Artistic Director of Persona Theatre Company,
Director, University Professor
Avra Sidiropoulou is Artistic Director of Athens-based Persona Theatre Company. She is Associate Professor and Academic Head at the M.A. in Theatre Studies Programme at the Open University of Cyprus. She has directed, conducted practical workshops and delivered invited lectures in different parts of the globe, and has published extensively on directing theory and practice, contemporary performance and dramaturgy. She was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, the Martin E. Segal Centre at CUNY, New York, the Institute of Theatre Studies at Freie University, Berlin and a Japan Foundation Fellow at the University of Tokyo.
Avra has a dual identity of an artist and an academic. She is the author of Directions for Directing. Theatre and Method, (Routledge 2018) and Authoring Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre, (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), editor of Staging 21st century Tragedies. Theatre, Politics and Global Crisis (Routledge 2022) and co-editor of Adapting Greek Tragedy. Contemporary Contexts for Ancient Texts (with Vayos Liapis). She is also co-editor of a special issue in Contemporary Director Training in the Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training Journal (with Adam Ledger).
Recent directing credits include: Troy Too by Karen Malpede at HERE Arts Centre in New York (2023); Enter Hamlet (text: Sidiropoulou) at the Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival in Verona (2022) and Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal at the Cyprus Theatre Organization (2022). She also staged Bryony Lavery’s Frozen (Skala Theatre, Larnaca, Nicosia, Fall 2020); Phaedra I—(text: Sidiropoulou –Tristan Bates Theatre, London 2019); A Doll’s House (Technochoros Ethal, Limassol and Nicosia 2019), and an animated adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” She is also co-creator of “Theatre Hacks”, a new series of stage adaptations for an online format.
Οther directing works: A Lover’s Melancholy. J. Ford. (Work in Progress). Dancehouse Lefkosia (Nicosia, Cyprus, December 2014); Someone’s Going to Come. J. Fosse. Versus Theatre. Theatre Ena. (Nicosia and Limassol, Cyprus, November 2013-January 2014), Maria Borisova. Based on F. Dostoyevsky’s novella A Meek Girl. Studio Mavromihali. (Athens, Greece, September 2012); Tell-Tale Hearts: The (Un) Told Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Vafopouleio Cultural Center. (Thessaloniki, Greece, June 2010); Hellenic-American Union (Athens, Greece, October 2010), And God Said. A Parable. Co-produced by Persona Theatre Company and Garajistanbul. Garajistanbul Theatre. (Istanbul, Turkey, April 2009). Invited participation at the 28th Fadjr International Theatre Festival. Sangelaj Hall. (Tehran, Iran, January 2010), Leftovers: Memories are Killing (based on S. Beckett’s novella “The Expelled” –Thessaloniki, 2005); 2012); Clytemnestra’s Tears. Produced by Persona Theatre Company, supported by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Hellenic Culture Organisation, The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Organisation and the Ioannis F. Costopoulos Foundation. Performed by Themis Bazaka. La MaMa ETC (New York, U.S.A., May-June 2007); Dipylon Theatre (Athens, Greece, April-May 2004); Trilingual production Clytemnestra'nin Gozyaslari/ Clytemnestra’s Tears/Ta Δάκρυα της Κλυταιμνήστρας funded by the European Union within the framework of the micro-project programme for the promotion of Greek-Turkish civic dialogue. Tiyatro Oyunevi ISM2. (Istanbul, Turkey, June 2004.) Official participation in the 40th International Arts Festival “Dimitria” of the Municipality of Thessaloniki. (Thessaloniki, Greece, September 2005).
Her next directing project will be Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (Dionysos Theatre, Cyprus, 2023).
Avra was nominated for the League of Professional Theatre Women 2020 Gilder/Goigney International Award.
