“The thread of Ariadne guides us through the labyrinths of the centuries from the Crete of the Minotaur to the Athens of the new Olympic Games, from the mythical times of antiquity to the years immediately following the turn of the millennium. Times and moments, theaters and history.

And the history of modern Greek theater begins in Crete and leads to Athens, from a peak of Renaissance culture to a peak of contemporary Greek dramatics and a flourishing of theater. Athens may have surpassed any other European metropolis in terms of the number of theaters. A metropolis of theater once again.

The labyrinths of historical exploration of Greek theater are a captivating journey, enchanting, into the hidden and the catacombs of the archives and into the dust and silence of libraries, as long as you have courage and endurance, and open eyes, a journey with surprises and adversities, with enthusiasm as the thread and the tools being patience, persistence, and intuition, the instinct for the exit, when you must decide at the crossroads. These crossroads. With the stopwatch in hand, you close your eyes and set your mind and heart free...

This volume, dedicated to my wife, collects 10 theatrical studies, almost all unpublished, from the last year of my research searches and wanderings, concerning, almost in their entirety, aspects of the Greek theater history, from Byzantium to the Interwar period, except for the second chapter which has a comparative perspective.

The sixth chapter deals with the Greek and theatrical aspects of “The Master of Weimar,” by Goethe, the eighth belongs to the reception theories. Two chapters, the first and the third, also address issues of acting and performance.”