Eleni Varopoulou

Theatre theorist, theatre and art critic, translator, essayist. She read law in Athens and theatre studies, semiotics, and media in Paris. Beginning in 1974, she worked as theatre critic and journalist for a number of newspapers (Avgi, Proini, Eleftherotypia, Mesimvrini, Vima). She has translated works by Heiner Müller, Walter Benjamin, Hermann Broch, Bertolt Brecht, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Falk Richter, Aeschylus, and Euripides. Her translations, critiques, and essays have been largely published by Agra Publications. Her study The Living Theatre: Essay on the Contemporary Stage was published in German by the Theater der Zeit, with which she also collaborates. She has taught theatre studies at the University of Athens, Patras, and Thessaloniki, as well as in Frankfurt and Berlin. She founded and ran the Festival of Argos-Mycenae (1992-1997) and served as artistic director of the Summer Academy of the National Theatre of Greece (2000-2009). She also served as special advisor of the Athens Concert Hall, president of the Hellenic Centre of the International Theatre Institute (1984-1992), and director of the Berlin Branch of the Hellenic Foundation of Culture (2014-2016). Since 1980, she has curated numerous exhibitions in her capacity as art critic.