Gakis Kostas

Director, composer, actor, Greece

Kostas Gakis is a graduate of the Greek National Theatre drama school, History and Archaeology department of Athens University, as well as Athens Conservatoire graduate on classical guitar. For the last 15 years he has been directing, acting, scriptwriting theatre plays, teaching acting in drama schools, composing music for theatre performances, and exploring new teaching methods as a theatre facilitator. In 2006 he was awarded the ‘DimitrisChorn’ award (best young actor) for his performance in “The cockroach”. In 2007 he scripted and directed the play ‘Without music’ and turned Italo Calvino’s novel ‘The Cloven Viscount’ into theatre. These two performances were staged in Athens for three years. In 2008 he worked with a group of people with physical disabilities and created the performance ‘Siga to aygo’ (‘Not a big deal’), while at the same period he participated in the TV series ‘Ioanna tis kardias’ (‘Ioanna of the heart’). In 2011 he founded the collective “Thea” (“View”), which is a workshop for artistic experimentations. At the same year he directed the play ‘Love’s executioner’, an adaptation on Irvin Yalom’s tale with Minas Xatzisavvas and Xenia Kalogeropoulou in the leading parts. He is a member of the theatre group ‘Idea’ since 2012, along with Athena Moustaka and KostantinosBibes. Together they created ‘Romeo and Juliet for 2’, a play which has been staged in three different theaters in Athens and has travelled all over the country. The performance is also awarded abroad: National Awards of Cyprus, 2013 (two awards), 1st Shakespeare festival in Serbia 2014 (honorary invitation by Nikita Milivojevits to represent of Greece), Almagro Festival - Spain (1st award in international competition), Festival se TeatroClasico MX - Mexico (honorary invitation to represent Greece). ‘Idea’s latest work is ‘the last black cat’ by EvgeniosTrivizas which met great success in “Chorn Theatre” and “Alpha.Idea” theatre. He is an active member of Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab, based in New York, as he was twice selected for its fellowship. In 2014 he was selected by Goethe Institute Athene to represent Greece in the training program on documentary theatre “Theatre experts from Southeast Europe” in Berlin. In 2016 his play ‘Aristophanias’, based on an Alpha.Idea script was staged in a crowded Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens Festival. Since September 2016 he is the artistic director of theatre Alpha.Idea, along with Konstantinos Babes and Lefteris Plaskovitis. He founded the ‘Duet Yourself Festival’, a festival for theatre duets realized every spring in Alpha.Idea theatre. In 2017 he directed the plays “Tree of Oedipous’ (script by Alpha.Idea group) and ‘From Antigone to Medea’ (script by himself) and traveled to Korea, representing Greece in big festivals. He also created the performance ‘Lalies toy cosmoythaymastes’ (‘wonderful voices of the world’), based on stories brought by immigrants who live in Athens. During the same year he directed the performance ‘Ikaria; a theatre record’ based on local stories of the island Ikaria, which was performed in open spaces of the island. Both the above performances were the outcome of the homonymous year seminars of Alpha.Idea. In 2018 he directed Mistero Buffo at the Theatre Organization of Cyprus, and toured all around the country.He is deeply grateful to his parents and his classical guitar teacher, Vassilis Kanaras. In his spare time he puts music to poetry or composes his own songs on guitar, piano, lute and tzouras.

Kalliopi Voulgari Giagiozi Evangelia