Youth Theatre Festival 2016

They’re at an age when they’ve left children’s theatre behind for their kid brothers and sisters and that ‘other’ theatre for their parents. So what sort of theatre is left for these restless teenagers? The answer: the Youth Theatre Festival.

An event staged by the Onassis Stegi and those pioneers in the field of Greek teenage theatre, the Grasshopper Youth theatre company, the Youth Theatre Festival is rejuvenated by, provokes, moves and inspires both the 140 teenagers who are directly involved in the creative process and everyone in the audience who wants to experience this marathon of theatrical creativity from up close. Ten teenage theatre groups, ten different productions which reflect the imagination and inventiveness of young people facing the challenges that come with growing up.

The Grasshopper Youth company and invited guest artists and associates including Dimitris Xanthopoulos, Thanasis Megalopoulos, Lenos Christidis, Michalis Konstantatos, Kostas Koutsolelos, Stavroula Siamou, Michalis Panadis, Ilias Vogiatzidakis and Myrto Panagou support the teenagers’ creative process. Encouraging and directing them, they help transform the physical space in their schools—spaces which have unfortunately become identified with a sterile educational process—into a multi-coloured hive of lively activity and exchanged ideas and experiences.

This year, the Festival will give the ten groups the opportunity to engage with seminal texts from the Greek and international theatre repertoire, inviting them to discover the theatricality latent on the page and to shed light on those less obvious aspects which may coincide with their experiences as teenagers today. From Frank Wedekind to Kosmas Politis, classic masterpieces provide the impetus for research and experimentation. A mix of classics and modern classics, the selected texts embrace every season, culture and genre (including plays, novels, novellas, short stories, even comics). There are no set formulas or demarcations in this theatrical and literary encounter, just approaches that remain true to the spirit if not the letter of the texts, free renderings and original performances. The initial texts are just the starting point—everything is viewed through the prism of discovering new and broader horizons. Like only teenagers can do.