Dimitris Karantzas

Dimitris Karantzas was born in Athens in 1987. He studied at Embros Higher Drama School and at the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Athens. He has worked with the National Theatre, Onassis Stegi, the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, the Greek National Opera, Theatro tou Notou at the Amore Theater, the Karolos Koun Greek Art Theater, Odos Kykladon Theater, etc. He has directed works from both the Greek and international repertoires, including: Dimitris Dimitriadis’s “Phaethon” and “The Circle of the Square”, Euripides's “Helen” and “Medea”, Thomas Bernhard's “Heroes' Square”, Virginia Woolf's “The Waves”, Harold Pinter's “Ashes to Ashes”, Aristophanes's “The Clouds”, Anton Chekhov's “Three Sisters” and “Uncle Vanya”, Marina Tsvetaeva's “Phaedra”, Aeschylus's “Persians”, William Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet”, etc.

His performances have been presented internationally at the Avignon Festival (68th edition), the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Le Lieu Unique in Nantes, and the Oslo Nationaltheatret. He participated in the KunstenFestivalDesArts in Brussels, as a guest artist for its “Residence & Reflections” project. He was nominated for the European Theatre Prize (XVI edition) in the "New Theatrical Realities" category.

He has been serving as Artistic Director of the theatre Proskinio in Athens since 2020.

As part of the Onassis AiR Pilot Professional Development Fellowships (2018), Dimitris Karantzas did the following research and activities:

Period I: This period was devoted to a research based on the several translations of Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex.” In collaboration with the writer and translator, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, a month-long translation research was conducted in Greece, to focus on analyzing different existing translations of the text and discovering ways for a new approach towards an original translation.

Period II: During this period, Karantzas attended several of the most important festivals in the world focusing on contemporary performance today: Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Belgium), Performatik (Belgium), and XING (Italy). Within these research trips, he attended the artistic presentations, symposia, talks and public programs of each festival, and conducted individual meetings with the festivals’ directors and various artists presenting their work, in addition to individual meetings with peers and representatives of large theaters and other festivals.

Period III: This period was devoted to a research of possible artistic methodologies that could be applied to a collective research environment for the work of Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex.” In collaboration with Tasos Karahalios (choreographer), Theodora Kapralou (dramaturg), and Thanasis Deligianis (sound designer/composer), the team immersed themselves in an elliptical research, on the remote island of Anafi.