Our method | Restart Theater Athens

All our projects are works in progress

they usually exist in numerous versions based on age groups and the kind of audience we reach each time

we have developed flexibility to shape, change, improvise our staging according to the conditions we meet, so the basis of our work is the actor's craft

did you know?

what we discovered

The incorporation of non-actors into the fabric of a theatrical performance can serve as a meaningful avenue for collective co-creation and active exchange between theatre professionals and members of society. This process leads to several outcomes, including individual self-empowerment of participants through their actions, mutual empowerment arising from collective actions and interpersonal interactions toward a shared goal, and social empowerment resulting from the interaction between the performative action and the broader social body, audience, or society to which it is addressed.

The Chorus Method: A Civic Theater for Today’s Communities

What if the audience could not only watch but be the performance? Inspired by ancient Greek drama and its deep connection to civic participation, Angeliki developed a unique approach to participatory theater that draws from the Athenian democracy, where attending theater was considered a civic duty. In this tradition, citizens didn’t just watch the performances—they were the performers, participating as choruses in the plays, representing the social body of the community both on stage and in the audience. Building on this, Angeliki’s method brings the "voice of the people" back into contemporary theater through the use of the Tragic, Comic, and Satyric Choruses, inviting citizens to actively shape the stories they see.

The Role of the Chorus in Contemporary Civic Participation

Imagine walking into a theater and realizing that you’re not just watching a performance—you’re part of it. In Angeliki's method, the boundaries between performer and spectator are blurred. Actors take on roles to guide and engage the audience while supporting non-actors who often have little or no previous theatrical experience. Meanwhile, community members perform the chorus parts, representing the diverse, and often contradictory, sentiments of the broader society. While the actors’ roles remain consistent across communities, the chorus parts are open and flexible, tailored to each community's unique cultural traditions, talents, and stories.

What if the performance you’re watching is just the beginning of the story? The performances are co-created with participants in a process that fosters collaboration. During the workshop phase, we engage in what Eugenio Barba calls "bartering"—we share our story with the participants, and they respond by sharing with us their own ideas, stories, and thoughts, or they perform a song, a text, a dance. Through this exchange, we build trust and common vision about our shared goal. The end result is a performance that feels unique to each community, while still staying grounded in a shared foundation.

A Community-Centered Creative Process

What if the entire community, not just the "professionals", were responsible for creating the performance you’re about to see? The community’s involvement doesn’t end with the performance itself. As we go through the process of rehearsals and workshops, participants also contribute their knowledge, skills, and resources to the production. Each person volunteers their abilities in areas such as technical support, props, costumes, makeup, promotion, and even organizing the event. These efforts are coordinated in parallel to the creative development of the performance, creating a sense of ownership and collective responsibility. It is not just the actors who shape the performance, but the entire community.

Can we find a way to keep our individuality while working toward a collective goal? The process itself is deeply trans formative. Citizens learn how to maintain their individuality while contributing to the collective purpose of the group. This balance of individuality and unity is what gives the chorus its power, where each person’s contribution is essential to the success of the whole.

The Power of the Chorus: Real-Life Applications

What happens when the chorus becomes a reflection of real-life struggles, triumphs, and contradictions? Throughout our practice, this method has manifested in various productions that illustrate the flexibility and power of the chorus. Each production incorporates the Tragic, Comic, and Satyric elements in unique ways, demonstrating how the chorus method fosters not only artistic expression but also social and civic reflection. Here are some examples

"100 Years Kesariani": actress Irini Mela, portraying the neighborhood itself, personified Kesariani as a "mother"—a nurturing figure that gives birth to its citizens and witnesses their struggles throughout turbulent historical times. The actual citizens of Kesariani then took on the roles of tragic, comic, and satyric choruses, embodying the refugee population that once inhabited the area. Through these choruses, the citizens narrated the diverse experiences of their community: from moments of communal joy and feasting, to political persecution and execution, to their collective resistance and efforts to preserve the historical memory of the neighborhood. The performance not only honored the past but also addressed the current sentiments of isolation, loneliness, and the loss of community that have emerged over time. By portraying the refugee population through the voices of its modern-day residents—some of whom were direct descendants of those whose stories were shared—the performance bridged the past and present, giving a voice to the social body of Kesariani in a site specific installation.
"Cycle of Futile Actions": presented at the Kesariani Shooting Range, the site where 200 political prisoners were executed by Nazi forces in 1944. The tragic chorus of men represented the executed prisoners, including the heroic Napoleon Soukatzidis, who chose death over allowing another man to take his place. The tragic women’s chorus symbolized the families of the fallen, embodying the mourning mothers, wives, and fiancées. The community’s involvement brought historical memory back to life in a place of pain and resistance. The community, many of whom were descendants of the executed, participated in honoring the memory of the fallen. This performance, set in the very place of their deaths, transformed the historical site into a living memorial.
"Life, Death, and Resurrection of Popolo Plebe": This street theater piece used a satyric chorus of protestors, social activists, and students to represent the friends and family of the protagonists—Popolo (the people) and Beautiful Indebted (Greece). Through a folk-surrealist performance, the audience decided to change the tragic ending of the story, resurrecting Popolo and freeing his beloved. This collaborative, carnivalistic performance drew crowds through street processions and folk music, turning protest into theatrical expression.
"Lysistrata - NO MORE BLODD": In this modern Interactive interpretation of Aristophanes' classic, the audience itself becomes the comic male and female chorus during the performance without any prior preparation and without keeping to the genders of the participants. Men and women in the audience are masterfully guided by Irini Mela performing Lysistrata into participating directly in the performance, taking on the roles of the chorus within the unfolding drama and the battle of the sexes for Peace. In a 3 minute rehearsal incorporated in the action of the performance allows the audience to engage with the narrative, turning them into active contributors to the performance's dynamic.

Each of these productions demonstrates how the chorus method can adapt to different contexts, creating a space where the voices of citizens—be they historical, political, or social—are heard and acknowledged. The performances are not just acts of theater but acts of civic engagement, connecting the audience directly with the themes and struggles they see represented on stage.

Celebration and Reflection: A Communal Experience

What if the performance didn't end with the final curtain call, but continued into a shared communal experience? At the conclusion of each performance, a communal feast/celebration is held, where participants and audience members share food, drink, and music, reflecting on the experience. This moment of closure fosters unity and reinforces the sense of shared purpose that the chorus represents. It’s a time for all to come together, not just as spectators, but as collaborators in the storytelling process.

We remain in contact with participants long after the performance ends. They continue to reflect on their experience and share feedback from their communities. This ongoing dialogue helps us stay connected to the real, lived experiences of the people, guiding our future projects and allowing us to stay grounded in the issues that matter most.

A Method for a New Civic Engagement

What if theater could become a powerful tool for social change? Angeliki’s method is more than a theater practice—it is a civic tool that empowers communities to take ownership of their cultural narratives. By blurring the lines between artist and audience, we open up a space where the collective voice of the people is not just heard but also enacted. Through tragedy, comedy, and satire, we reflect on the challenges of our times, finding ways to address societal issues and generate conversations that matter.

What if the future of theater wasn't just about performances, but about creating a new, participatory civic space? The community takes center stage, becoming the heart of the performance. By empowering citizens to actively shape the performance, we create a space where the audience is no longer a passive observer but an integral part of the story. This method connects the past, present, and future, ensuring that the voices of the people are not just remembered but actively engaged in the cultural and civic life of the community.

Especially in times of political, financial and cultural crisis and instability where whole large sections of society feel abandoned by what is called the cultural and academic intelligentsia, there is a real need for people of all ages and backgrounds to feel that creators from the cultural and academic sectors have a real interest and care for their lives, struggles and challenges; that they are on the same side, that they may have some guiding light, some inspiration, some words of encouragement or at least some compassion to offer.

how can we communicate our works, our calls to action and our aims without access to the mainstream media?

how can we create our own audience out of people who do not value going to the theater or have little access to it?

how can our art be useful to others and not just to ourselves in times of crisis?

how can we survive as independent theater creators and create the projects of our dreams with no state or private funding?

how can we use the asylum of the stage to voice freely our own protest for what is happening all around us in an innovative way through our art?

Some initial questions that guided us to the formulation of the Theatre and Society program as well as the above method and other applied theatre practices we have been using since 2010 were:

So inspired by ancient Greek drama and its connection to civic participation as it was developed in the years of the Athenian Democracy, where going to the theatre was considered a civic duty, and citizens/non actors were performing as members of the Choruses in the staging of the theater productions of the time, Angeliki developed a unique approach that uses the Tragic, Comic, and Satyric CHORUS as tools for the contemporary civic and creative participation/integration within the performative body, bringing together artists, citizens and communities through large-scale participatory works.

So in this method the actors hold the roles that through their skill and power of performance can move the audience and guide them skillfully in their interaction with the performance, while the cizitens, hold the chorus parts of the performance that represent the social body often with its contradictions. The chorus space is an open flexible space that can incorporate through action, song, and dance the cultural traditions of a participating community changing the performance from community to community and making this process a unique co-creation during the workshop period. We usually end the performance with a common feast and celebration, where the participants and members of the audience eat, drink and dance together while sharing stories from the process to the experience of the performance. Part of the significance of participating in a chorus of citizens is how to both maintain the individuality and the unique contribution of each participant while at the same time create serve the common purpose of the group that calls for unified group action in service to the common cause ...

Our approach unites the professional theatrical creator/artist with society bridging their often separate worlds through common action that benefits both on multifaceted levels.

Write your text here...Greece was connected to its artists through its long history towards democracy and independence. Poets, singers, writers, composers, actors, directors, painters and sculptors were voices of the resistance of the people that were calling for social justice, equal rights, democracy, education... And artists were in turn inspired by the people creating major works that could mobilize and sustain spiritually and emotionally thousands. By the 1990's these bonds were becoming more and more thin till for a large section of the population were finally severed by the 2000s. Socially engaged artists were being placed in isolation from the mainstream media becoming invisible and systemic artists, academics, etc were the only access to culture people had.

So by the 2000s it seemed that artists and theatre artists had abandoned the people with only an egoistic concern to get to the recognition of the mainstream, or state funded companies had no care to be understood by their audiences as the costs were covered, so the people starting to turn their backs on the theatre at large too. They could not find the use for it. For a family it was more useful and more entertaining to go have a dinner at a taverna with friends rather that pay for theatre tickets...

The founding members of Restart Theater have been pioneering collective performances, training, and workshops in Greece since 2010 through the "Theater and Society" program created by Angeliki Kasola.