International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama

The International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama is an annual theatre festival held every summer in Cyprus. It was created to promote ancient Greek drama on the island and to enrich the cultural life of Cyprus. The festival brings ancient Greek drama to a multicultural audience and attracts visitors from all over the world.

The International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama was launched by the Cyprus Center of the International Theatre Institute, the world’s largest performing arts foundation supported by UNESCO. The inaugural festival was held in 1997.

Ever since its inception, the International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama has introduced wide audiences to various interpretations of works by ancient Greek playwrights such as Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles. For example, the 2017 festival presented Electra and Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Medea and The Bacchae by Euripides, and Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus.

The festival takes place every summer and lasts for about a month. The performances are presented in several open-air amphitheaters across Cyprus, including the Paphos Odeon, the Makarios III (or Skali) Amphitheater in Nicosia, and the Curium (Kourion) Ancient Theatre in the Limassol district.

The International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama attracts professional theatre companies from around the world. Over the years, it has hosted companies from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and other countries.

The festival line-up offers a varied selection of performances. All productions are based on ancient Greek drama, but most of them are original in their approach to interpretation. The performances combine the uniqueness of Greek drama with the culture of the country where they come from. The International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama provides space for embracing innovation through classical works.

Each performance at the festival is presented in the language of the theatre group. Greek performances are presented with English surtitles (supertitles) and foreign performances have both English and Greek surtitles. As long as you know Greek or English, there is no language barrier to prevent you from enjoying performances from all over the world.