Theatre Architecture in Modern Greece: 1720-1940

Helen Fessas-Emmanouil

One of the dominant features of theatre architecture in Greece throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries has been its open-air tradition. This tradition offered improvised but effective solutions to the housing problem of the country’s performing arts. On the contrary, winter theatres of the above mentioned period have been patronised by the country’s economic, political and intellectual elite as a means of Westernising the Greek performing arts. The emergence, interaction and evolution of these two building types (i.e. open-air and winter theatres) from the eve of the Greek Revolution to 1940 is the subject of this book. The author’s intention was to approach Neohellenic theatre architecture comprehensively in order to demonstrate not only what it really produced during this period but also why it did so. The scope of this comprehensive and comparative approach is to interpret Neohellenic theatre space of the 19th and 20th centuries in the broadest context of the civilisation of its time as well as the more specific context of local tradition and circumstances.