Athens Epidaurus Festival 2021 Programme

© IOANNA CHATZIANDREOU
Dear audiences,
We are moved and excited to welcome
you back to the Athens Epidaurus
Festival, now scheduled to
take place live! This once self-evident,
intrinsic aspect, the liveness
of a performance, now gives us
cause for rejoicing, coming as almost
redemptive news.
After a shutdown of theatres
and cultural venues overall that
lasted for several months due to
the pandemic, we are hopeful that
this summer’s Festival will bring
us together again, emphatically
reminding us of all the things we
were deprived of last year: the joy
of human contact and the unique
effect of Art – live Art – on our
lives.
We are going to present more
than 80 productions, emphasising
works by Greek artists. The programme
encompasses works with
a very distinctive artistic brand
and a wide range of styles, including
over 50 Greek productions and
approximately 30 international
productions. Overall, about 1,800
artists will be featured in this
year’s programme. Furthermore,
the Festival expands its international
performing arts co-productions,
presenting 10 new works
this year in collaboration with
leading cultural institutions from
Germany, Canada, France, Po-
land, the United States, and Belgium. Some of them are
works by Greek artists, which will be presented at theatres
abroad as co-productions, following their premiere
in Athens.
After a cultural dry spell that lasted for almost a
year and a half, both our responsibility and appetite are
huge – it is high time this dialogue opened again.
In the summer of 2020, the Festival managed to
realise only a Fragment of its originally scheduled programme.
Utilising our experience and knowledge, we are
now optimistic that this summer we will be able to realise
our artistic programme to the greatest extent possible, in
a manner that will, first and foremost, ensure the safety
of audiences, artists, and Festival employees.
Far from being just an obstacle for the Festival, the
pandemic has also given us the opportunity to become
more creative. As such, we decided, for the first time in
our history, to expand our activities during the winter.
Planning new research initiatives, providing online
streaming of filmed performances and concerts, and even
launching original digital works such as Radio Plays, the
Festival offered top-quality works of art, while also actively
supporting artists in what has been a very difficult
period of forced inactivity for them.
Moreover, through a public tender, we have designed
a brand new identity for the Festival after almost
25 years, ushering in a new era for our visual communication.
Hopefully, this new brand identity, conveying
the institution’s various new goals and its historical continuity
in a daring and flexible manner, will accompany
the Festival for many years to come.
Themes
Our artistic programme cannot be pigeonholed into
strictly defined themes and theoretical frameworks.
That being said, several of our productions are, in fact,
built around certain recurring themes:
4 5