stage / creative director
2027 Love Letters Based on Ovid’s Heroides, Letters 1–15 Scheduled performance: 23 April 2027 Read more
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
2027 kyrá.frosýnı (κυρά.Φροσύνη) 1–25 April 2027 · Thursday–Saturday 20:30 · Sunday 19:00 Read more
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.
2026 The Spinalonga of Piraeus Site-specific walking performance 31 October 2026 · 17:00 · 80 minutes · Free participation Read more
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.
2025–26 Strygla Based on William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew Read more
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.
2024–25 / 2018–19 The Food By Maria Laina Premiered in 2018 in the specially adapted basement space (level −2). Restaged at PLYFA.space in 2024–25. Read more
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.
2022 Paraxenos Experimental film Read more
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.
2021 Homer’s Iliad Rhapsody A — Plague & Rage Premiere: 24 July 2021 Read more
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.