Εθνικό ΘέατροΕθνικό Θέατρο

A note from the Artistic Director | Season 2024 - 2025

17.9.2024

A note from the Artistic Director

Open cultural dialogues, inclusivity, and an outward-looking perspective. Three pivotal concepts that have guided us over the last three years.

The National Theatre of Greece’s 2024-25 artistic programme is a continuation of everything that we envisioned, planned, and accomplished in the previous two years. We are again offering a wide range of choices: new Greek and foreign plays side-by-side with classics of world drama, collective texts, original creations, and adaptations of theatrical and literary masterpieces.

This season includes a series of new Greek plays. The NTG has commissioned a number of dramatists to write about subjects suggested by directors, while other works are being staged for the first time or have unaccountably disappeared from the repertoire. There are also fresh adaptations of novels by well-known Greek authors.

Many productions will address crucial social and political issues of our time, such as the defence of democracy, the administration of justice, the absurdity of war, the position of women, the rights of minorities, the parochialism of the Greek family, the marginalisation of older people, and violence on the Internet.

The NTG faces a major challenge this coming winter, with the complete restoration of the Rex Theatre’s Marika Kotopouli Stage due to begin within the next twelve months. This enormous and hugely beneficial project is being planned and implemented by the Ministry of Culture through the Recovery and Resilience Fund. As things stand, all three stages at the Rex will close temporarily from mid-January 2025 until the end of the year. However, our performances will continue uninterrupted as we will be using alternative spaces, either in the Ziller Building and the Irene Papas School of Athens, or outside the NTG. We will be partnering with the Greek National Opera on a show for its Alternative Stage and with the Karolos Koun Art Theatre at Frynichou Street. We will also be using the Horos Theatre in Votanikos as a venue.

The NTG’s diverse activities go well beyond its productions. Our workshops remain highly successful. The Young People’s Stage is enhancing its activities this year with new workshops and topics. At the same time, we are focussing on social initiatives that are provided free of charge to the community: we are bringing back NTG Hospital Visits, and have renewed our offer of theatre workshops to correctional institutions and people on drug rehabilitation programmes. Furthermore, under the Cultural Prescription project, we are introducing dramatherapy workshops for people facing mental health issues. In line with our commitment to the principle of a theatre that is open to all, we will be continuing our “universally accessible” performances for people who have a visual impairment or who are deaf and hard of hearing.

In a few weeks, the major project of digitising and documenting the NTG’s historical archive will be complete. Valuable new archival materials will soon be available online, along with digital tours of the Ziller Building and the rich collection of the Wardrobe Department, and many other tools.

In terms of synergies, we are embarking on a collaboration with the Νeon Organisation for Culture and Development, which recently unveiled the contemporary art exhibition Space of Togetherness at the Irene Papas School of Athens.

In our pursuit of a more outward-looking approach, we are expanding our international partnerships. In April 2025, for the first time in its history, the NTG will host the International Conference of the European Theatre Convention (ETC), the major network of European theatres of which we are a member, welcoming representatives from over 30 countries. The conference will be held in parallel with the third consecutive NTG Showcase, where curators and directors from foreign organisations, as well as foreign journalists, will be invited to attend productions and meet creators from this country. In total, over 150 foreign theatre professionals will meet in Athens and at the NTG in early April. At the same time, we are repeating our Residencies exchange programme, launched last May, in which Greek artists are hosted abroad and foreign creators here.[1]

Over the last three years, we have largely achieved one of our main goals: the visibility of Greek theatre abroad. Holding the first ever annual Showcase in our history has significantly helped foreign colleagues get to know what we do. At the same time, we have systematically cultivated the NTG’s relations abroad through ongoing international engagement, which I am convinced will bear fruit in the coming years. Our productions have already begun to travel the world, being greeted with acclaim wherever they go.

We have sought to be artistically and socially active, not only through our choice of plays, but also by holding open discussions on pressing social issues and further developing our social outreach efforts. We have teamed with a number of important cultural bodies in Greece. We have also maintained and enriched projects and initiatives launched by previous artistic directors. For the Young People’s Stage, we have created a modern multi-purpose space for our educational workshops. We have broadened our touring schedule in Greece as far as possible, launching an innovative series of events last summer in collaboration with the Diazoma Association and the support of the Ministry of Culture. Through the “Introduction to Greece’s Ancient Theatres” scheme, the NTG travelled to 15 ancient theatres all over the mainland, in places we had never performed before.

We have championed ensemble theatre and the public has responded. We have regularly played to full houses. We have boosted our revenue. Our output has grown, generating more jobs. We have given our stages a distinct identity. We have re-established the Experimental Stage with a new remit, handing it over to young creators. We have partnered with many different Greek theatre practitioners of all generations, making space for a variety of styles from the most experimental to more traditional interpretations. Our aim has been to expand our audience by offering greater variety. There have, of course, been productions that have divided opinion, but also those that have made a strong artistic impression, being greeted enthusiastically by audiences and critics alike. I am proud of all of them – regardless of reception and result – because I know how much hard work and passion went into them, and how much care was put into staging them.

I am delighted with what we have achieved thus far. It has all been the result of a collective effort. By all the artists who have collaborated with us, of course, but also by our own employees: in the administrative and financial departments, the craftspeople in our workshops, the technicians, the stage personnel, the scholars, the special associates, and so many other specialties. They have all made a decisive contribution. I would like to thank everyone at the NTG. I am grateful for their cooperation and support.

We dreamed of a theatre that is outward-looking, alive, and inclusive, and we have stayed true to that vision.

We invite you to dream with us again this year and look forward to you sharing “An Open World” with us.

 

Yannis Moschos

 

 

 


 

 

 

 


[1] Cultural Prescription, the NTG Showcase, and the Artistic Hospitality Programmes (Residencies) take place within the framework of the "Greece 2.0" National Recovery and Resilience Plan with the funding of the European Union - NextGenerationEU.. The digitisation of the historical archive was carried out within the framework of the Operational Programme for Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation (NSRF 2014-2020).

 

Latest updated: 14/10/2024

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