Hellenic Festival, June – August 2010
The Hellenic Festival belongs to some of the world's most powerful culture celebration events - not only for the sheer scope of it (theatre and dance performances, recitals, cross-genre events, exhibitions and creative workshops are held throughout the three summer months, bringing together under the same roof the Athens Festival and Festival Epidaurus) but also thanks to the quality of the programme and the choice of participants. During the more than half-century of its existence, the Hellenic Festival has brought to Athens the best accomplishments of contemporary art - at some time or other, most of the living greats have presented their works here. The festival is open both to traditional art forms, for instance, opera, classical music and ballet, and the latest experiments in art.
The most powerful works shown in June include Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkmann, a masterpiece of human relationships played out by the great German actors Angela Winkler and Joseph Bierblicher, a Berlin Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz theatre producion directed by Thomas Ostermeier.
The highlights of the July programme are a the Paris Odéon Théâtre production of Tennessee William's Streetcar Named Desire staged by one of the most powerful Polish contemporary directors Krzysztof Warlikowski and starring the brilliant French actress Isabelle Huppert, and the opportunity to encounter unique, profound and disappearing art in the late great German artist Pina Bausch's Brazilian production of Água and the Istanbul-inspired Nefés.
July also brings a chance to see the legendary German director Peter Stein's stage version of Dostoyevsky's Demons, created last summer at Stein's Italian country estate; the critics praise the production as one of Stein's best works in a long time. To watch the piece in its entirety, you will have to spare a whole day: the theatre marathon starts at 11 am and concludes at 10:30 pm.
The reality exploring Rimini Protokoll team of directors are staging their own special contribution to the Athens festival, a production entitles Prometheus in Athens; it is also scheduled to premiere in July.
The festival showcases a selection of works by the most prominent local theatre figures; the representatives of the Greek performing arts range from legendary classics to the latest creative experiments by contemporary Greek dance artists.
Festival Epidaurus offers an opportunity to explore Greece as the birthplace of the theatre: every year a significant place in the programme is taken by new stage versions of classical Greek plays. The performances are held at Epidaurus, one of the world's most beautiful venues; the theatre, built in 4th century BC, saw the ancient tragedies performed at the time when the plays were freshly written and competed among themselves in front of an audience of 14 thousand spectators - that is the number of people for which the open-air amphitheatre with a view of a magnificent mountain landscape and unique acoustic properties - viewers sitting in the last row hear every word spoken on the stage - was originally designed. The programme comprises a selection of classical tragedies and comedies, as well as a number of contemporary sequels to the „Greek cause".
Festival Programme: www.greekfestival.gr
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