The ancient Greeks always seem to steal the limelight. If one were to mention "Greek theatre" it would be Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides that would come to mind, instead of Kambanellis, Skourtis and Matessis. The ancient playwright's age-old heroes, the larger-than-life Oedipus, Antigone and Medea, continue to fascinate today and pushing humble modern-day characters off the stage, so to speak.

Still, one of the goods that should come of the Cultural Olympiad is the promotion of Greece's rich, but largely obscure to the rest of the world, modern culture. The culture ministry's initiative to export a selection of Greek plays written during the last fifty years, as part of the Spring of Contemporary Greek Theatre program, is an essential venture to this very end.

A total of 40 plays, penned from the '50s to date, will be selected and energetically promoted to foreign theatrical organisations, with the hope they'll be picked up for production on a foreign stage, publication in translation – or both.

The Hellenic Culture Organisation S.A. and the Greek Playwright's Society are the two organisations chiefly involved in this initiative. The former will also participate with 50% of production costs of each play staged on foreign ground, while all profits will be injected back into the program.

The project has already attracted global interest, with at least five proposals coming from theatrical organisations in Australia, Germany, Britain and the United States.

Resetting the focus
The original program had actually called for proposals by local theatre groups to participate in a festival of contemporary Greek theatre, hosting the production of about forty plays with performances attended by foreign theatre groups. Yet, over 200 submissions were received, according to Greek daily, Ta Nea, and the program quickly became too exorbitant an expense.

The revisited version of the program, however, will achieve the same aim, i.e. the promotion of contemporary Greek theatre to foreign groups. Cynics insist, this won't be a matter of digging up forgotten works or plays that were never successful on the stage. Instead, the program will sift through all existing plays to locate those that have been tried and tested and are generally well known. That is, plays that truly represent the Greek contemporary theatre scene.

Iakovos Kambanellis , for example, is considered the father of post-war modern Greek drama and appears frequently on local stages, while Greeks of the Diaspora regularly performed his work. Pavlos Matessis is also well regarded throughout the European theatre scene as is veteran Yorgos Skourtis. Other successful playwrights that seek presentation abroad are Loula Anagnostaki, Dimitris Papahristos and duo Dimitris Kehaidis & Eleni Haviara.

Selection of the plays is already underway, with final decision set for publicizing by December. In the background, the promotional and support mechanism will be put into motion. Of the forty plays making up the final group, twenty already exist in a translation.

The other twenty will require a translation and it is up to the selection committee to choose the required language and appropriate translator. Speaking of which, the selection committee consists of five members of the Greek Playwrights Society, two from the Hellenic Culture Organisation and one member from the Greek Actors Union and the Greek Critics Union, respectively.