The performance The Archaeologist is a fresh, satirical, and profoundly humorous adaptation of a bold and controversial novel of the same title by Andreas Karkavitsas. In a Greece that is constantly searching for its place between the past and the future, a group of actors presents a performance about an “excavation” that takes place not only in the ground but also in our national consciousness. The work’s theme revolves around Andreas Embiricos’ quote, “Today as tomorrow and as yesterday.”
Karkavitsas’ novel was written in 1903, in a Greece humiliated by the 1897 defeat, financially suffering from consecutive bankruptcies, and seeking its identity between the glorious past of classical antiquity and the urgent need to catch up with the contemporary civilized world. His work was considered blasphemous because it spoke in a demeaning way about classical Greek art. Nonetheless, it remains relevant as it explores the relationship between contemporary art, the past, and the future.
Electra and Orestes, two young people living in the 2025 Greek countryside, share the stage with two characters of the same names from the well-known ancient Greek myth. Although they are millennia apart, the four of them become caught up in the same vortex of revenge and matricide. They cannot traverse time, yet their thoughts and actions intersect in a completely unexpected way. The thread of one story intertwines with that of the other, and both are driven to deviation. The drama’s key factor is space: the Gates of Hades. There, where the world of the living empties into the world of the dead, and the lines between life and death remain unclear and indistinct. In this place where the outlines of the living blur and merge with the shadows, what could lead someone to desperately wish for another person’s death to achieve redemption? And when the act is committed, does redemption truly come?
A music theatre piece that explores the core of human existence. The custom of “tama” (vow, offering), deeply rooted in Greek tradition, unfolds as an enduring act that unites the Divine with the human, and the past with the present. The performance delves into the lives of ordinary people from different generations who, through trials, pain, and miracles, make a promise to a supreme force as an ultimate call for help.
Through storytelling, live music, and movement, the performance Vow explores the human need, illuminating the fine line between faith, superstition, and sacrifice. The performance’s text is composed of materials based on true accounts of people, ranging from the past to the present day. Three actors reenact the journey from trial to promise, sacrifice, and anticipation of the miracle on stage. The performance combines elements of traditional art with modern directorial methods, where music, speech, and movement function as allegorical tools.
The performance Justice is inspired by the dialogue between the Melians and Athenians, as described by Thucydides. Contemporary citizens-audience members will be called upon to make a decision regarding the future of their country in a simulation of a potential war threat.
Melos faces the threat of military invasion. Representatives of the invaders come to discuss the possibility of a bloodless surrender. They will talk about the justice of the powerful, which is enforced as long as their power lasts. Spectators and performers will be asked to decide and vote, all while recalling similar moments and experiences.
The performance Sky from Other Lands is based on Sotiris Dimitriou’s book of the same name, a living monument of language with cracks, inscriptions, and unseen podiums. The central narrator, Alexo, is overwhelmed by an irresistible need to share. Her words surge within her like a rushing current that must definitely find a way out: into a precipice, a big river, a sea, or to an audience member. They want to water, carry away, and drown.
In the shadow of the Archaeological Museum of Arta, Alexo breaks vessels that conceal secrets of the past, exchanges coins – both counterfeit and genuine –, plays with figurines like a girl with her dolls, wears expensive jewellery or undresses, and kindles the candlelight on the tombstones of graves where both enemies and loved ones rest – including her own. A ritual of life that becomes a confession of guilt, nostalgia, and rejuvenating disaster, beneath the light of a dancing sun. Alexo’s words – fragmentary and soft, funny or daring, obscene, generous, weird, majestic – weave a tapestry with secret warps: God’s unknown plan.
“Tselementés,” the Greek synonym for cookbook, grandma’s old and cherished item, represents an heirloom of significant sentimental value. Browsing through it, we begin to feel a sense of nostalgia. However, as we delve deeper into its pages, what starts to emerge before us is the repression of a perhaps not-so-distant time.
The performance, inspired by the introductory texts of Nikolaos Tselementés’ Cookbook, the most iconic manual of Greek cuisine, serves as an invitation to reflect on gender roles and societal expectations.
Four performers, “good housewives,” use the Tselementés as a storytelling tool, taking turns in the roles of narrator, commentator, and acting subject while calling upon us to engage with the past and contemplate women’s position across time. Through flavours, smells, humour, and satire, we follow the story of an entire generation, along with the thread that connects it to our own.
*The performance is accompanied by Sandra Domvrou’s visual exhibition titled “Good Housewife.”
Two performers present a peculiar concert manifesto; a dialogue between two women fighting to keep a man by “screaming” against the hypocrisy of the male gender while opposing the values of marriage, motherhood, and the very concept of what it means to be a woman. This concert manifesto aims to explore the deeper motives behind a murder and the upheaval of an entire society surrounding gender issues, viewed through the lens of ancient myth.
The two Medeas converse without looking at each other, raising questions that concern women in art from ancient to contemporary times: What leads a Medea to kill her children? How can a serious crime be justified? What led to committing it in the first place? How can that be conveyed on stage through the tragic element of ancient drama, and how does ancient drama ultimately create a universal language to express contemporary issues? The performance unites the voices of many different versions of Medea written worldwide, from Euripides’ time to the present day, with music playing a primordial role in the composition of the vocal score.
In September of 1951, the exiled residents of the island of Ai-Stratis decided to stage a theatre performance there for the first time. They chose Aeschylus’ Persians. The censorship authorities allowed this because just four years earlier, the same play had been mounted by the National Theatre to celebrate the Dodecanese’s union with the rest of Greece. Moreover, Aeschylus’ text had always been used to underscore national supremacy and the continuity of a lineage dating back to ancient times. It was, therefore, considered the most appropriate choice in the process of reforming the leftist exiles. Besides, lines from the original drama, such as “Go ahead, Greek children” and “Now, you’re fighting for everything,” dominated the slopes of the “New Parthenon,” as the island of Makronisos (which also served as a place of exile) was called.
That performance on Ai-Stratis in 1951 was perhaps the first documented performance in Greece staged by those defeated in the official history—those whom the regime treated as the dangerous “Others” and whose struggle was condemned to fall into oblivion. It was perhaps the first time that instead of being used to celebrate the display of supremacy, Persians returned to its tragic origin.
Imitation of All is a music theatre and dance performance that incorporates elements of theatrical storytelling and visual happenings. At the same time, it aims to serve as the first phase of a research project on the blending of performing, interactive, narrative, and representational arts in premodern Southeastern Europe.
These hybrid performative events can be traced through fragments that, while insufficient, still support the assumption of continuities which, starting from late Greco-Roman antiquity, have come down to us as contemporary folk events or modern artistic manifestations through the post-Byzantine tradition. The lack of documentation regarding the historical accuracy and faithful delivery of the style, function, variety of themes, and form of these stage events during the crucial transitional period of the Dark Ages, in this case, allows for creative imagination: through the quest for a collective memory, we aspire to a contemporary autonomous artistic creation that showcases the fluidity connecting the past, present, and future.
Common Tale is a performance based on real-life testimonies from women sharing their experiences across various periods of 20th-century Greek history, including the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the Interwar Period, World War II, and the Civil War.
These stories illuminate war’s destructive consequences on people, regardless of time. They reflect the voices of ordinary people, capturing a shared reality that bridges the past with the present while reminding us of the need for a collective memory. Through the equal participation of deaf and hearing actors, a profound message about shared human experiences is conveyed. Using a bilingual storytelling process that combines vocal performance and Greek Sign Language, as well as physical theatre, and music-motor expression, diverse expressive forms are brought to the foreground. The stage action unfolds through interpretive music and motor references, as well as percussion instruments played by all performers, both deaf and hearing, in collaboration with an onstage musician, creating an enhanced and uniquely riveting theatrical experience.