Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-06-13

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Artistic director Theodoropoulos talks about Athens & Epidaurus Festival

[01] Artistic director Theodoropoulos talks about Athens & Epidaurus Festival

The entrance ticket comes with one glass of cold beer, free of charge, and live music by Himerinous Kolymbites, the Florina Brass Band and Matoula Zamani.

The festival will pick up momentum with multiple events in Athens and the ancient theater at Epidaurus in June and July, with a programme of more than 70 Greek and foreign productions of theatre, dance and music. It will wind down in August, when there will be four theatre performances at the ancient Theatre of Epidaurus.

Taking over after Loukos was replaced and a brief, abortive attempt to appoint the Belgian Jean Fabre as curator for the 2016 festival, Theodoropoulos launched his three-year appointment as the festival's artistic director by choosing productions from the protocol of Greek proposals submitted to Loukos, numbering some 300.

He said he was also very fortunate in managing to book foreign productions, where he was assisted by one of his consultants, the head of the Berlin summer festival Matthias von Hartz.

"It was something exceptionally difficult, because these are normally booked a year or two in advance, but he told me he would try. The next day he telephoned me and told me he had asked 22 foreign directors and that they all agreed. I find the response touching, both for the festival and for Greece," Theodoropoulos said.

Whereas he had been hoping for maybe five foreign directors, he suddenly had the luxury of choosing 10 from among 22 and was able to lead the festival into the "more youthful, alternative and more political" direction that he wanted, he added. According to Theodoropoulos, "theatre is political in its nature" throughout the world, in that it "listens to what is happening around us."

The task of organising the festival was nevertheless difficult and a "race", given the shortage of time but also money, after the budget was cut from four million euros to three million euros in order to pay last year's debts to those that worked for it.

The full programme throughout the summer is available at the festival website www.greekfestival.gr.

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