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Artistic Programming 2014-2015 (19/06/2014)

VASSILIKO (ROYAL) THEATRE
 
“Alexander the Great. A Rock Opera by Kostas Athyridis
Directors: Giannis Vouros – Kostas Athyridis
Premiere: October 23-26 2014
 
 
The rock opera “Alexander the Great” is a musical theatre production of the new work written by the composer Kostas Athyridis.
 
In the words of the artist: “The story begins in Samothraki, a year before the birth of Alexander, where during the Kaviria mysteries his mother –Olympias– and the King of Macedonia, Philippos, meet for the very first time, and concludes in the death of Alexander the Great in Babylon after 34 years. But who was the real man that changed history and affected the culture million of people? How many things do we know about his life? The opera aims at bringing us closer to the magic, the dream and the human nature of Alexander through contemporary sound and music.”
 
A world tour will follow after the end of the performances in the Vassiliko Theatre.
 
The text was edited by a group of Greek and international historians, philologists and text editors and, in what concerns its historical accuracy, it bears the signature of the Director of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Ms. Polyxeni Adam-Veleni. The play will performed in English with Greek supertitles and its duration is approximately two hours and 15 minutes, and it will be accompanied by a ten-membered live orchestra and a group of thirty actors, dancers and singers.
 
The NTNG and the play contributors aspire to present a show of high artistic and entertaining qualities that focuses on a Greek historical figure that has influenced the world cultural heritage, anticipating that the audiences in and out of the country will embrace this ambitious venture.
 
 
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“Absurd Person Singular” by  Alan Ayckbourn
Translation: Pavlos Matesis
Director: Giannis Paraskevopoulos
Premiere: November 2014
 
One of Alan Ayckbourn’s most successful comedies, where three couples meet in their kitchens for the Christmas Eve in three successive years, and through discussions and confessions, they reveal their secret passions and fears. Their frenzy for professional advancement and social approval, the alienation and the difficulties in the interpersonal relationships are the main themes of this hilarious comedy. Ayckbourn’s play is a satirical elegy for the bourgeoisie and its morality that offers laughter, but also arouses contemplation and emotions. Alan Ayckbourn’s play is staged for the first time in NTNG.
 
 
“Don Juan” by Moliere
Translator-Director: Damianos Konstantinidis
Premiere: January 2015
 
 
With Don Juan (1665) Moliere signs οne of the most important and enigmatic plays of the world repertoire, a comedy full of irony, but also of tragic depth.
 
His salacious aristocrat hero is constantly in suspense, as an incurable hunter of Beauty and Lust, but also he is constantly in retreat, as he is chased by everyone who has been insulted by him: the woman whom he abducted by the monastery, whom he later married and then dumped, her brothers who seek for revenge for her honour, his father who reprehends him for his dissolute living, and his lenders who ‘ll never get back what he owes to them.
 
In the end, this atheist and blasphemous rationalist, accepting the invitation for dinner made by the statue of a commander whom he killed in a duel, he decides to face the afterlife and the God himself, who sends a thunder on him and knocks him down in the depths of Hell.
 
The denouncement of a hypocritical, prejudiced society, Don Juan touches the issue of the absolute freedom, through the presentment of a man who wishes to get rid of the social, family and religious bonds: how can you exist without being repressed? Is this kind of freedom possible? And if so, what is the price someone has to pay for it, either the man who experiences it or the others that endure it?
 
 
 
“Woyzeck” by Georg Büchner
Translator: Antonis Galeos
Director: Stavros S. Tsakiris
Premiere: April 2014
 
Woyzeck: The unfinished play –only one third of the play was written–, by a young naturalist who studied the nervous system of fish, named Georg Büchner, originating from Germany, who was embraced by death when he was 23 years old.
Woyzeck: The forerunner of research psychiatry that chronicled bipolar disorder.
Woyzeck: A play for the oppressed, the proletarians, the flung.
Woyzeck: A play for the ones in love that can reach murder and suicide.
Woyzeck: An archetypical hero of the twentieth century. He haunts the ideology of rock, the beatnik poets, Jackson Pollock’s paintings, the cinema of the impugned, as well as, postmodern theatre.
Woyzeck: A play that was staged multiple times all over the world, it was adapted for cinema (10 films), for the opera (by Alban Berg) and for comics also.
Woyzeck: The prophet of an army of infernals that marches in the nightmare of our future.
 
Stavros S. Tsakiris
 
 
 
VASSILIKO (ROYAL) THEATRE FOYER
 
“The Four Girls” by Pablo Picasso
Director: Yannis Kalatzopoulos
August 27 – September 7 2014
 
Written in 1948, the totally unknown, for the wider audience, play by Pablo Picasso encapsulates in a unique manner the aesthetic, but also the ideological quests of the great painter. Poetry confronts the banality of everyday discourse and the logic of words is recruited in order to reveal the absurdity of the conventional way of living in a world that lost its childhood paradise.
 
 
 
 
THEATRE OF THE SOCIETY FOR MACEDONIAN STUDIES
 
 
GUEST PERFORMANCE
5TH SEASON OF ART
Mauthausen” by Iakovos Kambanellis
Director: Themis Moumoulidis
Music: Gustav Mahler-Mikis Theodorakis
November 14 – December 14 2014
 
We go towards darknesses
And in the dark proceed
Heroes proceed in darknesses

Yorgos Seferis
 
The life of the imprisoned in a German extermination camp, in a documental performance. More than 60 contributors of the performance join their forces in a demanding effort. On stage, there is a concentration camp. Here actors, singers, musicians create a harsh performance, triggering the historical memory of today’s spectator. The staggering autobiographical chronicle by Iakovos Kambanellis, which is more timely than ever, processed for a two-hour show, comes alive with the help of lighting, video, movement, silences and cries of devastated people, following a cinematic narrative.
 
The main theme of the play is the life of the prisoners at the German extermination camp Mauthausen, during World War II. Scenes from the last days of the fall of the Third Reich. The atrocity of Nazism. Unthinkable crimes and more than 240.000 dead people. The memories or the innocent civilians and war prisoners that were burned in crematoria, died in mass executions, on electric fences, buried alive in mass graves, in the “quarry of laments.”
 
Bloodcurdling details of the atrocities of an ideology that transcends human existence.
The humiliation of human existence.
Defenceless loves... And eventually liberation, the vision and hope for a better world...
A realistic, tender, funny and intimate play, written by the unique writing style of Iakovos Kambanellis.
 
A grand theatrical production by the 5th SEASON of Art.
 

 
 
“Don Quixote” by Mikhail Bulgakov
Translator: Tamila Koulieva
Director: Yannis Leontaris
Premiere: December 2014
 
Sancho, I love my ideals. Have you understood me at last?
Or maybe you don’t recognize the word “ideal”?

Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Don Quixote”
 
                         
The play
In total dissonance and collision with its social fate, the romantic, idealist and finally tragic Bulgakov’s Don Quixote invoke hindered dreams in a tragicomic fashion. It also invokes the cynicism in which concepts such as justice, ideal, dream are intertemporally treated. The play, written in 1938, is an adaptation of the epic novel by Cervantes. A comic, yet dark allegory on the human condition under the circumstances of totalitarianism. Behind every word by Cervantes, the writer’s personal anguish in the face of his absolute exclusion from the Stalin’s regime is revealed. His words pop up in the desperate letters Bulgakov wrote to Stalin. Don Quixote dies out of realism and the deprivation of his freedom. A little while later, Bugakov dies due to the same reasons.
 
Nevertheless, the concept of totalitarianism is much broader today. It is expressed through the totalitarianism of ideas, of the media, of the banks, of cynicism and intolerance. In this environment, the element of violence is always central. Whoever resists, whether a romantic hero or a conscious rebel, will have to bear with it, in his body and spirit. However, Bulgakov isn’t only interested in the utopia of the claim for a better world. He digs into an existential dimension. He attributes the comic Don Quixote with elements of the tragic hero, as he prefigures –through him– the course of man towards delusion. For Don Quixote, totalitarianism is the others. Everyone apart from Sancho Panza.
 
If you deprive a man from his illusions,
is as if you are killing him.

August Strindberg / Ghost Sonata
 
 
The play
Basic elements of the play are the use of shadow and the determinant role of violence. The shadow, the reflection and the illusion are organically bound to the essence of Don Quixote. In the play, the hero is directly associated with Bulgakov himself. Don Quixote is carried along by utopia, enters his personal illusion through travelling and music. Yet in the play neither element is painless: the journey is full of violence and disillusionment. Violence today is everywhere, close to us and around us. An outcast like Don Quixote would die today, on the sidewalk of a European metropolis. The music of the play, which is performed live on stage by Kostas Vomvolos, is paradoxically proved an ally of the harsh reality, attendant and validator of violence, and not a path to utopia.
 
In the context of the battle between the harsh reality and the ideal illusion of Don Quixote/Bulgakov, an absurd piece of sculpture in the centre of the stage and its multiform shadows, imply a second level in the reading of the play. The cast is constantly on stage, thus verifying the image of conflict between cynicism and dream, as a collective adventure. For yet another time, the claim for utopia is proved to be the ultimate political act.
 
Yannis Leontaris
 The play is staged for the first time in NTNG.
 
 
 
“The Seagull” by Anton Chekhov
Translator: Xenia Kalogeropoulou
Director: Giannis Vouros
Premiere: March 2015
 
118 after his absolutely unsuccessful premiere, the Seagull thrills makers, viewers and readers all over the world. Perhaps because every decade finds its own vision and need to lean upon Chekhov’s work, perhaps because the vision and the needs of the characters in the play are primordial and yet timeless. This year, in the new NTNG staging, the vision and need are dictated by the “Right to Difference.” Through a “different” and his unsuccessful efforts to innovate, get rid of the established norms and justify a new vision in art, a performance that praises difference and every attempt for change, no matter if it succeeds or not.
 
October 1896 (Chekhov’s letter to his brother after the Seagull’s first staging.)
 
“The play was knocked down and the performance was withdrawn as total disaster. There is a feeling of unbearable shame and awkwardness in the theatre. The actors performed with detestable stupidity. The moral of all this fuss is that no-one should write for theatre. It is a comedy with three female and six male roles, four acts, a landscape of a lake, a lot of discussion about literature, a bit of action and five tons of love.”
The Seagull, a monumental play in modern theatre that brought to the fore of world theatre a rebel of literature, is one of the most favourite plays of the world repertoire.
In the ambience that Chekhov creates in the play, all his philosophy, his life journey, the joy of Spring and the constant collapse of hope, but despite the above, a firm faith to a better future is always present. His heroes, like seagulls, strong yet vulnerable, fly over the lake, as symbols of freedom and the victory of human spirit over adversities and life troubles.
Giannis Vouros
   
 
“Sickness of Youth” / “Krankheit der Jugend” by Ferdinand Bruckner
Translator-Director: Pemy Zouni
Premiere: October 2014
 
The Sickness of Youth. The history (and our selves) that repeats itself.
The performance that earned the critics and audience’s acclaim in its first staging last May at the New Hyperoon of the Society for Macedonian Studies, is staged again in October. A stunning text that shocks in its reality. The reality of Vienna in Midwar and in crisis. The reality of societies where given facts are no longer given, values collapse and the limits are trespassed by the actuality. Two societies in confusion, that are led to Nazification. A performance that makes the viewer wonder: is it that can we not see that everything is repeated in such a similar way or are we totally powerless in the face of the circles of History? 
 
 
“Betrayal” by Harold Pinter
Translator: Eva Georgoussopoulou
Director: Glykeria Kalaitzi
Premiere: December 2014
 
Harold Pinter documents in Betrayal the story of a love triangle, setting a genious game with time for his heroes. When the play begins, betrayal or betrayals seem to have been left behind. However, as time machine starts working backwards, the viewer is confronted with another, bigger game, that of human relationships, hidden agendas, deliberate concealments, secrets and lies. The play is staged for the first time in NTNG.
 
 
 
“How I learned to Drive” by Paola Vogel
Translation: Konstatinos Arvanitakis
Director: Aspa Kalliani
Premiere: February 2015
 
Paula Vogel’s play, awarded with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, brings us confronted with the limits of morality. Two people that believe that they don’t belong anywhere become lovers in the environment of a dysfunctional family. He is a 40-year-old alcoholic, the husband of her aunt, she is an underage seeking to fill in the gaps left open by her absent father. The one can either save “or” destroy the other. The disjunctive “or” is the tricky point upon which we have all stepped at some point in our lives: a love that is incompatible with reality, the thin ice that is ready to break under the weight of a single mistake.
 
“When your breaks don’t work on ice, you‘ll have to accelerate,” he says to her in one of their driving lessons. Hence, with one foot on the gas pedal on thin ice, they learn something that will change their lives for ever: that the person that has the power to destroy us and the one that has the power to improve us are very often the same person. The play is staged for the first time in NTNG.
 
 
 

“Cherchez la femme” by Stratis Paschalis
Director-Choreography: Sofia Spyratou
Premiere: October 2014
 
 
The performance Cherchez la femme, guided by the great songs of Vassilis Tsitsanis  for the woman, introduces the viewers to the universe of the great folk singer. The play revolves around a central dramatic frame, with characters and events –imagined but also based on Tsitsanis’ own words (texts and interviews)– but also the events and on faces of his own biography, without falling into the trap of naturalism; on the contrary, he uses this material to built a dream plot full of mystery, realism and bizarre twists. Cherchez la femme, reveals for the first time to a wider audience the story behind the composition of a legendary song, “Archontissa”, as it was testified by the great composer.
 
Cherchez la femme is an interactive music and dance event, which has as its central them the presence of woman in the songs of Tsitsanis. The woman, who sometimes seems like an enchanting creature that rouses imagination and other times seems like a destructive intervention of fate, plays the lead role in the work of the great folk composer.
 
Next to the theatrical part, the music of Tsitsanis is the protagonist of the play: an orchestra of virtuosos and a big cast that is comprised of thirty actors, musicians and dancers that intervene in the drama, performing the top songs of the composer that are dedicated to the woman. All artists contribute actively to the spectacle, playing music, singing and dancing. Renowned folk singers join forces with them on stage, along with the rich manpower of the actors of the NTNG, bringing to the fore new people that emerged through last year’s great success, With Musical Treats, With Voices. Thus the performance aspires to encapsulate the timeless mark of Tsitsanis’ music – not only the authentic folk sound and the overall zeitgeist, but also its impact on today’s youth. Cherchez la femme was written especially for the National Theatre of Northern Greece.
 
 
 
 
   
 
“With Power from Kifissia” by Dimitris Kechaidis / Eleni Chaviara 
Director: Giannis Rigas
Premiere: November 2014
 
Four women in an apartment keep talking non-stop. They talk about their selves, their relationships, their husbands, the present and the future. The dialogue between these people is masterfully weaved, like a spider web. The boundaries between imagination and reality, comedy and drama are blur. Desires, intentions, thoughts are wickedly and constantly intertwined so quickly that they seem still, without escape. Relentless. The play With Power from Kifissia is definitely a masterpiece of the New Greek Theatre. The play is staged for the first time in NTNG.
In February the play will begin a big tour in Northern Greece with the Echelon of Macedonia and Thrace.
 
 
 
“Rubik’s Cube” by Alexandros Rigas
Director: Alexandros Rigas
Premiere: January 2015
 
Giannis, a 45-something writer of formerly successful TV shows and theatre plays, lives with his son, Jello, in a studio in the centre of the city. The relationship between them is magical. They live an “anarchist’s” life: they learn foreign languages together, they hitchhike, they do every crazy thing that fills them with love and joy to live...
 
Everything changes when two people from the Child Care Society inform them that after the accusations of their social circle, Giannis can no longer keep Jello with him, because his life conditions are not suitable for raising a child... If he doesn’t adjust his life to this society’s “traditional morals and customs,” the Child Care will take care of the child’s custody.
 
When the latest developments bring them before the dead end and the threat of adoption... young Jello will yell with all the power of his soul that it is “normal to be free and able to laugh.” Father and son decide to hit the road... the road that only the true rebels can follow.
 
Rubik’s Cube is an intimate comedy, a play that negotiates with humour and emotion the personal right to differ, to live as he/she wants, to love whatever he/she wants, to dream without limits his/her own dreams. A play that whispers from the beginning to the end: “Live in the way you want, laugh, sing, dance under the stars, become a child again, play, love, make mistakes, risk everything for the sake of your freedom.”
 
Alexandros Rigas
Rubik’s Cueb was written especially for the National Theatre of Northern Greece.
 
 
 
 “The Parthenon Below” by Minas Vintiadis
Director: Pericles Hoursoglou
Premiere: April 2015
 
The one wants to die. The other wants to rescue him.
An afternoon in a high-tech appartment.
They wrestle.
A while after dusk, they will see the Caryatids smiling at them.

Pericles Hoursoglou
 
The Parthenon Below is a tiny settlement –with benches and caves– where the “New-Homeless”, one of the two lead characters of the play, lives under the Acropolis. He sells books to make a living, he washes himself in public toilets, and he eats in the commons organized by the Municipality and the Church. The other one, the “Nouveau-Poor,” an executive of an investment company, lives in his modern appartment, having lost all his financial powers, in total despair. His last chance is to do something good for his children, something that will eventually save his posthumous fame. In order to achieve that, he needs a partner-in-crime. Thus the paths of these two people meet one afternoon, when their life changes in a game of conflict and revelations. A wall is raised between them, a wall as transparent as a mirror that breaks in pieces when a secret and a truth are revealed. Reality and imagination clash in today’s Greece, in the age of awkwardness...
The Parthenon Below is staged for the first time in NTNG.
 
 
“The Empire” ( I Have your Data) by Giorgos Veltsos
Director: Michael Marmarinos
Premiere: January 2015
 
 
I wrote the Empire in the dead end of time. I first saw it in the tenses of the verbs, in other words through the pedantic capacities of grammar which utters with verbs, with their cases and their modalities, all the pulsating agony of a body, when it endures the end of time and it ages revitalized, as it speaks.
 
As I don’t possess any other language, other than the one of the great dramaturges, foreseeing the dead end in the writing of the others, constantly recognizing in poetry the admissible condition towards theatre, knowing at the same time that this condition is not capable of revealing the play on stage, I wrote the Empire in the turmoil of writing what you cannot write, and yet performing it.
 
I revealed what obscures me, and this is why I delivered the Empire to Michael Marmarinos. Giannis Vouros dared to undertake this audacious task in the National Theatre of Northern Greece.
 
Giorgos Veltsos
 
 
This very moment – in which you read these few words, these few thoughts of mine (you “read my thoughts”) – is artificial Time, real, long Time .
 
It is long because even if these words were written long time ago, (on May the 25th, on the election day, in a train that travelled through Greece), you read them today.
It is artificial because this “now” is artificial, as it was born in another, older “now.”
It is real because, beyond all the above, what is happening in this very moment –you, reading my thoughts– is a fact that cannot be questioned.
 
So, this is the time of the EMPIRE.
 
A perpetuous mythical past, an Old Testament compressed in the today’s important, alien, undoubtable present:
this moment before your own eyes.
My dear witnesses, enjoy the lies of Time as much as you can.
 
Michail Marmarinos
 
The Empire is staged for the first time in NTNG.
 

 
CHILDREN & YOUTH STAGE
 
Children’s Stage
“Around the world in 80 days” by Jules Vern
Concept-Theatre Adaptation: Stelios Hadjiadamidis
Director: Tatiana Myrkou
Premiere: October 2014
Vassiliko (Royal) Theatre
 
The quirky and mysterious Englishman Phileas Fogg has calculated with mathematical exactitude that he can circumnavigate the world in 80 days. For this conviction of his, he is willing to stake his entire property on a bet. However, his journey is full of adventures. Will his naive yet faithful servant, a bunch of dangerous thieves, a fatal acquaintance and a merciless Scotland Yard inspector manage to drag him off his goal? How easy will it be for him to travel by a steamboat, a hot-air balloon, a train, even an elephant, in a universe full of incidents, where nothing is considered unexpected? What is more important for Phileas Fogg in the end? The journey or a bet of honour?
 
A theatre production based on the prototypes of the classic children's literature that is opening the theatre's doors to artists and children, inviting them to the co-creation of the play, through educational programs, workshops, school visits and many, many surprises on stage. An adventure up against time, through different places and cultures, in which all of us will travel around the world, aiming at accepting difference and multiculturalism.
 
In the context of the making of the performance the National Theatre of Northern Greece is organizing:
 
Competition of Theatrical Posters for Schools Around the Country
The aim of the competition is getting children closer to the concept of collaborative creativity and team up for the creation of a theatrical poster. The nomination of the awarded poster will constitute the main poster for the promotion of the theatre production and its application in banners, print material and advertising in newspapers and the digital media. The participation to the competition is group will be possible in a group and school class level.
 
Free Summer Children's Workshop for Theatre Education
The workshop includes courses on creative writing, direction, choreography, set and costume design, and it will run in parallel with the rehearsals of the play. The goal of the workshop is for the trainees to familiarize with the process of the creative preparation of the play, and actively contribute in the final result.
 
 
 
 
Youth Stage
“GODSPELL”
Adaptation: Xenia Georgopoulou, Giorgos Kiourtsidis, Roula Angelidou
Director:  Giorgos Kiourtsidis
Premiere: October 2014
Lazaristes Monastery – Socratis Karantinos Stage
 
 
The musical Godspell was first presented in 1970 by the students of Carnegie Mellon University, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but it was due to become successful on and off Broadway.
 
Although the initial conception of the play sets it in the modern era (the New York City of the ‘70s), with this new adaptation we move one step forward in the context of modern Greece in the time of crisis. The hypocrisy and arrogance of political power, the cumbersome justice system, the uneven accumulation of wealth, debts, prejudice and intolerance, xenophobia, racism and violence are the themes that find their similarities in the modern Greece. The timeless messages of the parables, extremely timely today, teach us, among others, the love for the fellowman, and are set into action on stage, as the characters of the musical (who stand for Jesus Christ and his Apostles) take part in acts of solidarity, which bring in mind similar communities that emerged in our country during the crisis, encouraging the audience to get the most out of this effort.
Godspell was staged for the first time in NTNG during the summer season 2014.

 
MUNICIPAL THEATRE OF KALAMARIA “MELINA MERCOURI”
 
In order to say a big “Thank you” to the people that embraced and participated in their own way to the culmination of each performance at the New Hyperoon, the NTNG transports this year the performances The Price (in November) and Sickness of Youth (in December) at the Municipal Theatre of Kalamaria “Melina Mercouri”. In addition to this, the musical Godspell will be also presented in December at the Municipal Theatre of Kalamaria.
 
 
OTHER COLLABORATIONS
 
The National Theatre of Northern Greece will present during the Christmas period at the Royal (Vassiliko) Theatre, the famous Christmas fairytale “The Nut Cracker,” in collaboration with a music-theatre group of Thessaloniki.
 
   
The NTNG responsibly keeps up with its educational policy, with programs that will be presented in Primary and Secondary Schools. 
 
F@ce_Fo-RA
The successful Educational F@ce_Fo-RA (note: the acronym of the Greek words “fovos” [=fear] and “ratsismos” [=racism]) that is implemented in the NTNG for the third continuous year, addressing to Secondary School students. This year, the programs is refreshed in order to focus to the phenomenon that is broadly known as cyber-bullying.
This phenomenon troubles Greek society at increasingly higher rates in the last few years. It is mostly observed among high school and junior high students, the vast percentage of which have internet access and reach social network platforms. The cases of bullying through digital media among children and teenagers keep increasing in number, while they often take uncontrollable dimensions.
 
The implementation of the importance and, at the same time, the necessity to confront the phenomenon, this new action entitled F@ce_Fo-RA is proposed. The goal of this specific action is the information and the sensitivation of the students around the issue of cyber bullying inside and outside school environments.
 
More specifically, the trigger for fruitful dialogue will be the presentation of a symbolic story. Through experiential educational activities, the students are called to reflect upon and answer to questions οι related to the boundaries between virtual reality and real life, the cause of the phenomenon and possible solutions for its treatment. The project ultimately aims at getting the children to state their own personal experiences through dialogue, and to express their personal standpoint.
 
Action coordination-Texts: Amalia Kontogianni
Scientific collaborator: Fotini Papaharambous, Psychologist of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki - Psychodramaturgist
 
 
 
INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES 2014-2015
 
Workshop of the Union of Theatres of Europe, with the director Victor Bodó, in Porto.
In the context of its activities in the Union of Theatres of Europe, the NTNG participates in an international workshop that is organized by the National Theatre São João, in Porto, Portugal, from June the 26th to June the 29th 2014. The workshop will be instructed by the important young Hungarian director Victor Bodó.
 
“Min(d)ing Ibsen” travels in Norway, at the Ibsen Festival, from September the 21st to September the 24th, 2014.The theatrical action “Min(d)ing Ibsen: an enemy of the people meets the people,” won the Ibsen Scholarship 2013 by the renowned establishment Ibsen Scholarships of the Norwegian Ministry of Culture, will be presented in the context of the Ibsen meeting, which will be realized from September the 21st to September the 24th, in Skien, Norway. Haris Pechlivanidis and Korina Vassiliadou, the creators of the show that was embraced and co-produced be the National Theatre of Northern Greece, will travel in Norway in order to create the methods in which they prepared the show, but also its results and the audience reception, during its presentation at the Thessaloniki City Hall last January.
This performance is a pioneering staging of the play An Enemy of the People, by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, where the urban drama opens a dialogue with documentary theatre. The astonishing classic text meets modern reality, in an attempt to open a dialogue on stage on the controversial issue of the excavation of gold in the area of Chalkidiki –Ibsen’s dilemma meets a dilemma of the present.
 
Lysistrata project at the festival Art Carnuntum in Austriaon October 4, 2014
The pocket theatre performance Lysistrata project, which was presented with notable success last April in Brussels, at the European Council, travels at the festival “Art Carnuntum”, which was founded 25 years ago, by the Greek-Italian director, stage designer and translator Pierro Bordin, and will also participate at the Open Day of the Lazaristes Monastery Festival on June the 25th.
The performance will be presented on October the 4th, in the context of the Festival that is organized every year by the ruins of the two ancient theatres of the ancient Roman City Carnuntum next to the contemporary Austrian town Petronel, a few kilometres East of Vienna.
Lysistrata project is a pocket theatre performance, based on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. The myth of Lysistrata, seen through the prism of cotemporary war forms and its consequences, is embodied in the shape of four women, that are ready to occupy the Parliament and claim the pause of the war of any kind.
 
Utopia in progress
The co-production of the National Theatre of Northern Greece and the Youth Theatre of Konstanz (Junges Theater Konstanz),“Utopia in progress,” directed by Anestis Azas and Prodromos Tsinikoris, will be presented by the NTNG in the context of the events of the Thessaloniki Youth Capital, but also at the Dimitria Festival, from October the 29th to November the 1st, 2014.
Based on Aristophanes’ “Birds” (Ornithes), the performance speaks of the quest for the ideal homeland, brings to light the dreams and the “nightmares” of ten people and exposes stereotypes in the relations between Greece and Germany. Ten youngsters from Greece, and ten more Germans, aged 18–23 years old, emphasize the two rhythms in which these two countries function, talk about the “European Dream,” their fears, their insecurities, but also their hopes for a, frankly speaking, common future.
 
Participation of the NTNG to the program “Terrorisms” by the Union of  Theatres of Europe, with the performance “The Prize” by Arthur Miller.
In the context of the international program “Terrorisms” organized by the theatre-members of the Union of Theatres of Europe and was submitted to the European Union program “Creative Europe,” the National Theatre of Northern Greece participates with the performance “The Prize” by Arthur Miller, directed by Aspa Kalliani.
 
Participation of the NTNG to the European Union program “Creative Europe” with two international collaborations.
In the context of the European Union program “Creative Europe,” the National Theatre of Northern Greece participates with two groundbreaking proposals that relate to the use of modern technologies in theatre, on the one hand, and to the potentials for  the young people to express themselves through the art of theatre.
  1. The first proposal, which was adopted by the Union of Theatres of Europe, is entitled “My future now” and it is related to the theatrical approach of the young people’s vision of the future. Four theatrical organizations participate to the proposal: the Austrian theatre Schauspielhaus Graz, the Italian theatre Teatro di Roma, the German theatre Schauspielhaus Bochum, and also the National Theatre of Northern Greece. The goal of the Proposal is the realization of performances in each partnering country, which will be subsequently presented during a big festival in Vienna, Austria. The time span of the program will expand from September 2014 to May 2015.
  2. The second proposal is made possible in collaboration with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and more specifically with the School of Journalism and Mass Media, and the School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Its title is “Exodus to Eu-topia” and it concerns the research, implementation of presentation of a new model of integration of the new technologies into the field of the performing arts (automatic interactive mask, robot systems). “The Free Besieged” by Dionysios Solomos is the text upon which the performances of the program will be based, something that contributes to the promotion of Greece and the country’s cultural heritage in Europe. The following institutions participate in the proposal: the Ionian University of Greece (School of Audiovisual Arts), the Theatrical Society of Cyprus, Frederick University of Cyprus, Linnaeus University in Sweden (School of Cinema and Literature), the Fraunhofer Institution IDMT in Germany, Oberhausen Theatre in Germany, The Romanian National Theatre in Craiova, and the National Theatre São João in Portugal. The proposal aims at creating artistic and technical workshops in each partnering country, creating a platform for collecting material of the interaction between artists and audiences, and for applying crowd sourcing tools, creating an international theatre group that will perform in the partnering countries. Lastly, a core festival of Arts and Technology will be held in Cyprus, where the results of the program will be presented through live streaming, in all partnering countries. The time span of the program will expand from September 2014 to December 2018.
  The successful tradition of “Big Days” will continue this year as well. All-day tributes are programmed for Moliere, Harold Pinter, Anton Chekhov, and Georg Büchner.
 
 
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES
 
The NTNG, in the context of its social policy, continues organizing a series of extremely successful social activities. More specifically, the following will be continued:
“In-house” theatre. Visits of actors of the NTNG to individuals, but also to vulnerable population groups that don’t have access to the theatrical praxis.
Social theatre shop. Solidarity Theatre by the actors of the NTNG, where the audiences of the performances are called to submit long-lasting food, which will be distributed in social institutions, instead of paying a ticket.

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