Early directorial explorations of Theodoros Terzopoulos: from Brecht to his own method

The aim of the research is, on the basis of Greek criticism from 1977-1982 (Attis Theatre Archive, Athens), to demonstrate the transformation of director Theodoros Terzopoulos’s (b. 1945) directing method from his earliest productions up to the moment when his method took shape in the form by which it is known today. The article examines, in chronological order, five of Terzopoulos’s productions staged between 1976 and 1982, before he founded his own Attis Theatre (1985). The scholarly novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time in Russian theatre studies, it shows how, over the course of six years and from production to production, the features of Theodoros Terzopoulos’s directorial signature – by which he is known today – were formed, and how, having begun with a full adherence to Brecht’s directing method, by the end of this period Terzopoulos arrived at his own method, in some respects diametrically opposed to Brechtian practice. The study concludes that, despite presenting himself as an adherent of Brecht’s directing method throughout his early career, in reality Terzopoulos moved away from it with each production and accrued his own theatrical techniques and perspectives. This served as the foundation for the development of his own method.