For theaters in Greece, pandemic is a tragedy
EPIDAURUS, Greece — As dusk fell here on a Saturday late last month, a whiterobed chorus filed onto the sparse stage of a limestone amphitheater for the National Theater of Greece’s production of “The Persians,” the world’s oldest surviving dramatic work.
In 472 B.C., when Aeschylus’ play was first performed, the actors would have been wearing masks. This time, it was the audience.
The show, part of the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, was livestreamed to an audience around the world and was hailed as theater’s return to the place where it all began after the coronavirus lockdown darkened stages across Greece.
To abide by restrictions set by health authorities, visitors wore masks to enter and leave the amphitheater, and ushers in plastic visors and surgical gloves enforced social distancing. The theater’s usual 10,000-seat capacity was capped at 4,500.
Even before the pandemic, Greece’s theaters were in trouble. Years of austerity meant less government spending on the arts, with subsidies for the largest theaters cut in half or withdrawn altogether for some smaller venues.
As a deep recession hammered the economy, tens of thousands of businesses closed down, leaving little prospect of support from the private sector. Dozens of theaters closed; others survived only by cast members covering the costs of performances themselves.
As Greece started to emerge from its financial crisis, in 2018, state funding started trickling back; the major state-funded theaters edged up to three-quarters of their pre-crisis budgets, and the smaller theaters that survived recouped some of their losses.
Then, the pandemic came and threatened to wash all those gains away.
On March 12, the government closed all theaters in the first wave of its response to the coronavirus. Since July 1, open-air venues have been allowed to resume, but only at half capacity. The conditions under which indoor venues would be allowed to reopen have yet to be decided by health authorities, said Nicholas Yatromanolakis, general secretary of the Greek Culture Ministry.
“No one knows what will happen yet,” he said. “We have to roll with the punches.”
Even if closed theaters reopen in the fall, the social distancing rules they will most likely have to introduce will mean greatly reduced ticket sales — and state subsidies on their own are not enough to keep most organizations going.
Greece has so far weathered the pandemic much better than many of its neighbors, recording about 4,300 cases and just over 200 deaths from the virus, but many in the industry worry a second wave of the illness would mean venues have to remain shuttered for even longer.
Dimitris Lignadis, artistic director of the National Theater, which staged “The Persians” at the festival, said in an interview he was bracing for losses.
“I’m doing it to keep up appearances, to keep the theater alive,” he said of this summer’s reduced program.
The Greek government has announced some measures to cushion the blow for arts organizations. In May, it set aside 100 million euros (about $120 million) to support businesses in the arts sector that were forced to close and to compensate workers left out of a job. But only 4 million euros were pledged for theaters, a pittance in comparison with the funds made available by other European nations.
Dimitris Antoniadis, a former president of the Union of Greek Actors, said state compensation for performers helped only those who were working when the lockdown began. When the virus struck, about 80% of Greek actors in the austerity-hit industry were unemployed, he said, noting roles were now so scarce that many had sought work in cafes and hotels to make ends meet during the pandemic.
“It’s not like the virus came along and ruined some sort of paradise,” he said. “Things were already hard; now it’s hell.”
During the lockdown, the Culture Ministry encouraged theaters to find ways to bring in revenue for themselves, such as by recording plays for paid digital distribution. It is also planning to help theaters present productions with English subtitles in the hope of drawing in foreign visitors — although tourism, too, has been battered by the pandemic. A program of more than 250 performances in archaeological sites around the country, organized by the ministry, will run through the summer.
“We tried to expand the safety net, to protect jobs and to promote Greek theater,” Mr. Yatromanolakis said.
However, distributing aid to theaters has been complicated by poor record-keeping. A register is only now being compiled, Mr. Yatromanolakis said.