Theater Week in the works

New administration of theater center setting up annual celebration of the season’s best productions

By V. Angelikopoulos - Kathimerini

A new institution is being launched in Greek theater, an institution that is expected to rejuvenate the public’s interest in theater and support those who are in it, as well as play a decisive role in promoting the best of Greek theater abroad by creating an opening to festivals and other such events.

Created by the Greek Center of the International Theater Institute (ITT), headed by stage director Michail Marmarinos, and under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture, the initiative is for an annual theater festival to be held in Athens at the end of each theater season in the spring. The schedule foresees the presentation of some 10 performances that will have been selected by a specially appointed committee from each year’s crop to represent the best productions of the season. The committee is to meet for the first time this month.

Furthermore, organizers will invite acclaimed foreign critics, festival and cultural center directors and people from other fields related to theater so that they may see the cream of the Greek crop and possibly suggest collaborations.

Theater Week will begin this year in experimental form – possibly in May – but will not go into full operation until 2008. Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis recently announced his ministry’s intention to support Theater Week but is waiting to discuss the specifics with ITT before making any details public.

According to the plan, the best productions from Athens and around Greece (this includes those by regional municipal theater companies) will be selected and presented from Easter to the beginning of the annual Athens Festival, that is, in May. Early estimates set the cost of the event at around 120,000 euros, though the ministry has commissioned a production company to draw up a detailed budget.

The committee in charge of the selection process will be composed of seven personalities, not just from the theater but from the arts more generally.

“The plan for this institution is just one of the proposals and goals put forward by the new management of the theater center,” says Marmarinos. “Another interesting proposal, which we must say the Ministry of Culture embraced immediately, was to cede the Embros Theater to new theater ensembles for rehearsals for two or three months a year.”