Dimitris Bampilis

Dimitris Bampilis is a stage director working exclusively in the realm of the “real”.

Combining documentary theater with performance, he places a dramaturgy of violence at the heart of his theater practice, highlighting his performers’ uncertainties, weaknesses and shortcomings, with the aim of creating theater that demands a politics of the gaze, dialog and debate in the public sphere.

Together with Elisavet Xanthopoulou, he co-founded the companies In-vade Art, BpPong!, KOLOFON, and REFORMERS, all of which applied their belief in the discontinuity of the (artistic) self.

He studied Theater Studies at the University of Patras, and Theater Direction at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where Michail Marmarinos was his supervising professor.

He has collaborated with Documenta 14, the National Theater of Greece, the National Theater of Northern Greece, Eleusis 2021 – European Capital of Culture, the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation, the Patras Municipal and Regional Theater, Semio Theater, and a series of theater companies – Noiti Grammi, ODC ensemble, Per-Theater-Formance, and the BelleVille Collective – on a series of performances in various roles, thereby putting his opposition to all hierarchical divisions of labor into practice.

Select collaborations with such artists as Vasilis Papavasileiou, Włodzimierz Staniewski, La Pocha Nostra, Marina Abramović, and Rimini Protokoll have to date helped shape his perspective on theater.

He is a co-founder of APARÄMILLON, a new space in Athens dedicated to the performing arts and research.