this work was an audience member who described it as 'making love to a stranger through a book'. The work invites audiences into a sensual and concrete encounter with Cavafy’s life and poems: fingers making contact with history; illumination revealing images from between the pages; sounds conjuring the ghosts of 19th century Alexandrian cabarets.

With words by sister sylvester, score by Nadah El Shazly, and illustrations by Efrîn Özyetis, Constantinopoliad is a multi-sensory encounter with the past, and with forgotten stories that can haunt us into new imaginings for the present." - sister sylvester.