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GREEKTHEATRE TRADITIONby Eva Georgoussopoulou

Archivist at the Theatre Museum of Athens

Theatre in the antiquity

Every year Greek people continue to admire, not only the new theatreproductions, which are almost always dealing with everyday mattersand characters, but also with the oldest greek plays – especiallyancient Greek Drama- presented today under a new prism, oftenenough trying to keep the traditional and classical style – although,during the last decade, many theatre groups (“postmodern”, as theyare called) are interested in depicting the “classical style” through avery provocative and intriguing manner and form, creating negativereactions and strong disagreements. Sometimes they are thought totrade upon the ancient, classical texts or destroy themon purpose.

The importanceofTheatre in theAn-tiquitycannotbeneglectedorunder-estimated.Tragedies, comediesandsatiricalplayswere thought tobe thecentre of the Ancients’ cultural life,which seemedoftenemptywithouttheatre presentations, “agones”.The audience participated in fullduring the performances (“methex-is”) and the plays of Aeschylus,Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanesand later (4thcentury B.C.) Menandercultivated and succeeded in includ-ing all these people in the dramaticor comic situations and feelingstheir characters experienced.

GREEK THEATRE’S EVOLUTIONThe presence of the Theatre neverceased to exist through the centuriesand to influence the way of life andthe thought of the Greeks: especiallyduring the monumental evolution ofthe Arts in the Middle Ages and theRenaissance, two periods that of-fered a great success and a numberof motivations to the European The-atre (William Shakespeare, Ben John-son, Carlo Goldoni, Moliere or theGerman poetry and Romanticismwith Goethe and Schiller), but alsoto the Greek one as they contributeda lot to the evolution of the theatricalproduction in Crete and the islandsof the Ionian Sea (Eptanissa).

Vitsentzos Cornaros, Georgios Hor-tatsis, Petros Katsaitis, DimitriosGouzelis, Antonios Matessis intro-duced new theatre types and pat-terns, mostly influenced by theItalian Theatre and, sometimes, im-itating the ancient greek texts and itsmyths (Katsaitis, for instance, haswritten a play called “Thyestes”, atragedy of ancient greek form and de-scent). The language used was orig-

inal, mostly the cretan or ionian di-alects that, nowadays, have almosttotally disappeared.

19th CENTURY

Greek Theatre’s flourishing led up tothe end of the 19th century (around1880, to be more specific and pre-cise), when the first professionaltheatre groups make their presenceprominent on the greek stage, pre-senting basically plays of Frenchorigin (vaudevilles, comic farces). Atthat time, new theatre authors ap-pear, authors that represent andintroduce new theatre forms andkinds, which will be strongly estab-lished on the greek theatre produc-tion and will open a new era towardsthe 20th century. Dimitrios Vernar-dakis, Dimitrios Koromilas, SpyridonPeressiadis, Dimitrios Kokkos, Ange-los Vlachos and others are madepopular through, mainly, their tragicplays (especially Vernardakis – “Faf-sta”, “Maria Doxapatri”) and thecomic or dramatic idylls – descrip-tions of families’ traditional life in theprovinces or in old quarters of a dif-ferent Athens (ithographia).

In 1894 a new theatre type appearsupon the Athenian stages, introduc-ing a lurid spectacle that created awhole new different atmosphereand a new theatre kind, totally un-known by that specific moment, butvery promising and creative for thefuture: the Athenian Cabaret (Athi-naiki Epitheorissis). It includedmusic, lyrics, songs, dance and,mostly, cheerfulness and liveliness.The texts satirized basically thepolitical, social, religious or moralsituations of those times and theywere played by excellent actorswho were successfully tested tothese kinds of roles. The authors of

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those satirical texts and lyrics weremainly journalists, people extreme-ly familiar to situations like theabove mentioned. All these specta-cles were influenced, in great part, bythe cabaret shows all over Europe(Paris, London, Berlin – especiallythere with the great actor and show-man Carl Valentin, who later influ-enced Bertolt Brecht) and, in tryingto enter the greek society, they hadsuccess. Nowadays, the Epitheorissisis flourishing every winter or summerperiods in Athens (although, thelast decade, less theatres presentthis kind of performance, due mainlyto the lack of experienced writers),since the political and social situationchange radically, offering the brilliantauthors the spark of satire, critique,abuse or protest.

The audience, usually, accept the crit-icism and the laugh is often sponta-neous.

20th CENTURY

At the dawn of the 20thcentury, a new

era begins for the greek theatre,which is escorted by influences,having their origins mostly to the The-atre of Northwestern Europe (Norway,Sweden, Germany). Henrik Ibsenbecame one of the greatest ancestorsof the so – called Bourgeois Drama(Astiko Drama), represented inGreece by Grigorios Xenopoulos,Spyros Melas, Pandelis Horn, DimitrisBogris and others. Up until 1950,there is also an evolution of Poeticand Historical Theatre, a kind thatwas usually written by dramatists ex-tremely familiar with certain historicalperiods or with poetry, such as An-gelos Sikelianos, Angelos Terzakis,Nikos Kazantzakis, Vassilis Rotas.

The decades 1950 – 1960 found theFarces and Comediesat the peak ofthe theatrical production. The realisticdescriptions of the comic characters’everyday life, the misunderstand-ings, the caustic satire of greek cus-toms or habits, the tenderness oflove affairs – all that create a scenerythat dominated the greek stage (andthe cinema as well) for many years

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and fascinated with its themes gen-erations and generations of thegreek audience. They continue to beat their preference even today, al-ways powerful and contemporary.

MODERN GREEK THEATRE1957 was an important and criticalpoint for the history of Modern GreekTheatre: it is the year that IakovosKambanellis – the “Father of ModernGreek Theatre” as he is called – pre-sented in the ART THEATRE of KarolosKoun his significant and most fa-mous play, “The yard of miracles”(“Avli ton thavmaton”) and markedthe beginning of a new, talented eraof theatre authors. They had as theirpurpose to change the history andthe atmosphere and to introducenew ideas and ideologies, concern-ing the evolution and the maturity ofthe greek theatre. The audience –then and now – discovers alwayssomething creative, tragic, dramatic,comic, satirical, even complicated orinconceivable under the themes

and the characters of the new au-thors: Vassilis Ziogas, Dimitris Ke-haidis, Pavlos Matessis, GiorgosSkourtis, Marios Pontikas, MitsosEfthimiadis, Giorgos Maniotis, LoulaAnagnostaki, Stratis Karras, KostasMourselas, Giorgos Dialegmenos,Yannis Chryssoulis and many others.

All of them dominate the greek stageand are daily renewing their reperto-ry, imitating situations and charactersof the everyday life and choosing topresent nothing else, but REALITY.Some of those authors often repre-sent, through their texts, many otherartistic “currents”, such as SURREAL-ISM, EXPRESSIONISM or HYPEREAL-ISM.

THEATRE GROUPSIt is worth noted that, besides theauthors who led Greece and theGreeks towards a brand new era atthe beginning of the century, therewere also the directors and actorswho put all those texts into action

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and gave them life and substanceon stage. After the first professionalgroups of Dionissios Tavoularis,Eftihios Vonasseras, DimosthenisAlexiadis, Evangelos Pantopoulosand others (around 1870 – 1880), af-ter the old – fashioned, worth men-tioning performances of two greatactresses of the 19th century, Evan-gelia Paraskevopoulou and EkateriniVeroni, there appeared a new gen-eration of actors and directors whointroduced more advanced propo-sitions about the scenic presenta-tion of certain texts and certain, im-portant theatre “currents” such asRealism, Classicism, Romanticism.

In 1901 Konstantinos Christomanos,director, author, translator and,mainly, a well – educated scholar,created NEA SKINI which endedabruptly its career in 1905 – due tofinancial problems – after having pre-sented on stage plays by Euripides,Ibsen, Goldoni and, after havingmade known how the currents of Re-alism and Naturalism can be com-

bined in a single, well – organizedperformance. Parallel to NEA SKINI,the german – educated directorThomas Oikonomou took the lead ofthe ROYAL THEATRE, with the finan-cial support of the King and thePalace, where, until 1908, he directedand kept the leading roles in excel-lent performances of monumentalplays (for instance, Ibsen’s “TheGhosts”, Strindberg’s “The Father”).Both scholars were influenced by the“directing” german school of theMainingen and the German directorand teacher Otto Brahm.

On May 1927 the significant greekpoet Angelos Sikelianos and hisAmerican wife Eva Palmer organizedfor the first time after the Antiquitythe 1stDelphic Festivities, where theypresented Aeschylus’ “PrometheusBound”, with amateurs and thewomen of Delphi as members of theChorus. They invited great person-alities of the Arts from all over theworld and their attempt is historicalas they revived the ancient greek

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dramatic art and laid the excava-tions for the later performances ofgreek drama. All the costumes werehand – made at the loom, by EvaPalmer herself and the women ofthe village. On May 1930 Angelosand Eva Sikelianou organized the2ndDelphic Festivities, with Aeschy-lus’ “Suppliant Women”, but thesuccess was surely inferior to the 1st

Festivities.

The two pioneer directors of the20th century, Christomanos andOikono-mou, were followed by othergreat theatre Teachers who inculcat-ed generations of actors and gener-ations of the greek audience withtheir, sometimes, revolutionary andradical ideology: Fotos Politis, theo-retician, scholar and director, founderof the NATIONAL THEATRE in 1932,Dimitrios Rondiris, successor ofFotos Politis’ tradition at the NA-TIONAL THEATRE and the first to in-augurate the Epidaurus’ Festival in1954 (with Euripides’ “Hippolytus”),Karolos Koun, founder of LAIKI SKINI

(1934) and ART THEATRE (1942),Sokratis Karandinos, who created theSTATE THEATRE OF NORTHERNGREECE (1961), Linos Karzis (directorand founder of THYMELIKOS THIAS-SOS, with performances of greek dra-ma, very close to the ancient metresand stereotypes), Takis Mouzenidis,Pelos Katselis, Kostis Michailidis,Alexis Solomos – the only directorwho introduced Aristophanes at theancient theatres (1956) and pre-sented 10 out of his 11 comedies –and, more recently, Spyros Evange-latos, Minos Volanakis, GiorgosMichailidis and many others.

These directors have, during thedecades, directed or, sometimes,kept up during their efforts, withunique actors and actresses who lefttheir indelible traces on the Athenianstages: Kyveli, Marika Kotopouli,Katina Paxinou, Alexis Minotis, EleniPapadaki, Emilios Veakis, VassoManolidou, Dimitris Horn, Elli Lam-beti, Mary Aroni, Katerina Andreadi,Dimitris Myrat, Thanos Kotsopoulos,

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Giorgos Pappas, Christophoros Nez-er, Kostas Moussouris, Anna Synodi-nou, Antigoni Valakou, Nelly Angeli-dou and others.

The people who had the chance tosee all of them on stage talk todaywith admiration about the miraclesthey have watched and about theunique and ineffable pleasure andjoy they have experienced.

THE ROLE OF GREEK THEATREThe role of Theatre in Greece has notchanged since the Antiquity: then, itused to be amusing, recreational, in-structional and, as we have alreadyseen, the audience’s participationwas thought to be indispensable,since the tragic poets’ success andestablishment, in people’ s minds,as excellent authors and great rep-resentatives of the greek cultureand civilization, had always to dowith the positive or negative reactionof the spectators. Nowadays nothinghas actually changed, especially

during the summer Festivals ofAthens or Epidaurus, where the an-cient greek drama gives always thespark, offers pleasure and arousesthe interest and the intrigue of theparticipants, when not provokingthem!

An important and quite encouragingaspect of the change in the specta-tors’ participation is the entrance tothe theatre world of more and moreYOUNG people, who have suddenlydiscovered the intriguing motivationthat action and scenic representationoffer.

The introduction of the most impor-tant theatre currents in the greek the-atre (Realism, Naturalism, Symbol-ism) have made easier the acquain-tance and the connection with theEuropean and the American Theatre.The Europeans’ and Americans’ wayof writing have, at great extent, influ-enced the authorship of their Greekcolleagues as well as the views of thedirectors. The combination of theory

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and action into a performance liesbasically on the good cooperationbetween actor and director and theirmutual acceptance of certain “con-ventions”, basic and indispensableaspects that constitute a nice and in-teresting spectacle. The new gener-ation of modern greek theatre au-thors follow quite often the patternsand the form of their European andAmerican colleagues, but one shouldsee this effort only as a slight imita-tion of those writers’ “mould” andnot as a complete conveyance of theforeigners’ customs and habits inGreece.

The Greek writers transform theircharacters and the events of the playby transporting and establishingthem to the greek facts and by de-scribing realistic matters as close tothe audience’s experience as possi-ble. In our century one could aswell note that the spectators’ reactiontowards a performance can also becritical, if one decides to acceptBertolt Brecht’ s view and ideology

about a critical participation of theaudience and a kind of alienation(“Verfremdung”) from what is goingon upon stage.

CRITIQUEThe evolution of greek theatre and itsregenerative ideas and influenceshave brought on the surface of greekcultural life a number of notablecritics – mainly after 1920 – who es-tablished the theatre critique as animportant and indispensable factorof the theatrical reality and its cre-ative representation.

The first critics – the majority ofwhom were scholars, theoreticiansor even authors or directors (FotosPolitis, Emilios Hourmouzios, AlkisThrylos, Spyros Melas, Angelos Terza-kis, Vassos Varikas, Leon Koukoulas,Marios Ploritis and others) – wereusually at the beginning more re-straint, more literal or analytical to-wards the performances, mainly be-cause some of the innovative ideas

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seemed to them strange or evenprovocative and outrageous. Someof them, old – fashioned and preser-vative, were often demanding to-wards the new creations and theystrictly criticized or even deploredthem. One must point out, though,that their critiques were often very in-teresting, intriguing and with excel-lent analyses and theoretical viewsabout the plays. Nowadays, the newgeneration of critics is more open tosuggestions, more tolerant, more ap-proving and basically receptive. Theplays that were recently written andadded to the theatrical “market”(plays of greek or universal origin anddescent) found the critics and the cri-tique more mature and forced themtowards a further reading, in order tobe totally informed about “current”matters or literal texts.

MODERN THEATRE GROUPSWhat strikes today in Athens is thesuperabundance of theatre groupsand buildings – old or modern – that

house the efforts of actors and direc-tors in order to present their work asperfectly as possible in front of a cu-rious and, sometimes, voraciousaudience. At that moment there aremore than 300 theatre groups onlyin Athens and the number increasesday by day, if one adds the amateurs,the school or the University groupsthat make their presence more andmore powerful and prominent intothe theatre world.

Before, for about 60 years (1900 –1960) there were basically 20 – 25theatre groups that presented,though, many plays, even two orthree every week and two differentthe same time! NEA SKINI, ROYALTHEATRE, KYVELI’S and ΚΟΤΟPOULI’Sgroups, NATIONAL THEATRE, LAIKISKINI and ART THEATRE, PIRAIKOTHEATRO by Dimitris Rondiris, KATE-RINA ANDREADI, KOSTAS MOUS-SOURIS, ELLI LAMBETI and DIMITRISHORN groups e.t.c. Furthermore,one could watch performances ofcabaret sketches or farces by groups

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that played in Athens or toured in theprovince: there, where today lifehas become very intense and also in-dispensable, since after 1981 therewere created, at almost every townoutside Athens, MUNICIPAL THE-ATRES (around 16: Larissa, Patras, Vo-los, Veroia, Kavala, Komotini, Kala-mata, Kozani, Kerkyra, Chania, Gian-nena, Agrinio, Serres, Lamia, Rhod-ed, Chios) with very good directorsand actors, some of them protago-nists on the main Athenian stages.The increase of theatre interest at theprovince is very promising for the fu-ture and, especially, with the partic-ipation of the younger generation.The plays presented oscillate be-tween the classical and the morecontemporary repertory, but all ofthem are received by the audiencewith a very positive interest and, of-ten, enthusiasm.

The return to some species of mod-ern greek theatre and also to farcesshows the increase of the audience’scuriosity and interest towards the the-atre, which seems more and more tohave surpassed the cinema and theother ways of nowadays’ amusementand relaxing.

CONCLUSION

The new theatre currents are nowmore arty and sophisticated andsome groups present their workbased on more peculiar and exper-imental views that appear to beprovocative and appealing for thespectators. The pioneer ideas andversions of some plays seem to at-

tract basically the younger people (18

– 25 years old) who constitute today

the majority of the greek audience:

they begin to discover motivations

and the spark of the NEW. Finally, one

could mention that many years ago

(and at a larger extent today) there

has started a co – operation between

theatre groups that are lodged

abroad and greek theatre groups. The

NATIONAL THEATRE, the ART THE-

ATRE, the AMPHI – THEATRE, the

STATE THEATRE OF NORTHERN

GREECE and some of the well –

known Athenian groups have trav-

eled to different cities or countries of

the world to present their work and

to receive, almost always, an enthu-

siastic welcome.

The greek audience had – and still

has – the chance to see foreign

groups coming to Greece (mainly,

since the 1990’s), groups that always

have something new, alluring or ex-

treme to propose. The critique and

the points of view differ, but the in-

terest remains.

The conclusion of all the above

shows clearly that greek theatre is not

anymore a negligible quantity of

Greece’s civilization, but seems

more and more to possess a very

high position at the Greeks’ estima-

tion and belief of a true, good, inter-

esting, creative and respectable

spectacle, a spectacle that could

–and should– belong exclusively

to the Greeks.