Get your tickets for the 4th BE-HIVE THEATRE FESTIVAL 2026

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

PERFORMANCES: 15/09 at 21:15 – 16/09 at 19:00

It’s Not What You Think… is a theatrical improvisation performance where every story is born live right in front of the audience. Prompts provided by the audience spark scenes created by three actors that begin in a seemingly clear reality, only to gradually reveal something completely different.

The characters become trapped in misunderstandings, absolute certitudes, and misinterpretations, until the truth unpredictably shifts. With humor, emotion, and compelling stage presence, the performance explores how easily we believe we know someone before we truly listen to them.

CREDITS

Directorial Supervision & Dramaturgy: “Glykes Regges” Improv Theatre Group

Concept – Creation – Music Curation: Claire Chatzigianni

Cast: Claire Chatzigianni, Giouli Vombiri, Ippokratis Trovas

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FOUNTOUNIA

PERFORMANCES: 16/09 at 21:15 – 17/09 at 19:00

A bag of Fountounia (hazelnut peanut puffs) opens inside an intercity bus, awakening a memory. As the bus continues its journey, the narrator travels in a different direction: back in time, to her relationship with her grandmother, Eleni. Through sounds, scents, small family stories, and a shared moment of vulnerability, she reconstructs the face of a woman who learned to love without ever saying it out loud. Fountounia is a story about what we inherit without realizing it, about memories that insist on returning, and about the moment we truly see another human being.

Fountounia is a work that explores the relationship between memory, family legacy, and the formation of personal identity. Its starting premise is that our identity is not formed solely through our own experiences, but is also shaped by the traces left on us by previous generations. Through the relationship between a granddaughter and her grandmother, the play examines how those who came before us continue to exist through the gestures, habits, fears, and ways of loving they pass down. The search for identity is treated as a journey, making the motif of travelling on an intercity bus the core narrative axis of the piece.

CREDITS

Text: Kornilia Papanastasiou

Directing: microdose

Dramaturgy: microdose

Cast (in alphabetical order): Maria Vlachou, Eri Marioglou, Melissanthi Mavridou

Production: microdose

FINE, THANK YOU

PERFORMANCES: 17/09 at 21:15 – 18/09 at 19:00

A room, a person, the world. Many everyday routes, many memories that feel handmade. So much life. And suddenly… a void. A void hatching inside a room. A person pierced by existence, involuntarily and painfully. Without warning. This is perhaps a depressive episode. This is perhaps an episode written by people who woke up one day not feeling “fine.” People of the modern world who look just like your best friend, your partner, your lover, your colleague, your sister, your son, a passerby—and who declare they are “fine.” After all, whatever you declare is enough. Right?

CREDITS

Directing / Movement Design: Katerina Kas

Set & Costume Design: Marilena Georgantzi

Trailer Video & Editing: Katerina Synapidou, Tonia Stefanatou

Performers: Katerina Kas

Voices: Fani Vlachou, reesejohanson, Argyro Kepesidi, Stavros Kolometsos, Katerina Synapidou, Tonia Stefanatou, Mandy Flessa

MARIA T.: A Life Story

PERFORMANCES: 18/09 at 21:15 – 19/09 at 19:00

Maria T., a 30-year-old Greek-French woman, is hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic following a suicide attempt. She acts like a wild animal—untamed, aggressive. She brutally abuses her children. A Monster-Mother, one might say. With the help of her psychotherapist, the thread of her life begins to unravel: maternal rejection, an invisible father, forbidden love, marriage, abortions, childbirths, deaths, faces, and masks. And amidst all of this, a girl. A girl desperately searching to find her own identity. Her own right to life.

The play is based on the true story recounted in the homonymous book by psychotherapist V.A. Riga. It relies on two voices: through Maria T.’s words, we hear the story of an abusive mother; through the voice of the psychotherapist, we catch glimpses of the psychological dynamics behind the story.

CREDITS

Written– Directed – Visual Supervision: Andreas Zachariadis

Maria T.: Anna Maria Iliou

Psychotherapist: Andreas Zachariadis

ORIENTAL ROUTES

PERFORMANCES: 19/09 at 21:15 – 20/09 at 19:00

Oriental Routes is a physical theatre journey that unfolds the history, evolution, and misunderstood nature of Oriental Dance (Belly Dance) through the centuries. From pre-Islamic fertility rituals in Mesopotamia and the worship of Goddess Isis, to the 19th-century Orientalist perspective, the golden era of “Casino Badia” in Cairo, and its arrival in Greece through Smyrnaean songs.

A central narrator (actor) acts as the connecting link between time and space, guiding the audience through five historical and geographical stations (Egypt, Persian Gulf, North Africa, Turkey/Lebanon, Greece). Each station comes to life through original choreography capturing the authentic technique and emotion of every region: from the grounded Baladi and ritualistic Guedra, to the dynamic Dabke and the liberating Greek tsifteteli.

The play is a tribute to womanhood, motherhood, empowerment, and the timeless power of movement and expression as a language of the soul. Far from a simple dance demonstration, it is a dramatized historical retrospective under the directorial supervision of Thodoris Eleftheriadis, redefining “Belly Dance” as a deeply sacred and universal art form, made by women for women.

CREDITS

Written and Directed by: Thodoris Eleftheriadis

Co-Writter and Choreographer / Dancer: Stavroula Karantzali

Choreographer / Dancer: Despoina Kouna

Choreographer / Dancer: Zafeirenia Ziggiridou

Actress / Narrator: Anna Rousali

KNOW THAT WHAT YOU HEAR IS A TRAIN WHISTLE

PERFORMANCES: 20/09 at 21:15 – 21/09 at 19:00

In a not-so-distant, yet familiarly bleak future, a new employee arrives at the notorious Office 20/4 of a state agency to assume her duties.

A work of social protest against crimes committed against migrants, pushbacks of refugees, and migrant tragedies in the Mediterranean.

The performance takes place in a dystopian, near future where the management of human life has turned into a cold, bureaucratic process. The play stands as a social and political indictment against crimes targeting migrants and refugees, pushbacks, and ongoing tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea. However, the focus is not only on documenting violence, but primarily on exposing the mechanisms that render it everyday, acceptable, and administratively manageable. Human beings cease to be seen as individuals and are turned into numbers, files, data, and official cases.

CREDITS

Cast: Alexandros Margaritis, Chara Matarelli, Nikolas Panos

Directing: Dimitris Karatzias

Music: Manos Antoniadis

Photography: Christina Fylaktopoulou

BUILDING ATHENS

PERFORMANCES: 21/09 at 21:15 – 22/09 at 19:00

Athens Drama or Building Athens is an original experimental performance project formatted as a one-act play that reflects on love, identity, the body, society, and the city through 11 urban vignettes (scenes) taking place simultaneously on a section of an Athenian sidewalk and inside an Athenian apartment.

Two young women converse. With each other. With the city. With themselves. They prepare to go out into the city. Or perhaps, they will never leave.

They are already in the city. 49 Valtetsiou Street.

CREDITS

Concept / Writting and Directing: Athanasia Tsifoutidou (studiotsif)

Performers: Athanasia Tsifoutidou, Eleni Panopoulou

Digital Art: Athanasia Tsifoutidou (studiotsif)

Photography: Stelios-Rafail Sakellariou

Voice-over: Eleni Kantidenou

ATMOSPHERE

PERFORMANCES: 22/09 at 21:15 – 23/09 at 19:00

Monologues of people caught between dream and reality, trapped in a dreamlike, nightmarish delirium—in an anxious search for their place, their function, and their existence in this world, or in the one we imagine.

A play dealing with the extreme boundaries of human nature. The stage setting is minimal, and people stagger as they try to survive the agonizing existential question reflected in Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, excerpts of which are used in the performance. The work also features live sounds, movement elements, original songs written specifically for the play, and recorded voice-overs.

CREDITS

Aikaterini Oikonomopoulou, Mariliza Chronea, Tasos Blatzios

THE BLACK CAT

PERFORMANCES: 23/09 at 21:15 – 24/09 at 19:00

Moments before his execution, a man asks to address an audience to tell his story—unhesitatingly confessing and diving into the darkest corners of his soul.

By touching upon such an extreme and dark monologue, one realizes the true value of life and love—much like Odysseus, who had to descend to Hades before he could move forward.

CREDITS

Concept – Adaptation: Dimitris Vamvakas

THOSE WHO COULD NOT FIT INTO WORDS

PERFORMANCES: 25/09 at 21:15 – 26/09 at 19:00

Those Who Could Not Fit Into Words by Thodoris Eleftheriadis is a polyphonic drama for three female voices.

It centers on Sofia, a woman trapped in a marriage of silent terror and absolute control exerted by her husband. When Sofia attempts a secret escape with her young daughter to visit her sick mother, a tragic accident leads to the child’s death. Crushed by guilt and fear, Sofia sinks into silence.

The play is a harrowing protest against patriarchal oppression, domestic psychological abuse, and the societal conventions that silence female existence.

CREDITS

Written and Directed by: Thodoris Eleftheriadis

Cast: Ira Damigou, Anna Rousali, Alkistis Panagidou

Music: Giannis Tsoutsias