National Theatre of Greece

The National Theater began to expand its operations and in 1901 a Drama School opens, in the same year The Royal Theatre opens its doors to the public with a monologue from Dimitris Verardakis’ play Maria Dozapatri and two Greek one-act comedies: Dimitris Koromilas’ The Death of Pericles and Charalambos Anninos’ Servant Required. Following the first performance the theatre begins to expand in popularity among Greece's upper and upper middle classes and stages more productions. One of the most famous of the period was Aeschylus’ Oresteia is staged in a prose translation by Yorgos Sotiriadis. The production sparks off a long linguistic conflict, as students from the School of Philosophy, incited by their classicist professor, Yorgos Mistriotis, march down Agiou Konstantinou in an attempt to halt the performance. The episodes that follow, known as the Oresteiaka, result in one death and ten injuries.
The Royal Theatre announces that it is stopping its performances indefinitely. The theatre remained closed, occasionally playing host to foreign theatre companies, until 1932. It remained closed until The National Theatre was founded, under an act of parliament signed by the education minister, Yorgos Papandreou, on 30 May.
15.01.2010
Marat/Sade
Ziller Building – Nikos Kourkoulos New Theatre
Almost 20 years after the French Revolution, the Marquis de Sade, shut away in the Charenton Asylum, applies the method of drama therapy to direct the inmates in a play based on the murder of the central figure of the revolution, Jean-Paul Marat. Little by little, as the events that led to Marat’s murder unfold on the “stage”, the line between performance and reality blurs and the play becomes a biting and timely comment on the Revolution and the conflict between individual freedom and historical and social duty.

22.01.2010
Don Juan
Ziller Building – Central Theatre
Having abandoned yet another of his lovers, Don Juan continues to provoke the conservative establishment by challenging institutions and breaking social taboos. With his invincible charm and incisive, uncompromising intellect, he overcomes every obstacle, exposing his enemies and challenging conventional morality. In a show of supreme self-confidence, he even attempts to challenge God. Will he succeed in escaping unharmed from such an encounter?

05.02.2010
Henry Edward Richard
Contemporary Theatre of Athens – Stage B
Three English kings in the period of civil strife known as the Wars of the Roses, a time of plots, lies and murder most foul, peopled by bellicose women, unprincipled leaders, incompetents and lechers. No promise is kept for long; no oath is sacred. Moral barriers and all the buttresses erected by society have been swept away by the thirst for power or in the race to grab a few acres of land. This abandonment of conscience is as common in today’s democracies as it was in the feudal society of medieval England.

19.02.2010
The lady from the sea
Ziller Building – Central Theatre
Ellida, trapped in a loveless marriage to Dr Wangel, seems psychologically closed off from the world and is drawn irresistibly towards the sea. However, the appearance of a mysterious stranger from the past, to whom she is bound by a terrible secret, awakens unfulfilled passion and brings her desire for freedom into conflict with her social duty. The lady from the sea is a work with all the characteristics that make the writing of the great Norwegian realist unique: an exhaustive analysis of the thoughts and mental states of the main characters, an imposing atmosphere, and perennial questions about human relations.

17.04.2010
Leonce and Lena
Ziller Building – Nikos Kourkoulos New Theatre
Prince Leonce cannot shake off his suffocating ennui. “I am so young and the world is so old,” as he says. He cannot rid himself of his feelings of joylessness and emptiness, and so when his father, the king, insists that he marry a princess that he has never even seen, the prince organises his escape. With the help of his attendant, Valerio, he wanders far and wide until, in Italy, he meets and falls in love with a beautiful young woman.