Artistic Director of Persona Theatre Company,
Director, University Professor
Avra Sidiropoulou is Artistic Director of Persona Theatre Company. She is Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Associate Professor of Theatre at the Open University of Cyprus. She has published extensively on directing theory and practice, contemporary performance and dramaturgy and is the author of Directions for Directing. Theatre and Method, (Routledge 2018) and Authoring Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre, (Palgrave Macmillan 2011). She is also the co-editor of Adapting Greek Tragedy. Contemporary Contexts for Ancient Texts (CUP 2021) and editor of Staging 21st century Tragedies. Theatre, Politics and Global Crisis (Routledge 2022) and co-editor of a special issue in Contemporary Director Training in the Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training Journal. Avra is currently working on a new monograph on directing and difficulty, which will be published by Routledge in 2016. She is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance (EASTAP).
Her main areas of scholarly specialization include directing theory, the ethics of adaptation, contemporary dramaturgy and practice as research. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Arts Barcelona, Columbia University, the Martin E. Segal Centre at CUNY, MIT, the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds and Surrey, the Institute of Theatre Studies at Freie University in Berlin and was a Japan Foundation Fellow at the University of Tokyo. She has lectured and conducted directing workshops and seminars on directing methodology, practice and ethics; adapting the Greeks and Shakespeare for the contemporary stage, in various parts of the world.
As the Αrtistic Director of Athens-based Persona Theatre Company, she has directed works from the classical and contemporary repertory. Her theatre company has received state subsidy and funding from several private foundations, as well as the E.U. Her most recent directing works include Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at Dionysos Theatre in Nicosia (December 2023); Karen Malpede’s Troy Too at Here Arts Center in New York (May 2023); Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal at the Cyprus Theatre Organization (2022) and Enter Hamlet (her adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet) at the Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival (2022).
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).
In 2020 she was nominated for the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award by the League of Professional Theatre Women.
