A soprano. A composer. A dancer. An actor. Four distinct stage languages encounter Ovid’s Heroides. What the voice remembers. What the body holds. What returns as music. Love Letters — a performance about love and loss. About everything that was said — and, above all, everything left unanswered.

Credits

Text

Based on Ovid’s Heroides, Letters 1–15

Greek translation

Vaios Vaiopoulos, Andreas Michalopoulos, Charilaos Michalopoulos — Gutenberg, 2021

Dramaturgical adaptation / Direction

Dimitris Liolios

Original music / Performance

Giorgos Stefanakidis

Set supervision / Costumes

Matina Megkla

Movement

Giannis Nikolaidis

Lighting design

Zoi Molyvda-Fameli

Dramaturgical advisor

Giannis Kokolakis

Artistic collaborator

Eleni Koutaloni

Visual identity / Social media

MEKAOME

Publicity

Evangelia Skrompola

Performers

Maira Milolidaki — soprano
Giannis Nikolaidis — dancer
Giorgos Stefanakidis — musician
Anastasia Chatzara — actor

A woman is drowned alongside other women in Lake Pamvotida in the early nineteenth century. Today, a man performs stand-up about his relationship. Between them, two women, each in her own time, and two centuries of stories about who she was — and who she was supposed to be. Lover, adulteress, victim, heroine or symbol? Efrosyni Vasileiou has reached us through different, often conflicting versions. Beside her are those who were led to the lake with her. Those left almost without a name. Without a story.

kyrá.frosýnı sets what survived, what was lost and what was invented about her against a contemporary stand-up set. An allegory rooted in documentary material, exploring memory, desire, guilt and the power of narration. Who speaks for whom? And what changes when a story is told without the person it concerns?

Director’s note

Two entirely different stage languages share the same dramaturgical concern. Someone holds the floor. Who ultimately controls the story? What happens when the narrator changes? How easily can one version acquire the weight of truth? A microphone, a first-person voice, two women who never meet and a discord that persists. The immediacy of stand-up brings this narrative dangerously close to certainty. How far, after all, can the weight of an event be shifted? The performance attempts to move within this ambiguous distance. Where humour can change the temperature. Where certainty begins to give way.

And what is missing — how long can it remain a gap?

Credits

Text composition

Giorgos Rizopoulos, Dimitris Liolios

Dramaturgy / Direction

Dimitris Liolios

Set / Costumes

Matina Megkla

Original music / Sound design

Mimis Nikolopoulos

Movement

Giannis Nikolaidis

Lighting design

Zoi Molyvda-Fameli

Visual identity / Social media

MEKAOME

Publicity

Evangelia Skrompola

Performers

Eleni Koutaloni, Anastasia Chatzara and stand-up comedian Giorgos Rizopoulos.

The Spinalonga of Piraeus is a walking narrative unfolding along the waterfront, seeking the stories of those who arrived but remained outside the city. Taking the islet of Agios Georgios and its former quarantine station as its dramaturgical starting point, it brings the experience of exclusion into contact with the present of a place in constant motion. Historical documents, personal testimonies and literary texts form the material of a performance about arrival, isolation, confinement and passage. The event takes place on Saturday 31 October 2026, with students of the “Praxi 7” Drama School.

Close to the city yet cut off from it, the islet of Agios Georgios served as a place of quarantine and health inspection for people arriving in Piraeus by sea. An in-between place of waiting, where distance from one’s destination was measured in metres and days. This condition — being so close and still unable to arrive — forms the dramaturgical core of the walking performance. Audiences and performers move together along the waterfront. At each stop, narratives, personal testimonies and theatrical interventions shift the rhythm of the journey, bringing individual experience into contact with collective memory.

The research extends to Psyttaleia and Atalanti, connecting the geography of these nearby islets with shipwrecks and stories of love, war and displacement. As we move from one place to another, the familiar landscape reveals the less visible traces of its past. The Spinalonga of Piraeus invites us to look at the port from the perspective of those who arrived but were made to wait; to seek, behind movements and events, the people and their stories.

Credits

Concept

Dimitris Liolios

Dramaturgy / Direction

Tzortzina Kakoudaki, Dimitris Liolios

Sound design / Music curation

Mimis Nikolopoulos

Performers

Students of the “Praxi 7” Drama School, in alphabetical order in Greek:
Anastasia Alexopoulou, Vasiliki Anthymidou, Giorgos Atzaris, Vasilis Dellas, Eleni Kantidenou, Giannis Karakotsoglou, Irida Katsikadama, Stavroula Kokkoni, Giannis Krouskos, Zoi Boni, Eleni Panopoulou, Christina Rizaki, Christina Sakka, Theodora Siogka, Sofiana Schoina, Myrto Tsalamata, Ismini Tsintonidou, Athanasia Tsifoutidou, Efthymia Troussa, Danai Chaviara.

Shakespeare’s iconic play is reshaped into a psychological game about power, gender identity and social oppression. A contemporary, stripped-back, free adaptation that examines the fine cracks between domination and submission, freedom and conformity. A game that is not innocent. The battle behind the laughter, and a story that never ends.

Director’s note

As soon as the textual adaptation was complete, I was almost certain this production would be called “Gagged”. Nobody liked it. A strygla is also a cutting or smoothing tool which, used by hand, creates a smooth, even surface. The shrew evokes imaginary or mythical creatures. It frightens some people. Furies, Maenads, Witches, Princesses and other demons… And somewhere here, any attempt to establish that the undersigned has a sense of humour comes to an end. He does not.

Is laughter simply liberating, or is it a mechanism of control? Why do our needs hide, where do they clash and how do they coexist? Strygla is also a love story in a skewed, arbitrary, present-day situation. Comedy or tragedy? A dive into the psychodynamic portrait of power, manipulation and control. What forms of coercion shape our identity? How are roles constructed within a relationship? The performance seeks to re-examine this crucial and ambiguous balance through distance, irony and exaggeration. Everything is constantly being reshaped and redefined. And as the dramaturgy leads towards something darker and more dangerous, as the play is stripped of its historical features, we find ourselves on a battlefield. Our home. Enjoy?

Credits

Text

Based on William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

Translation / Direction

Dimitris Liolios

Free adaptation / Dramaturgy

Dimitris Liolios, Anastasia Chatzara

Set / Costumes

Alegia Papageorgiou

Original music / Sound design

Mimis Nikolopoulos

Movement

Giannis Nikolaidis

Lighting design

Zoi Molyvda-Fameli

Artistic collaborator

Vangelis Ampatzis

Assistant director

Vicky Kostopoulou

Special constructions

Konstantinos Chaldaios

Photography

Giorgos Striftaris

Visual identity / Social media

MEKAOME

Publicity

Evangelia Skrompola

Hair styling

Thomas Galazoulas

Performers

Dimitris Liolios, Anastasia Chatzara.

Food is usually not allowed in the theatre. Beyond its purely biological dimension, the human need for nourishment reveals and points to more than one form of hunger. A powerful and distinctive work of contemporary Greek drama.

Director’s note

An open dialogue about what we define as food. “Food is our innocent victim, and we must acknowledge that.” A death, an affirmation of life. How do we understand this loss, and how violent can the moment of growing up become for each of us? What did we have to sacrifice, and what did we have to replace? The cannibalism of the self. Projections, symbols and the ways we swallow everything we feel in order to survive, to be satisfied. Two parallel and entirely different testimonies which, although they do not initially seem to converge, compose a pattern of how a person understands and confronts a traumatic experience.

Credits

Text

Maria Laina

Direction / Dramaturgical adaptation

Dimitris Liolios

Sound design / Music

Stavros Markalas

Movement

Giannis Nikolaidis

Set supervision

Alegia Papageorgiou

Costumes

Apostolos Mitropoulos

Lighting design

Dimitris Baltas

Artistic collaborator / Assistant director

Panagiotis Kafousias

Photography

Giorgos Striftaris

Graphic design

Konstantinos Argyriou

Performers

Stavros Lilikakis, Dimitris Liolios.

An original cinematic development of a work based on the short-story collection Strange Days in Heraklion (Paraxenes Meres publications, 2018). Stories that describe and traverse space and time, from the era of Candia to the present. Stories dedicated to Heraklion by writers who come from, live in or have lived in the city. Stories about its beauty, its pride, its divides and its wounds.

Through the eyes of the narrator-performers, loves, accidents, people arriving and others departing emerge, with the place itself as their constant point of reference and connection. The central dramaturgical thread and field of artistic research of this hybrid project is the exploration of identity as it emerges through a relationship with charged spaces, a turbulent history and the natural environment. The narrator-performers use diary fragments to map an emotional, psychological and intellectual mosaic of memory.

Credits

Direction

Dimitris Liolios

Cinematography / Film editing

Evita Skourleti

Dramaturgical adaptation of texts

Stella Samioti

Dramaturgical advisor

Dimitris Filippidis

Sound design / Original music

Chrysostomos Mouratoglou

Heraklion location footage

Giorgos Chalampalakis

Sound recording

Maria Sitara, Sierra Studios

Wardrobe supervision

Alegia Papageorgiou, Ermofili Fotiadi

Production

Municipality of Heraklion

Performers

Dimitris Liolios, Denia Stasinopoulou.
Also appearing: Stavros Markalas, Giannis Nikolaidis.

Special thanks to Giannis Zarkadas, Panagiotis Kafousias, Thodoris Markopoulos, Grigoris Papadogiannis and Thodoris Souranakis.

This stage adaptation of the first rhapsody of the Iliad, in Giorgos Psychountakis’s Greek translation, premiered on 24 July 2021 at Firkas Fortress, in Chania’s Old Venetian Port. The performance was part of the “Anoichta Pania” Festival of the Municipality of Chania and KEPEDICH-CAM, co-organised with the Region of Crete.

Director’s note

The dramaturgical research and development of this stage adaptation focuses on the many-layered ideological references and elements of material culture that run throughout the first rhapsody. The performance seeks to depict the anthropomorphism of the gods, the existence of hierarchy, the roles of men and women, and the intervals of relaxation and entertainment within the charged atmosphere of the war narrative.

Five performers and a musician on stage use a range of storytelling techniques to transport us to the days being described. Within this divisive atmosphere, they take sides, become involved, feel jealousy, rage and joy, grow suspicious or make threats, until each has travelled their own path — one that also enters into dialogue with Greece today. Heroes who may be safe and are probably alone.

Credits

Translation

Giorgos Psychountakis (Homer’s Iliad, Crete University Press)

Dramaturgy / Direction

Dimitris Liolios

Set / Costumes

Alegia Papageorgiou

Movement

Giannis Nikolaidis

Original music

Giagkos Chairetis

Lighting design

Dimitris Baltas

Artistic collaborator / Assistant director

Panagiotis Kafousias

Dramaturgical advisor

Giannis Kokolakis

Photography

Evita Skourleti

Graphic design

Konstantinos Argyriou

Organisation / Production

Municipality of Chania / KEPEDICH-CAM

Co-organised with

Region of Crete

Supported by

Ephorate of Antiquities of Chania

Performers

In alphabetical order in Greek: Vangelis Ampatzis, Eleni Koutaloni, Stavros Lilikakis, Giannis Charkoftakis, Anastasia Chatzara.
Musician on stage: Giagkos Chairetis.