My First Greek Sunset

10 minutes | 2 actors

Maia recalls her first night in Athens, Greece. She has travelled there, alone, for her Fall break. Hoping to see the Acropolis, she takes a walk in the fading sunlight along a trail that weaves through a small wooded area. It is here that she meets a charming Italian man, and her life is irrevocably changed.

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I wrote this as part of a 28-day playwriting challenge in 2021. The prompt asked us to write a play inspired by the process of petrification.

I thought of an experience I had in Greece, several years before: a seemingly harmless interaction with a stranger. I thought of the fear and anger I felt at the time, for trusting someone who clearly wasn’t meant to be trusted. I also thought about how that interaction could have ended much, much worse. I wanted to write about the encounter and the feeling of being scared, of being petrified. But I also wanted to confront a possible reality in which I myself went through a literal process of petrification, completely transformed and forever altered by what I’d been through.

I captured the above photo in October 2017, during my first night in Athens on my way to see the Acropolis, moments before a stranger stopped me to say “Ciao.”

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I’ve also recently rewritten My First Greek Sunset as a short story.