Director of the “OEDIPUS REX” performance after Sophocles (the Alexandrinsky Theater)

Theodoros Terzopoulos is one of the Europe’s leading theater directors: since 1993, he is President of the International Committee of the Theater Olympiad. In 1985, he established the Attis Theater in Athens and organized the Delphi Meeting of Ancient Drama. In 1990, he founded and later became the head of the International Institute of Mediterranean Theaters. Terzopoulos was honored with many prestigious theater awards for his directions: “The Bacchae” were recognized the best performance at the Madrid and Malaga Festival (1987), “Persians” in Karakas, Montpelier and Barcelona (1992) and Lisbon (1993). Russian public knows Terzopoulos thanks to his performances directed for Alla Demidova: Muller’s “The Quartet,” Euripides’ “Medea,” and “Hamlet, a Lesson.”

“What is a human being? What do we know about a human being? The entire antique tradition tries to shed some light onto this darkened area. The extreme human revelations illuminate what is contained inside us, in the subconscious mind area, enriching our understanding of a human being. Today, when human beings look more and more like puppets, the meaning of a tragedy is particularly important. The question is how to find this measure of what is actually allowed? We are in the permanent quest of this godly measure. And it is not only that the high and the mighties, but each of us bears the responsibility. We, the artists, should show the true and real greatness of a human being. This connection between the God and a man is lost in the modern world. Tragedy is our great school, which we have to study at again and again in order to understand something important about the modern status of the society and the humanity".

                                                                     Theodoros Terzopoulos

“For me, Theodoros Terzopoulos is a director, a votary of art, who in the first place is interesting and important for his professing aesthetic theater -- a Theater, which is not hiding behind words, and which could not be called a literature narrative theater. Terzopoulos is dealing with a theater on the basis of the inner material of each actor: his status and emotionality. And it is not just the emotional excitement of an actor that is implied, but a special way of existing on the stage. Theodoros Terzopoulos always works with classic texts, the ancient Greeks in the first place; he is the best European specialist on the ancient Greek tragedy. It is extremely important for me that relying on the tragic essence; he never follows the narrative meaning, but always explores the tragic basis in the actor’s nature.”

 

Valery Fokin