Editorial 37

• Published on: 24/06/2023

THE GREEK PLAY PROJECT   New season ahead. September is already loaded with summer shows and announcements about upcoming productions. There was a lot of talk about the shows that are leaving, a lot of talk about the shows that are coming before they even come. In such an unstable time somehow the world around us is running to catch up, - probably doesn't know what. The Greek Play Project will support contemporary drama and its people also this year. New writers will be added to the GPP team and new projects are hatching. This summer we had to say goodbye to Tsimaras Tzanatos, a great artist an important person. ...

EDITORIAL 36

• Published on: 10/09/2022

Summer in Greece means open theatres waiting the audience.  Instead of an editorial we pin  the poem of Athos Dimoulas, Epidaurus. I want to understand exactly what it means That "three thousand years ago" was built. Stone, of course, means difficult prey of  time. Workers (slaves perhaps) that they carved it to be smooth. Foremen with the voices (or the whip) means. And, in a hurry to finish their work, the few, with the strange intuition, that in this amphitheatre the expression of beauty will resonate even after three thousand years. 2022, July   

EDITORIAL 35

• Published on: 19/07/2022

2021 has been a great test for our world. Greek people were supposed to celebrate the anniversary of the 200 years from the Greek Revolution, but we found ourselves giving a new struggle for survival – along with the rest of the world. Our enemy, invisible and dangerous, still hides its powers well from us and surely knows how to mutate. At the same time we have to face ourselves, Man, who unfortunately instead of realizing the ephemerality of his existence and the value of the human dimension of life releases his worst self defeated by fear and anxiety. Art seeks to find room in a world that is becoming closed and isolated, that is afraid of contact and uncovered faces. ...

EDITORIAL 34

• Published on: 24/12/2021

A new theatre season begins, almost two years after corona virus and its effects, with the hope that one way or another theaters will remain open and the artists active. Many hopes, many desires, many frustrations and many dreams await us. Instead of editorial, we copy here a poem, the Rehearsal (Πρόβα), by the poet Yannis Varveris, and  the collection "Sta xena" (Kedros, 2001). Ζούμε καλά σ’ αυτό το απόμακρο νεκροταφείο. Στους ευάερους τάφους κάνουμε πρόβες ξαπλωμένοι ενώ φυσάει από παντού ζωή και μας γεμίζει νιάτα. ...

EDITORIAL 33

• Published on: 27/09/2021

The Greek Play Project NY is an important platform that promotes Greek Theater in the United States and introduces the work of contemporary Greek playwrights to a broader American audience since 2018.  Modern Greek dramaturgy has a powerful voice that needs to be heard outside the borders of our country and we strongly believe that Greek Play Project New York contributes to this effort. This year our program includes a series of readings of contemporary Greek plays by women playwrights (Women’s voice in Greek Theater), live and recorded Greek plays, and a series of lectures about the Greek theater. All the plays and lectures will be presented in english or with english subtitles. ...

EDITORIAL 32

• Published on: 23/06/2021

Just before the end of spring we celebrate its arrival. For months we are once again in isolation, in distance, in agony and fear. Gradually the signal is given and many areas of activity open. But theatres, and the cultural activity in general, are closed since last October and still we know nothing about their opening. In the aftermath of Easter let us wish for a substantial Renaissance and Resurrection. 4/5/2021

The Greek Play Project

• Published on: 20/06/2021

The Greek Play Project (www.greek-theatre.gr) ) is a dynamic promotional platform, a network of collaborations and activities, and an open space for information and exchange of ideas. GPP’s aim is to give prominence to the modern Greek dramaturgy, contribute to its promotion  and encourage discussion and action around it. With a group of 77 active playwrights and more than 700 plays listed it is a first attempt to a map of the theatrical landscape as it is currently being formed, while there is constant updating and expansion. ...

Editorial 31

• Published on: 04/05/2021

2021 emerged modestly, loaded by all of us with many, many expectations. We hope it will  bring the coveted ascension, the gradual release and the return to hugs. We, the team of the Greek Play Project, choose to publish all the texts of the DAY AFTER written during the first quarantine, from March to May 2020, at the beginning of this brand new year as a wish list. A wish list that exorcises fears and strengthens desires. We hope that the Day After will come soon. Thay will quickly heal the wounds - physical and mental - quickly reunite people, show their faces, will permit smiles, hugs,and release people to return to their lives. Wiser and more aware. ...

EDITORIAL 30

• Published on: 06/01/2021

EDITORIAL 29

• Published on: 07/10/2020

This summer was not like any other before. It was hot, it may had sun  and sea, but it was not slap happy, it didn’t have dreams and plans, nor we were looking forward to what autumn will bring. I would dare to say that we did not really have a break - the forced break caught us in the spring and put us in a waiting position from which we probably have not yet left. This summer we were full of anxiety, reflection and many doubts. But it does not cease to be summer in a country where the sun shines and the nights are clear, always leaving a window open in the hope of what is about to come. The theater and especially its people will have to give once again a difficult fight. ...

EDITORIAL 28

• Published on: 26/08/2020

Τheatre is the art of communication as theatre is mainly contact! Loneliness it’s not its style at all! It requires teamwork, coexistence, cooperation, it is a collective art. After all, remember, it is the product of dialogue and communication. Communication on many levels and directions - the artists, the characters, the actors between them, the actors with the audience, the eras, the director's and the writer's intellect. Theatre, unlike other arts, cannot be introvert even when the circumstances are difficult. But it can pause for a while when a situation, that no one could, imagine demands it. ...

EDITORIAL 27

• Published on: 14/03/2020

We don't play theater for theater. We don't play theater to live. We play theater to enrich ourselves, the audience that attends us, and in order to help to create a wide, spiritualy rich, and undiveded culture in our homeland. Anyone on their own is helpless. Alone, each of you, the closests to us, is helpless. Together, maybe, something we can do. Theater as a form of Art enables us to connect, to move, to touch each other, to feel a truth together. That's why we chose theater as a manifestation of our spiritual world.  14.2.2020  33 years without Karolos Koun (1908-1987)

EDITORIAL 26

• Published on: 20/02/2020

Saying goodbye is never easy, even if it's just a year. It is already a part of oursleves that we must to leave behind us. Whatever happened is over. Even if we have been defeated and we have to heal our wounds, we are still winners as we stand here. The unknown that comes is always ahead of us loaded with hopes and dreams but also with the anxiety of what it is about to come. Our wishes are like a spell to drive away the dangers and secure the favor of fortune, to shield our future, our people, our own lives. The team  of the Greek Play Project wishes everyone to live in light. ...

EDITORIAL 25

• Published on: 29/12/2019

One more theatrical season is just around the corner! The summer productions are slowly closing their cycle with their last performances, mainly in the country's capital, where the tired - as if they never left - residents are coming back from vacations. Theaters are getting ready, rehearsals have started, collaborations are going on. The Greek scene is ready to meet new challenges, new concerns, new structures, new people. Or at least we hope we are ready. The Greek Play Project is also being prepared for the new season. We refresh our material,  prepares  the presentation of new playwrights, adds new columns and actions. ...

EDITORIAL 24

• Published on: 31/08/2019

EDITORIAL 23

• Published on: 05/05/2019

Not only from bread lives the man. If I would have to be hungry and helpless in the street, I would not ask for bread, but I would ask half a bread and a book. And I attack from here with violence those who only talk about economic claims without never mentioning the cultural ones, which are the ones people need and ask for, shouting at the top of their voices.   All people must eat, it is a need. But all people must also know how to enjoy all the fruits of the human spirit, because the contrary would convert them into machines to the service of the State, which means into slaves of a terrible social organization. ...

EDITORIAL 22

• Published on: 22/01/2019

Christmas are already here and we are just a few days away before the welcoming of 2019. We leave behind us a year of so many productions and performances, many plays, many efforts, a year of many disappointments that should be our motivation. Our most important mission for this year is to take advantage of what we have experienced and to keep on discovering ourselves. The Greek Play Project wishes that 2019 will be a year that we will not forget: To Believe! To Laugh! To Love! To Live! To write, read, attend and play theatre! The GPP team wishes you MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY 2019!

EDITORIAL 21

• Published on: 23/12/2018

I believe that Theatre will never cease to exist. I think, even if this might sound paradoxical, that this ancient Art is also an Art of the Future. Not because of the will of those who create Theatre–playwrights, actors, directors–and all the other factors that contribute to a performance, but because you, the people, the audience, will still want it to exist in the future. [...] In my view, this evident, timeless relation between human beings and theatre is an eternal one. This is because I believe that while Theatre evolved into a social phenomenon, it was, at the beginning, a natural one. ...

EDITORIAL 20

• Published on: 22/10/2018

September. We are already on the threshold of a new theatrical season. We overcome a difficult summer that did not give us moments of rest and carelessness but instead it hurt us, shook us, troubled us. However, art, and especially theatre, is always a shelter. It is always a road open to new destinations. The Greek Play Project has become four, and is now steady with optimism. New playwrights, new performances, new plans, new dreams and new goals come in to continue a work of trust and loyalty. We continue to see life otherwise ..... Little by little we will say more ... The best are yet to come. Let's wish  for an nice theatre season! 

EDITORIAL 19

• Published on: 09/09/2018

When such a catastrophe, a tragedy, a criminal act takes place - it is of no importance how someone will decide to call it - it is hard to find the words to speak, to write, to express yourself and the way you feel. No word can erase, exorcise, or soothe untold feelings: pain that tears apart your soul, anger that leads you to despair, desperation that grows your void, and a sense of injustice that swallows you. There is no way here, no choice leading to Catharsis. Neither mercy nor fear can work. The Greek Play Project keeps silence for all those people who left. For parents, children, young people, older ones. For all the people, like us, who dreamed of a beautiful afternoon by the sea. ...

EDITORIAL 18

• Published on: 30/07/2018

Four contemporary Greek playwrights, four Greek plays in English translation presented in New York for the first time.   Eclipses Group Theater New York (EGTNY) presents The Greek Play Project New York, a weekend of staged readings of contemporary Greek plays at New York University. This is an important initiative for the promotion of modern Greek dramaturgy, in collaboration with The Greek Play Project (www.greek-theatre.gr). Four plays by contemporary Greek playwrights will be presented in the United States for the first time, in English, featuring American and Greek-American actors. ...

EDITORIAL 17

• Published on: 17/04/2018

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.  William Shakespeare, Tempest, Act 4, Scene1

EDITORIAL 15

• Published on: 24/02/2018

INSTEAD OF EDITORIAL The Nine Muses were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne,   goddess of memory. The two gods slept together for nine nights and nine daughters were born:  Calliope (epic poetry), Clio  (history), Euterpe (flutes and lyric poetry), Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Terpsichore(dance), Erato (love poetry), Polhymnia (sacred poetry), Urania (astronomy). Appolon was their leader and they all stayed to Elliconas Mountain, close to Olympus. Melpomene , initially the Muse of Chorus, she then became the Muse of Tragedy, for which she is best known now. ...

EDITORIAL 15

• Published on: 24/02/2018

INSTEAD OF EDITORIAL The Nine Muses were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne,   goddess of memory. The two gods slept together for nine nights and nine daughters were born:  Calliope (epic poetry), Clio  (history), Euterpe (flutes and lyric poetry), Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Terpsichore(dance), Erato (love poetry), Polhymnia (sacred poetry), Urania (astronomy). Appolon was their leader and they all stayed to Elliconas Mountain, close to Olympus. Melpomene , initially the Muse of Chorus, she then became the Muse of Tragedy, for which she is best known now. ...

EDITORIAL 16

• Published on: 24/02/2018

We are already in the Twelvetide period - the period from Christmas Eve to Epiphany -  that will lead us to the Shakespearean Twelfth Night. With our back in the year to go, we count hundreds of performances, new plays by older, younger and newcomer playwrights, projects and festivals of all kinds, efforts and attempts to express through theater our anxieties and struggles. ...

EDITORIAL 14

• Published on: 16/11/2017

A personal editorial. Four years earlier, I was planning feverishly a project, with the collaboration of my beloved friend and co-worker, Maria Karananou, and a few more people; a project that I was thinking about since years: the Greek Play Project. What would it be, how it would be, who were going to be part of this, how we should communicate it. Countless questions, anxieties and difficulties, but, above all, a lot of love and passion for theater and for what little by little was becoming reality. This two-day event, with which we celebrated the three years of the GPP but also contemporary Greek dramaturgy, theatre and its people filled me with optimism in difficult times. ...

EDITORIAL 13

• Published on: 05/10/2017

Greek Play Project is three years old and celebrates! Celebrates its presence, the dream that became true, the efforts to preserve it but mainly celebrates contemporary Greek dramaturgy. 56 playwrights, 400 plays, theoretical texts, interviews, reviews, news, a dynamic archive of the Greek plays going on the scenes, people who met through our work and performances that raised the curtains thanks to the bridge we built. And we go on ... This celebration will culminate on October 1 and 2 at Stathmos Theater with the presentation of the plays that were awarded in the GPP contest titled "Write Your Myth". ...

EDITORIAL 12

• Published on: 06/09/2017

Summer is here! The theatrical season does not come to an end - rainy weather helps -, the Athens Festival opened its doors and is already welcoming its audience, the local festivals throughout Greece are being prepared with feverish rhythms, theatre workshops are waiting for the Drama School exams to be completed in order to take the lead. Our thoughts are mainly with young actors who are ready to enter the professional arena full of dreams and appetite for work, willing to dedicate themselves to theatre and who will have to deal with an  undefined, blurry condition not at all auspicious and with their professional rights being far from secured. ...

EDITORIAL 11

• Published on: 11/06/2017

Easter once meant the end of the theatrical season in Athens and the subsequent staging of successful plays in Thessaloniki and other cities. Nowadays, it paves the way for a second start. After all, the conditions are extremely different. For theatres to survive, a series of plays must be staged during the season –few are those that can make it featuring only one production per season– while there are also big changes in the production conditions (which will not be commented on in this note) and in the plays' presentation. ...

EDITORIAL 10

• Published on: 23/04/2017

EDITORIAL 9

• Published on: 01/03/2017

The new theatre season has made a strong beginning. Dozens of plays have been performed on all kinds of theatrical or non-theatrical stages across the country over the last three months. To start with, Maria Bouba, in charge of ON STAGE, has counted so far 200 performances of Greek plays and there still is a long way to go. Purely theatrical texts, dramatizations, dramaturgical compositions, devised. The Greek Play Project is also getting ready for its own performance, as already announced. The play awarded the first prize, Helen or Sula, written by Despina Kalaitzidou is to be performed in Thessaloniki and Athens, starring Nikoleta Kotsailidou. ...

EDITORIAL 8

• Published on: 23/12/2016

Two years ago when we sailed off with Greek Play Project for our journey we could not even imagine the route and the destinations that would lead us. Today, in a turbulent cultural landscape where everything seeks for space to exist and everything wither without the necessary curing period, we feel even more intense our responsibility for the emergence of modern Greek dramaturgy. Fixed to our goals that we set ourselves from the very beginning we go on persisting in our efforts and evolving slowly but steadily. Theater is an open art, live, constantly developing. So GPP; it is being prepared and updated and this in turn on the new theater season. ...

EDITORIAL 7

• Published on: 25/09/2016

Theatre season 2015-2016 comes to its end. An impressive year of hundreds of productions, with more than 1,500 performances only in the city of Athens. Among them many productions of Greek plays (in the broadest sense and with every version and form someone can imagine). The Athens Festival, after many adventures, with the director Vangelis Theodoropoulos at the helm, prepares itself for its opening while numerous festivals across the country are ready to welcome the audience. ...

EDITORIAL 6

• Published on: 29/05/2016

The Greek Play Project a few days ago proudly announced the completion of the playwriting contest "Write your myth" where participants were asked to submit an original theatre play. The play awarded the first prize was Helen or Sula written by Despina Kalaitzidou. The play was distinguished for the flow of speech it presents; it also has theatricality, great sense of humor, it creates an interesting atmosphere, it deals effectively with the ancient myth and its relevance to the present. The play Diagonal by Panagiota Dimopoulou was awarded Praise. The play distinguished mainly for the dialogues, the accomplished characters and the suspense it created. ...

EDITORIAL 5

• Published on: 02/02/2016

EDITORIAL 4

• Published on: 14/11/2015

One of the main goals of a society that is currently built on and formed through the abundance of information, the easy access to the sources and the "security" of online media (which, however, does not imply validity), should be critical thought and, by extension, critical discourse. Our country’s vivid theatrical landscape - the numerous trends, the opposing forces, the hundreds of performances that are staged, the efforts of a new generation to find its way and of the older ones to stand and create new, but unfortunately not better, conditions – demands careful observation, critical approach and the evaluation of artistic activity. ...

EDITORIAL 3

• Published on: 15/10/2015

EDITORIAL 2

• Published on: 14/10/2015

Only a few months after its launch, The Greek Play Project has a consistent and broad activity to present. Staying close to the Greek play and its onstage implementation, the project supports the efforts of the artists, listens to their needs, informs, and facilitates a fruitful dialogue and exchange between Greek and foreign artists. The number of playwrights at the website has already increased, and even more creators are scheduled to be presented in the coming months. ...