A new introduction to contemporary Greek writing for the theatre, Salons of Language, comes to the National Theatre of Greece on the last Sunday of every month in the Ziller Building Hall. The initiative will present original stagings of works-in-progress by top Greek playwrights, followed by open discussions with creators from different artistic fields. It will be an open space for creative encounters, possibly leading to further iterations of the plays.

Salons of Language — the NTG’s introduction to contemporary Greek writing for the theatre — return to the Ziller Building Hall on Sunday 29 March, this time drawing inspiration from the theme of the National Theatre of Greece’s Artistic Programme for March, Violence. Guest author: Sakis Serefas.

Serefas shares an extract from his work in progress, Madhouse, a complex drama inspired by some of the most dreadful and traumatic events that have scarred the 20^th and 21^st centuries. They include the terrorist attack at the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015; the massacre of Algerian rebels by the colonialist French, both in Algeria in the late fifties and at a demonstration in Paris in 1961; the appalling system of Soviet labour camps – or Gulags – in Siberia under Stalin; the concentration camps and death camps for the extermination of Jews and others during World War II; the Asia-Minor Catastrophe of 1922 – with chickens pecking at severed heads; and the eugenics and sterilisation programmes forced on tens of thousands of homosexuals and people who did not meet the physical or mental standards demanded in Sweden both before and after the war.

Five NTG actors, Pyrros Theofanopoulos, Dimitris Kollios, Melina Konti, Dimitris Mandrinos and Alexandra Ospici bring the work to the stage without a director. Sakis Serefas’s guest during the ensuing discussion will be the actor and director Olga Pozeli.

More about the scene to be presented.
One of the butchers-in-chief of the massacres of Sarajevo and Srebrenica during the 1996 Bosnian War lives in disguise in Belgrade: he drinks wine and sings in a bar that has his photo hanging on the wall, while his neighbour, an investigator from Interpol who is on his trail, never recognises him, although their paths cross daily on the staircase of their apartment block. He also publishes poetry and takes part in conferences on alternative medicine, while he and a close associate come up with verses while targeting civilians from the hills around Sarajevo, as if they are on a horrifying safari. This is also a world in which an American Delta Force operator disguised as a gorilla ambushes him in the forests of the Dinaric Alps. Years later, he will be arrested on a bus in a Belgrade suburb, while all around, Muslim cows graze Muslim grass and produce Muslim milk.

When history finds its way onto the stage it can prove mad, merciless, and paradoxical.

About Sakis Serefas
Sakis Serefas writes poetry, prose and drama. Zooula was awarded the State Playwriting Prize in 2026. Kiti, a collection of his poetry, received the Lambros Porfyras Award from the Academy of Athens in 2022. Cheria won first prize for a short-form play at the Analogio International Festival in 2021. Another of his plays, Mam, was the recipient of the 2007 Karolos Koun Award from the Association of Greek Theatre Critics. Liomeno Voutiro (Melted Butter) was chosen by the Greek Ministry of Culture to be performed at the Sarajevo International Festival in 2012, while his play Apostoli ston Planiti Gi (Mission to Planet Earth) was honoured with the Ministry of Culture Award in 2007. Tha Se Parei o Dromos (The Road Will Take You) appeared on the European Theatre Convention’s list of the 120 Best Contemporary European Plays in 2010. Enas Deinosavros sto Balkoni Mou (A Dinosaur on My Balcony) was awarded the State Prize for a children’s factual book in 2008. Dromo Pairno, Dromo Afino (I Take the Road, I Leave the Road) received the State Prize for Children’s Literature in 2013. Mia Trypa sto Nero (A Hole in the Water) won the Penelope Maximou Prize for 2012 from the Greek Children’s Book Circle (the Greek IBBY) in 2012. His book Thessaloniki se Proto Prosopo (Thessaloniki in the First Person), with photographs from the Haris Giakoumi archive, was awarded the Milos Prize and published in French by Kallimages in 2005. Serefas also wrote the screenplay for the feature film Rouleman (2004).

Salons of Language — the NTG’s introduction to contemporary Greek writing for the theatre — return to the Ziller Building Hall on Sunday 22 February with Giannis Aposkitis.

Drawing inspiration from the themes of the National Theatre of Greece’s Artistic Programme for February, society and change, the writer-director unveils a dark new one-act play written especially for Salons of Language. The Employees is an examination of how the manner and pace of work have changed in recent years: from the isolation of remote employees working from home, for whom office hours and colleagues become a thing of the past as they convert part of their living space into a shrine to the company they work for, to the rapid rise of AI technologies that are making many such jobs obsolete. Office workers in the 21^st century can no longer believe in the fantasy of long-term job security.

Faced with late capitalism’s new industrial revolution, in which the alienation of work in the city verges on cruelty and the pay is barely enough to survive on, it seems that everywhere, the modern precariat is working feverishly, but without it truly making much sense. 

The play will be performed by two NTG actors, Dimitris Georgiadis and Nikos Kousoulis, without directorial guidance. Giannis Aposkitis’s guest during the discussion that will follow is the director George Koutlis.

About The Employees
In December 1994, two attorneys at an ordinary law firm in the centre of Athens arrive at work to find that something trivial but utterly unusual has occurred. Calmly at first, but then with mounting anxiety, they wonder what this unexpected turn of events might mean and begin to fear the worst. But what does “the worst” mean? That they stay at the office because they are afraid, or that there is no longer an office for them to stay at? Or is the worst part of their ordeal the fact that they simply do not know?

Salons of Language – the NTG’s introduction to contemporary Greek writing for the theatre – returned on Sunday 25 January to the Ziller Building Hall, with Glykeria Basdeki. The playwright and poet shared an extract from her work in progress, Mama, a theological thriller that walks a tightrope between realism and metaphysics. Based on the concept “In the beginning was hunger” and the central character of a beggar who is also a mother, this play about credulity and the simplicity of evil was brought to the stage by four NTG actors, without a director.

The author’s guest in the conversation that followed was the director Giannis Skourletis. With the familiarity that came from their time working together in the bijoux de kant group, they embarked on a wide-ranging discussion about the theatre of today, intertextuality, and the dynamics of the Greek language.

Cast: Andriana Chalkidi, Maria Georgiadou, Antonis Gritsis, Thaleia Sykioti

About Mama
In a confined world, Mama is mother, wetnurse, queen, and prime minister, the Grand Beggarwoman who shamelessly pleads for alms. She drags with her the three beggar children, Angela, Litsaki and ‘Farty’, the trainee successors to her dismal throne. The children, who have the bodies of ten-year-olds but a mental age of only five, have no option but to obey her, faced with the grim reality of the overwhelming hunger that ‘devours’ the play from beginning to end

The ‘revolution’ will come from the fruit of the belly of Stavroula, the pregnant outcast who, before dying – from Mama’s sorcery – will give birth to the blond, blue-eyed (and staunch advocate of ‘free bread for all’) Messiah. He will take over the business, Mama will be reduced to a mere consultant, while the children will continue, temporarily well-fed, the art of begging they have been taught, worshipping the new boss as their god.

Mama is a theological thriller and an allegory about hunger, exploitation, faith and leadership. In it, the dividing line between good and evil, morality and immorality, violence and kindness, is blurred. The begging racket is the only existential constant. It is only the bosses that change over the centuries.

On Sunday 30 November, the writer, director and researcher in Political Ecology at Imperial College London, Danai Liodaki, took up the baton from October’s guest, the award-winning playwright, fiction writer, and theatre director, Elena Penga, entrusting an excerpt from her work-in-progress, Black Box, to five NTG actors, who  performed it without a director. This new piece explores the existential dimension of the climate crisis and the dramatic change it has effected on a human race that is no longer able to imagine its own future. 

Danai Liodaki’s guest during the discussion that followed was Myrto Alikaki.


About Black Box
The play is inspired by the true story of the Golden Record, sent into space by NASA on the Voyager spacecraft to convey sounds and images from Earth to any extraterrestrial civilisation that might find it. The record contains greetings in 55 languages, natural sounds, music, and photographs of human life. The play’s characters make their own ‘black box’, attempting to preserve fragments of humanity for audiences in the future. Fifty years on from the Voyager mission, the play invites us to ask what is worth saving and sending into the future from our history and what will be consigned to oblivion.

In the not-too-distant future, sea levels are threateningly high, and some prominent individuals have planned their escape from the planet. A group of people decide to stop them and preserve the memory of human civilisation by launching a ‘black box’ into space that will record the final testimony of humankind shortly before it disappears for good. The black box travels to extraterrestrial worlds, making a comment on environmental destruction and the imagined possibility of a new symbiotic relationship between human – and non-human – forms of life. The five characters, situated in a liminal place, send an urgent message about the future of humanity out into the ether.

On Sunday 26 October, award-winning playwright, fiction writer, and theatre director Elena Pega entrusted an excerpt from the play she is currently writing, The Doomsayers, to seven National Theatre of Greece actors, who brought it to life on stage without directorial guidance. This satirical comedy explores the apportioning of blame in a society that is in decline and a world that increasingly embraces irrationality and superstition, giving rise to the crucial question of why we live the way we do. And what would living differently look like? 

The author’s guest during the discussion that followed was Smaragda Karydi.

About The Doomsayers
On a modern Athenian terrace with a view of the Acropolis, a group of friends and acquaintances, some of them former lovers, gather to celebrate the new life of their foreign friends who have just bought a house in Greece – receiving a Golden Visa in the process. But will it be a new life and is it a cause for celebration? They soon discover that they are all united by a shared passion: disasters and the conspiracies surrounding them. As they exchange stories, are they using them to connect with one another or trying to exorcise them?

Cast: Thanassis Akokkalidis, Dimitris Georgiadis, Katerina Gevetzi, Nikos Kousoulis, Konstantina Takalou, Pyrros Theofanopoulos, Vicky Volioti

The initiative is part of the NTG’s programme for the 2025-26 artistic season, which is inspired by the concept of language and the broader web it weaves.