Organization
“Theatrical Sympaignia” was founded as a non-profit organization in 2003 in Athens. Today, its establishments are in the city of Ioannina (North-Western Greece), where most of its operations take place. Its mission is the organization, production and stage of theatrical performances in Greece and abroad, the participation and organisation of theatrical, artistic and cultural events (workshops, lectures, seminars, and cooperation events), the theatrical-scientific research and the innovation in the teaching of acting. The portfolio of the company is impressive, with the presentation of more than 16 plays since 2015, from Greek and international repertoire.
Project: New theatrical practices
In Greece, during the crisis, lots of people found comfort in theatre and empathized with its fiction characters, desiring its catharsis effect. Big cities like Thessaloniki and Athens, due to their status in culture institutions and large audiences, host dense number of performance stages and small theatres offering a great variety of choice. Studies show that there is an increase in the number of theatre audience and its number of visits in the last years.
Unfortunately, the smaller cities in Greece cannot capitalize on the above flourish, and struggle with their theatrical state of play. Although young people, mostly students, have found in theatre a way out to express themselves, mostly through amateur theatrical productions, there are neither big institutions to support and incubate this activity nor are the city’s population sophisticated enough to pick it as a regular choice of entertainment. Therefore, the theatrical professionals in Greece’s provinces waver economically due to the above mentioned circumstances.
Since 2016, Theatrical Sympaignia has confronted drastically this issue in Ioannina city by implementing the following actions:
1. Cooperation with performers and actors from Athens and Thessaloniki with the organization of seminars and workshops, satisfying the urge for novelty of the local theatre community.
2. Development of innovative performances that extract their themes from local oral tradition and folk stories, in order to lure and develop new audiences.
The 2nd activity has shown a great impact in the enlargement of audiences, with the appropriate marketing. Local themes or competitions of theatre extracting their performances from traditional oral storytelling has provided a new platform of “communicating” with the audience. We regard the above as a common challenge for the professionals in theatre industry that perform in low urbanized environments.
Thus, we are looking for partners that share the same vision and wish to accompany us in this journey, to rediscover our local tradition and folk stories and introduce them to the world stage.
Contact: Grigorios Vangelidis (Grigorios.vangelidis@yahoo.com)