What happens when a theatrical Iphigenia engages in conversation with a poetic Iphigenia and an artificial one? A dialogue between Artificial Intelligence, timeless texts, and original music.
In the music theatre performance The Dimension of Iphigenia, the audience will be introduced to three different versions of the female character of Iphigenia. Each actress, through her own monologue, will shed light on a different aspect of the same figure, adding a new dimension to the development of the plot.
More specifically, Evangelia Keramari will portray Euripides’ Iphigenia, set against a backdrop of exile within a dystopian world. Ioanna Efthymiadiou will take us on a journey through Yiannis Ritsos’ Iphigenia. Markela Zerdali will perform as the Artificial Intelligence Iphigenia, rejecting the realm of emotions in favour of logic. Composer Angeliki Zoe will offer her own musical dimension to the show, with original music that highlights the inner worlds of the three performers.
Axion Esti (1960) – based on the poetic composition of the same name by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Odysseus Elytis – is presented through the timbral palette of 6 pianos and the sonic homogeneity of the interpretation of 12 pianists from the Piandaemonium Ensemble on 30 and 31 July 2025 at the Hellenistic Theatre of Dion.
The iconic work, set to music by Mikis Theodorakis, constitutes a hybrid sound, combining a symphony orchestra and choir on the one hand, with a cantor and narrator on the other, at a crossroads where spoken music meets tradition. The deep discussion of the expressive loads of heterogeneous musical traditions is carried out on the canvas of Elytis’ high poetry, aiming to express a modern and multidimensional Greekness, and aspiring to communicate its collective message directly to a large audience. This distinctive sound acquires new life through the original conception and performance of the unique Piandaemonium Ensemble, which, with its twenty-five years of experience, attempts a modern sonic reapproach to a work that still carries the symbols of a culture that is constantly renewed.
A woman who is being pursued arrives in a small village. The Priest, the Mad Man, Sifis, the Teacher, and the Gossiper appear terrified, through their cries and deafening whispers, before the “public danger” posed by the stranger. Years pass. A young shepherd learns to walk a tightrope. The village is afraid. The blessing of being able to strike a balance on a stretched rope, high above cliffs and against raging winds, seems a sin to those who are easily pushed around, stumbling breathless on the ground. The ability to gaze like a vampire, both here and there, at the living and the dead, at strangers and your own people, at the just and the unjust, comes at a price: exile.
What perceptions of justice arise from folk tradition, and how have they endured to this day? What shame does the unknown bear? What is just, what is unjust, and what lies between them? Is the desire for justice linked to humanity’s eternal longing for happiness? This performance features a musical dialogue among words, verses, traditions, and fairy tales from this land and its history.
Catch-22 – the title of Joseph Heller’s novel – means “vicious circle” and has become established as an expression denoting the irrational of human existence, the irrational of war, where success and disaster are inextricably linked.
For what else is war but one more Sisyphus rolling his rock up the mountain and then repeating the process all over again? Catch (19)22 explores the Asia Minor Catastrophe, through the irrationality of war and dares to contrast it with the peak and decline of the Macedonian civilization. There, over the tombs of the great kings, where grandeur and death are the two sides of the same coin.
The site-specific performance Catch (19)22 unfolds in the archaeological site of the Royal Burial Clusters of Aigai, based on a collection of oral and written testimonies about life in Asia Minor and with the artistic contribution of students of the 1st Junior High School of Veria.
A land of rebirth, a place of co-formation, an old café with contemporary music. Spectators, habitués, refugees, residents, leaving back their memories, keeping personal narratives as a legacy.
The performance crosses the historical paths with theatrical tools, but also with the use of our mobile phones, our smartphones, our modern technological need, which can finally allow us to create our own personal narrative with new media, to find our place in this world.
The story can be shaped, if we are a part of history.
The work is a theatrical adaptation based on Stratis Doukas’ novel of the same title that incorporates participatory activities of an educational nature. The story of the original text is about the adventures of a Greek man who was arrested by the Turks during the Smyrna Catastrophe in 1922. It vividly describes his escape and his struggle to survive until he is rescued.
The novel is dedicated to “the common sufferings of nations” and has an internationalist character. The references and comparisons to the refugee waves shaking today’s world are obvious. The work’s main focus is human resourcefulness and the preservation of human dignity amidst the horrors of war and the bitterness of being uprooted.
The performance is enriched with interactive parts, which – using Educational Drama as a vehicle – aim at the further exploration of the work’s thematic core.
An interdisciplinary project by Bill Balaskas, which attempts a poetic reading of the anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922). It revolves around a new large-scale neon installation consisting of the phrases “THERE IS NO SEA WITHOUT A LAND” and “THERE IS NO LAND WITHOUT A SEA”.
The project proposes a more contemplative or – even – optimistic approach to historical trauma, and is accompanied by a bilingual publication, two workshops, a dedicated website, and an international conference co-organized by Kingston University, London.
Through the project, 2291 becomes an imaginary date that refers not only to the universal and timeless nature of refugee disasters, but also to the hope that they will disappear sooner rather than later.
A musical performance that engages in a dialogue with the digital painting of George Kordis, who digitally creates a series of murals depicting refugee processions titled “Anestii” (Hearthless). Fenia Papadodima converses with the works, following George Seferis’ journey to Cappadocia, testimonies of refugees, and poems.
With her voice she travels across hymnody, singing, improvisation, speech. She leads audiences to an inner approach of the tragedy of the hearthless people of all eras.
From the person to the loss of the person.
Four actors sitting around a table. The feast begins. Their food is newspapers, their laptops and mobile phones. They read and comment on the headlines of the Greek, Turkish and Cypriot press from 1922 to this date.
How does the Press work? As a propaganda mechanism or as an information medium? How is the event presented, as a defeat or as a victory? And what about refugees? Are they presented as people or as numbers? Is the national interest a Need? How do newspapers treat war, destruction, the uprooting, expulsion, and settlement of refugees?
What are the references to the Event throughout the years? How have the relationships among the three countries evolved? How have they been shaped?
The Semio theatre company, using the unique contribution of Islahane to the history of the Greek state and Thessaloniki as a connective tissue, suggests a double approach, with 1922 always at its center.
The work revolves around 10 short theatrical pieces that have “The Islahane’’ as their central theme. Created by very important writers and performed by acclaimed performers, actors, disabled dancers, dancers, opera singers, the works run through the history of adjacent peoples, religions, consciences, families, orphans, Muslims, Christians, metalworkers, people of labor etc.
The celebration of the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, last year, and of the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, this year, is an opportunity for evaluation and redefinition. The plays that will be presented in the exhibition, illuminate aspects of Greek social reality.