The Challenge of Being Greek in Today’s European Theatre

Abstract

Greece, a border of both East and West, is constantly in a delicate balance trying to explore issues of identity, historicity, and orientation. Greece has the privilege – but also the great responsibility – of bearing the heritage of the ancient tragic and comic drama as the birthplace of theatre and this is at the same time an obstacle for contemporary Greek theatre as any comparison with its glorious past is always painful. At the beginning of the 1980s in Greece, in a country re-created at all levels, the conditions for theatrical development were gradually being formed: state grants for independent groups, establishment of Municipal and Regional Theatres, abolishment of the special license for the actors, founding of university theatre departments. Moreover, Greece’s entry into the European Union (with all the changes brought about) changed theatrical reality. These new conditions enabled artists and groups to dare approach theatre from new perspectives and move away from the repertory theatres, the protagonists and traditional choices; enabled new groups to be created and then to discover unconventional venues transforming them into centres of creation and research; playwrights to experiment and check their potential moving away from topics that used to be the main themes of the previous decades, such as life in the countryside, class stratification, urbanization, the pursuit of easy success that meant money and social upgrade and of course the dialogue with what is happening worldwide has been strengthened. This intense activity, the rise regarding artists, venues, productions and tendencies, brought on stage both classical and modern works, both Greek and non-Greek, and created the need for new, modern texts that would correspond to their era and express their reality.