“Truly, we live in dark times,” Bertolt Brecht cries out in 1938, and 2026 rather comes to confirm it. We live in “difficult times” where everything around us seems fragmented and without meaning. And so, Art no longer comes simply to comfort or entertain us, but to become the very mechanism of our transformation.
It is the only tool left to us to dismantle our “ego” and look deep inside ourselves. And it is possible that what we will see might frighten us. We might realize that we let ourselves go and changed, silently and involuntarily, transforming into a creature we never wished to be. We might find within us monsters of unknown origin — after all, we are the world. But meeting them is probably a necessary step. Because after that, only two paths remain: to reconcile with them or to change, this time consciously.
With all these thoughts, we choose to dedicate this year’s Festival to the concept of metamorphosis, of change, giving space to a unique encounter. An encounter with stories difficult and tender, harsh yet ultimately generous and, in any case, revelatory. Stories that we hope will transform us.
From Ovid’s “Phaethon”, which is reimagined as a contemporary opera, the primordial myth of Antigone, which will be told as a transformative story in a special shadow theatre performance, the emblematic “Earthquake in Chile”, which will come to shake our own world as well, and the contemporary “Shared Walls”, which allow us to hear the reasons why someone refuses to sleep, this year’s programme constitutes a journey into our “inner rooms”, into the inner sanctums of ourselves that define us.
Because this year, we aim to complete a journey of coming of age. A unique path that goes hand in hand with the years and the history of the institution itself, which is also transforming and changing. With a comprehensive programme that includes five original productions, which for the first time move beyond the narrow boundaries of theatre, as they encompass music, opera, shadow theatre, and visual installations, with unique collaborations with major institutions (Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall – Camerata Junior, Greek National Opera, etc.) and important artists, as well as selected hosted performances and concerts that shape a distinctive programme, this year’s edition of the Festival constitutes, always with its characteristic boldness and spirit of experimentation, the most complete proposal of recent years.
But beyond and above all, it aspires to be an invitation to a journey of self-awareness and transformation that we hope to experience together.
May this summer, then, change us all.
Eva Oikonomou – Vamvaka
Artistic Director
