RETROSPECTIVES Festival
RETROSPECTIVES Festival
Modern readings of early Greek drama
14-18 January
Main Stage | Ziller Building
Staged readings of key Greek plays,
from the Cretan Renaissance to the beginning of the 20th century,
curated by renowned directors.
In the RETROSPECTIVES Festival – being held from 14 to 18 January at the Main Stage of the Ziller Building – the National Theatre of Greece is initiating an important creative dialogue with key pieces of early Greek drama. The texts chosen by the directors Simos Kakalas, Dimitris Dimopoulos, Efi Theodorou, Ilektra Ellinikioti and Tonia Ralli document various aspects of the country’s theatre from the Cretan Renaissance to the beginning of the 20th century, and serve as living vehicles of shared historical and ideological memory in conversation with the present.
As part of the RETROSPECTIVES Festival, artists engage with works that have marked the development of Greek theatre and, in some cases, influenced pivotal moments in the country’s cultural history. They re-examine them from a fresh perspective, illuminating them through contemporary readings and sociopolitical and aesthetic considerations. A chain of theatrical memory is restored, with former times no longer viewed as a closed chapter, but as an active arena for exchange and reflection.
From Bergadis’s Apokopos and Iakovos Rizos Neroulos’s Korakistika to The Basil Plant by Antonios Matesis, The Kurds by Giannis Kampysis and The New Woman by Kallirroi Parren, the RETROSPECTIVES Festival demonstrates the continuing relevance of the plays, their theatrical daring and formal and conceptual innovation, and their linguistic and stylistic diversity. It also shows how well they function as spaces where issues of identity, gender, power, intellectual opposition and social change can be articulated.
The RETROSPECTIVES Festival is a dynamic meeting of eras; an invitation to audiences to return to these texts in the light of current concerns and questions, discovering the fruitful and ongoing interaction between Greek drama and the country’s people and their past.
