With the central theme of “The Freedom of Others”, this year’s program of the Athens and Epidaurus Festival – multi-collective and extroverted – with an eye on the export of Greek creation, hosts 2,200 artists in 76 productions.

The artistic director of the Festival, Katerina Evagelatos, announced today the programming of this year’s event in the packed hall of Piraeus 260, noting that on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the writing of the “Hymn to Freedom” and listening to the anxiety of our time, topical and critical questions, but also absolutely timeless in relation to this dominant demand of humanity, are highlighted as a priority.

“Freedom is one of the most difficult, most demanding and most misinterpreted ideas. Everyone today – we and others – call for freedom. But how free and free are we?

Free to think, to act, to choose our way of life, to love any creature we love, to speak our mind without fear, to stand publicly.

And furthermore, are we ready and prepared for the freedom of others and not just our own?

For the freedom of other groups, who do not identify with our national, racial, class, religious, sexual ‘we’? Is social coexistence possible if freedom does not go hand in hand with respect for others, but also with individual obligation and responsibility?” he wondered.

Three symbols, a swallow, a heart and water as sources of life, love and freedom, shape this year’s visual identity of the event.

The theme of Freedom runs through the programming, starting with the Open Plan platform, which will unfold in April and May through digital projects commissioned by the Festival and live discussions. Drawing inspiration from the “Hymn”, which remains to this day one of the most important poems in the modern Greek language, this year’s edition of Open Plan presents the artistic project “Frequencies / Eleftheres öfkentes”: four independent digital works by Greek artists that illuminate the conversation of Solomos with Greek today and his anxieties about what freedom is and can be in the modern world.

In the summer program, we meet international co-productions and major premieres, with the signature of leading creators from the field of theater, music and dance, collaborations with international organizations, many artists making their debut in Greece, and new proposals that try to listen to the rhythm of the times us.

As already announced, this year the festival invites for the first time to Epidaurus, the legendary German director Frank Castorf, to direct “Medea” with great Greek actors, in an unconventional performance that gives the international stamp of this year’s program on July 20 and 21 and will be presented exclusively in the Argolic theater.

A big international surprise, however, is in store for us in Herodion. The idiosyncratic creator Philip Ken, after the show “Farm Fatale”, which captivated the audience of Piraeus 260 last year, takes over the Herodeion orchestra this year, with a spectacular show co-produced with a leading international festival, inspired by the Renaissance “Garden of Pleasures”. the well-known painting by Hieronymus Bosch, which will solemnly close the Athenian program of the festival, on August 4.

This year’s Herodei program is also extremely strong, with the curtain raiser of “Madama Butterfly” by Giacomo Puccini (1, 4, 7, 10/6) directed by the leading French director Olivier Pi and with music direction by Vassilis Christopoulos. while classical music concerts with the legendary violinist Anne-Zophie Mutter (12/6) and podium star Theodoros Kourentzis, who comes to Athens (15/6) with the Utopia orchestra and Mahler’s Third Symphony, take the lead. as well as the first appearance of Kraftwerk electronics (7/16).

The Piraeus 260 program opens with the new play “Bíi” by the pioneering Russian theater and cinema director Kirill Serebrennikov (7 and 8/6), and includes foreign productions including “La obra” (14 and 15/6 ) by the internationally acclaimed Argentinian director Mariano Pensotti, the performance “Sob (Woe)” by the Swiss heretic Christoph Marthaler (19 and 20/6), as well as the “Confessions” of the rising star of the British theater Alexander Zeldin (23 – 26/6 ).

New initiatives

As far as the organization’s extroversion is concerned, Katerina Evagelatos emphasized that the goal is not only to present the cream of the crop of international creators, but also to promote Greek performances outside the borders.

For this purpose, the new platform “Grape” (Greek Agora Of Performance), an Agora for the Greek performing arts, was created this year.

In this context, it is planned to produce and present an exuberant anthology of 14 Greek works – in two separate five days of July (3-8.07 and 18-22.07), which in fact extends from Piraeus 260 to Mikri Epidaurus, with invited artistic directors of international festivals, curators, journalists and program managers of foreign organizations.

The works that will be presented at “Grape” have at their center modern dramatic searches, Greek “idiom”, but also themes that concern the international artistic development, while at the same time they are designed with flexibility, so that they can travel.

Another innovation launched this year is the new music festival “SubSet” which will take place from June 21 to 25 in collaboration with the Athens Conservatory, curated by Stavros Gasparatou.

In this five-day event, the premises of the Conservatory will be filled with audio-visual installations and concerts, musical performances and workshops, on a multi-prism and particularly extroverted musical platform.

Another new element of this year’s program, thanks to the support of the Ministry of the Interior, is the initiative to reopen the exhibition space at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus after 22 years of being closed.

Triggered by Frank Castorff’s performance and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Maria Callas, its reopening will begin with a periodical exhibition dedicated to “Medea” which will focus on the presence of the legendary heroine in the Argolic theater since 1956 to the present day.

This periodic exhibition, which will be open throughout the performances from July 7th to August 26th, will include documents of unique value from the archive collection of the Festival, but also of the cultural organizations and troupes that have staged Medea in Epidaurus .

Among the new collaborations of the organization is the Foundation of Greater Hellenism, which will host a music festival with young Greek bands from the alternative music scene.

Finally, a very important project that will be implemented this year by the Athens Epidaurus Festival at the initiative of a particularly dynamic curatorial group of Greek scenographers – costume designers, is the national participation in the Quadrennial in Prague, where 60 Greek creators and 10 university departments and workshops will travel the creative diversity of the modern Greek scene beyond temporal and local borders.