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GREEK THEATRE TRADITION
by Eva Georgoussopoulou
Archivist at the Theatre Museum of Athens
Theatre in the antiquity
Every year Greek people continue to admire, not only the new theatre
productions, which are almost always dealing with everyday matters
and characters, but also with the oldest greek plays – especially
ancient Greek Drama- presented today under a new prism, often
enough trying to keep the traditional and classical style – although,
during the last decade, many theatre groups (“postmodern”, as they
are called) are interested in depicting the “classical style” through a
very provocative and intriguing manner and form, creating negative
reactions and strong disagreements. Sometimes they are thought to
trade upon the ancient, classical texts or destroy them on purpose.
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The importance of Theatre in the Antiquity cannot be neglected or underestimated. Tragedies, comedies and
satirical plays were thought to be the
centre of the Ancients’ cultural life,
which seemed often empty without
theatre presentations, “agones”.
The audience participated in full
during the performances (“methexis”) and the plays of Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes
and later (4th century B.C.) Menander
cultivated and succeeded in including all these people in the dramatic
or comic situations and feelings
their characters experienced.
GREEK THEATRE’S EVOLUTION
The presence of the Theatre never
ceased to exist through the centuries
and to influence the way of life and
the thought of the Greeks: especially
during the monumental evolution of
the Arts in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, two periods that offered a great success and a number
of motivations to the European Theatre (William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Carlo Goldoni, Moliere or the
German poetry and Romanticism
with Goethe and Schiller), but also
to the Greek one as they contributed
a lot to the evolution of the theatrical
production in Crete and the islands
of the Ionian Sea (Eptanissa).
Vitsentzos Cornaros, Georgios Hortatsis, Petros Katsaitis, Dimitrios
Gouzelis, Antonios Matessis introduced new theatre types and patterns, mostly influenced by the
Italian Theatre and, sometimes, imitating the ancient greek texts and its
myths (Katsaitis, for instance, has
written a play called “Thyestes”, a
tragedy of ancient greek form and descent). The language used was orig-
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inal, mostly the cretan or ionian dialects that, nowadays, have almost
totally disappeared.
19th CENTURY
Greek Theatre’s flourishing led up to
the end of the 19th century (around
1880, to be more specific and precise), when the first professional
theatre groups make their presence
prominent on the greek stage, presenting basically plays of French
origin (vaudevilles, comic farces). At
that time, new theatre authors appear, authors that represent and
introduce new theatre forms and
kinds, which will be strongly established on the greek theatre production and will open a new era towards
the 20th century. Dimitrios Vernardakis, Dimitrios Koromilas, Spyridon
Peressiadis, Dimitrios Kokkos, Angelos Vlachos and others are made
popular through, mainly, their tragic
plays (especially Vernardakis – “Fafsta”, “Maria Doxapatri”) and the
comic or dramatic idylls – descriptions of families’ traditional life in the
provinces or in old quarters of a different Athens (ithographia).
In 1894 a new theatre type appears
upon the Athenian stages, introducing a lurid spectacle that created a
whole new different atmosphere
and a new theatre kind, totally unknown by that specific moment, but
very promising and creative for the
future: the Athenian Cabaret (Athinaiki Epitheorissis). It included
music, lyrics, songs, dance and,
mostly, cheerfulness and liveliness.
The texts satirized basically the
political, social, religious or moral
situations of those times and they
were played by excellent actors
who were successfully tested to
these kinds of roles. The authors of
GREEK THEATRE TRADITION
those satirical texts and lyrics were
mainly journalists, people extremely familiar to situations like the
above mentioned. All these spectacles were influenced, in great part, by
the cabaret shows all over Europe
(Paris, London, Berlin – especially
there with the great actor and showman Carl Valentin, who later influenced Bertolt Brecht) and, in trying
to enter the greek society, they had
success. Nowadays, the Epitheorissis
is flourishing every winter or summer
periods in Athens (although, the
last decade, less theatres present
this kind of performance, due mainly
to the lack of experienced writers),
since the political and social situation
change radically, offering the brilliant
authors the spark of satire, critique,
abuse or protest.
The audience, usually, accept the criticism and the laugh is often spontaneous.
20th CENTURY
At the dawn of the 20th century, a new
era begins for the greek theatre,
which is escorted by influences,
having their origins mostly to the Theatre of Northwestern Europe (Norway,
Sweden, Germany). Henrik Ibsen
became one of the greatest ancestors
of the so – called Bourgeois Drama
(Astiko Drama), represented in
Greece by Grigorios Xenopoulos,
Spyros Melas, Pandelis Horn, Dimitris
Bogris and others. Up until 1950,
there is also an evolution of Poetic
and Historical Theatre, a kind that
was usually written by dramatists extremely familiar with certain historical
periods or with poetry, such as Angelos Sikelianos, Angelos Terzakis,
Nikos Kazantzakis, Vassilis Rotas.
The decades 1950 – 1960 found the
Farces and Comedies at the peak of
the theatrical production. The realistic
descriptions of the comic characters’
everyday life, the misunderstandings, the caustic satire of greek customs or habits, the tenderness of
love affairs – all that create a scenery
that dominated the greek stage (and
the cinema as well) for many years
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and fascinated with its themes generations and generations of the
greek audience. They continue to be
at their preference even today, always powerful and contemporary.
MODERN GREEK THEATRE
1957 was an important and critical
point for the history of Modern Greek
Theatre: it is the year that Iakovos
Kambanellis – the “Father of Modern
Greek Theatre” as he is called – presented in the ART THEATRE of Karolos
Koun his significant and most famous play, “The yard of miracles”
(“Avli ton thavmaton”) and marked
the beginning of a new, talented era
of theatre authors. They had as their
purpose to change the history and
the atmosphere and to introduce
new ideas and ideologies, concerning the evolution and the maturity of
the greek theatre. The audience –
then and now – discovers always
something creative, tragic, dramatic,
comic, satirical, even complicated or
inconceivable under the themes
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and the characters of the new authors: Vassilis Ziogas, Dimitris Kehaidis, Pavlos Matessis, Giorgos
Skourtis, Marios Pontikas, Mitsos
Efthimiadis, Giorgos Maniotis, Loula
Anagnostaki, Stratis Karras, Kostas
Mourselas, Giorgos Dialegmenos,
Yannis Chryssoulis and many others.
All of them dominate the greek stage
and are daily renewing their repertory, imitating situations and characters
of the everyday life and choosing to
present nothing else, but REALITY.
Some of those authors often represent, through their texts, many other
artistic “currents”, such as SURREALISM, EXPRESSIONISM or HYPEREALISM.
THEATRE GROUPS
It is worth noted that, besides the
authors who led Greece and the
Greeks towards a brand new era at
the beginning of the century, there
were also the directors and actors
who put all those texts into action
GREEK THEATRE TRADITION
and gave them life and substance
on stage. After the first professional
groups of Dionissios Tavoularis,
Eftihios Vonasseras, Dimosthenis
Alexiadis, Evangelos Pantopoulos
and others (around 1870 – 1880), after the old – fashioned, worth mentioning performances of two great
actresses of the 19th century, Evangelia Paraskevopoulou and Ekaterini
Veroni, there appeared a new generation of actors and directors who
introduced more advanced propositions about the scenic presentation of certain texts and certain, important theatre “currents” such as
Realism, Classicism, Romanticism.
In 1901 Konstantinos Christomanos,
director, author, translator and,
mainly, a well – educated scholar,
created NEA SKINI which ended
abruptly its career in 1905 – due to
financial problems – after having presented on stage plays by Euripides,
Ibsen, Goldoni and, after having
made known how the currents of Realism and Naturalism can be com-
bined in a single, well – organized
performance. Parallel to NEA SKINI,
the german – educated director
Thomas Oikonomou took the lead of
the ROYAL THEATRE, with the financial support of the King and the
Palace, where, until 1908, he directed
and kept the leading roles in excellent performances of monumental
plays (for instance, Ibsen’s “The
Ghosts”, Strindberg’s “The Father”).
Both scholars were influenced by the
“directing” german school of the
Mainingen and the German director
and teacher Otto Brahm.
On May 1927 the significant greek
poet Angelos Sikelianos and his
American wife Eva Palmer organized
for the first time after the Antiquity
the 1st Delphic Festivities, where they
presented Aeschylus’ “Prometheus
Bound”, with amateurs and the
women of Delphi as members of the
Chorus. They invited great personalities of the Arts from all over the
world and their attempt is historical
as they revived the ancient greek
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dramatic art and laid the excavations for the later performances of
greek drama. All the costumes were
hand – made at the loom, by Eva
Palmer herself and the women of
the village. On May 1930 Angelos
and Eva Sikelianou organized the
2nd Delphic Festivities, with Aeschylus’ “Suppliant Women”, but the
success was surely inferior to the 1st
Festivities.
The two pioneer directors of the
20th century, Christomanos and
Oikono-mou, were followed by other
great theatre Teachers who inculcated generations of actors and generations of the greek audience with
their, sometimes, revolutionary and
radical ideology: Fotos Politis, theoretician, scholar and director, founder
of the NATIONAL THEATRE in 1932,
Dimitrios Rondiris, successor of
Fotos Politis’ tradition at the NATIONAL THEATRE and the first to inaugurate the Epidaurus’ Festival in
1954 (with Euripides’ “Hippolytus”),
Karolos Koun, founder of LAIKI SKINI
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(1934) and ART THEATRE (1942),
Sokratis Karandinos, who created the
STATE THEATRE OF NORTHERN
GREECE (1961), Linos Karzis (director
and founder of THYMELIKOS THIASSOS, with performances of greek drama, very close to the ancient metres
and stereotypes), Takis Mouzenidis,
Pelos Katselis, Kostis Michailidis,
Alexis Solomos – the only director
who introduced Aristophanes at the
ancient theatres (1956) and presented 10 out of his 11 comedies –
and, more recently, Spyros Evangelatos, Minos Volanakis, Giorgos
Michailidis and many others.
These directors have, during the
decades, directed or, sometimes,
kept up during their efforts, with
unique actors and actresses who left
their indelible traces on the Athenian
stages: Kyveli, Marika Kotopouli,
Katina Paxinou, Alexis Minotis, Eleni
Papadaki, Emilios Veakis, Vasso
Manolidou, Dimitris Horn, Elli Lambeti, Mary Aroni, Katerina Andreadi,
Dimitris Myrat, Thanos Kotsopoulos,
GREEK THEATRE TRADITION
Giorgos Pappas, Christophoros Nezer, Kostas Moussouris, Anna Synodinou, Antigoni Valakou, Nelly Angelidou and others.
The people who had the chance to
see all of them on stage talk today
with admiration about the miracles
they have watched and about the
unique and ineffable pleasure and
joy they have experienced.
THE ROLE OF GREEK THEATRE
The role of Theatre in Greece has not
changed since the Antiquity: then, it
used to be amusing, recreational, instructional and, as we have already
seen, the audience’s participation
was thought to be indispensable,
since the tragic poets’ success and
establishment, in people’ s minds,
as excellent authors and great representatives of the greek culture
and civilization, had always to do
with the positive or negative reaction
of the spectators. Nowadays nothing
has actually changed, especially
during the summer Festivals of
Athens or Epidaurus, where the ancient greek drama gives always the
spark, offers pleasure and arouses
the interest and the intrigue of the
participants, when not provoking
them!
An important and quite encouraging
aspect of the change in the spectators’ participation is the entrance to
the theatre world of more and more
YOUNG people, who have suddenly
discovered the intriguing motivation
that action and scenic representation
offer.
The introduction of the most important theatre currents in the greek theatre (Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism) have made easier the acquaintance and the connection with the
European and the American Theatre.
The Europeans’ and Americans’ way
of writing have, at great extent, influenced the authorship of their Greek
colleagues as well as the views of the
directors. The combination of theory
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and action into a performance lies
basically on the good cooperation
between actor and director and their
mutual acceptance of certain “conventions”, basic and indispensable
aspects that constitute a nice and interesting spectacle. The new generation of modern greek theatre authors follow quite often the patterns
and the form of their European and
American colleagues, but one should
see this effort only as a slight imitation of those writers’ “mould” and
not as a complete conveyance of the
foreigners’ customs and habits in
Greece.
The evolution of greek theatre and its
regenerative ideas and influences
have brought on the surface of greek
cultural life a number of notable
critics – mainly after 1920 – who established the theatre critique as an
important and indispensable factor
of the theatrical reality and its creative representation.
The Greek writers transform their
characters and the events of the play
by transporting and establishing
them to the greek facts and by describing realistic matters as close to
the audience’s experience as possible. In our century one could as
well note that the spectators’ reaction
towards a performance can also be
critical, if one decides to accept
Bertolt Brecht’ s view and ideology
The first critics – the majority of
whom were scholars, theoreticians
or even authors or directors (Fotos
Politis, Emilios Hourmouzios, Alkis
Thrylos, Spyros Melas, Angelos Terzakis, Vassos Varikas, Leon Koukoulas,
Marios Ploritis and others) – were
usually at the beginning more restraint, more literal or analytical towards the performances, mainly because some of the innovative ideas
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about a critical participation of the
audience and a kind of alienation
(“Verfremdung”) from what is going
on upon stage.
CRITIQUE
GREEK THEATRE TRADITION
seemed to them strange or even
provocative and outrageous. Some
of them, old – fashioned and preservative, were often demanding towards the new creations and they
strictly criticized or even deplored
them. One must point out, though,
that their critiques were often very interesting, intriguing and with excellent analyses and theoretical views
about the plays. Nowadays, the new
generation of critics is more open to
suggestions, more tolerant, more approving and basically receptive. The
plays that were recently written and
added to the theatrical “market”
(plays of greek or universal origin and
descent) found the critics and the critique more mature and forced them
towards a further reading, in order to
be totally informed about “current”
matters or literal texts.
MODERN THEATRE GROUPS
What strikes today in Athens is the
superabundance of theatre groups
and buildings – old or modern – that
house the efforts of actors and directors in order to present their work as
perfectly as possible in front of a curious and, sometimes, voracious
audience. At that moment there are
more than 300 theatre groups only
in Athens and the number increases
day by day, if one adds the amateurs,
the school or the University groups
that make their presence more and
more powerful and prominent into
the theatre world.
Before, for about 60 years (1900 –
1960) there were basically 20 – 25
theatre groups that presented,
though, many plays, even two or
three every week and two different
the same time! NEA SKINI, ROYAL
THEATRE, KYVELI’S and ΚΟΤΟPOULI’S
groups, NATIONAL THEATRE, LAIKI
SKINI and ART THEATRE, PIRAIKO
THEATRO by Dimitris Rondiris, KATERINA ANDREADI, KOSTAS MOUSSOURIS, ELLI LAMBETI and DIMITRIS
HORN groups e.t.c. Furthermore,
one could watch performances of
cabaret sketches or farces by groups
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that played in Athens or toured in the
province: there, where today life
has become very intense and also indispensable, since after 1981 there
were created, at almost every town
outside Athens, MUNICIPAL THEATRES (around 16: Larissa, Patras, Volos, Veroia, Kavala, Komotini, Kalamata, Kozani, Kerkyra, Chania, Giannena, Agrinio, Serres, Lamia, Rhoded, Chios) with very good directors
and actors, some of them protagonists on the main Athenian stages.
The increase of theatre interest at the
province is very promising for the future and, especially, with the participation of the younger generation.
The plays presented oscillate between the classical and the more
contemporary repertory, but all of
them are received by the audience
with a very positive interest and, often, enthusiasm.
The return to some species of modern greek theatre and also to farces
shows the increase of the audience’s
curiosity and interest towards the theatre, which seems more and more to
have surpassed the cinema and the
other ways of nowadays’ amusement
and relaxing.
CONCLUSION
The new theatre currents are now
more arty and sophisticated and
some groups present their work
based on more peculiar and experimental views that appear to be
provocative and appealing for the
spectators. The pioneer ideas and
versions of some plays seem to at-
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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 THEATRE, the AMPHI – THEATRE, the
STATE THEATRE OF NORTHERN
GREECE and some of the well –
known Athenian groups have traveled to different cities or countries of
the world to present their work and
to receive, almost always, an enthusiastic 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 extreme to propose. The critique and
the points of view differ, but the interest 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’ estimation and belief of a true, good, interesting, creative and respectable
spectacle, a spectacle that could
–and should– belong exclusively
to the Greeks.