International Summer Festivals: all the world's a stage.(Events calendar)(Epidaurus Festival of Greek Drama)(Directory)

American Theatre, May, 2005 by Estvanik, Nicole; Johnson, Cassandra

EPIDAURUS, GREECE: There are 10,000 pairs of ears--give or take a few--in this photograph of the theatre at Epidaurus. Yet even the quietest of onstage whispers reaches them all without a single microphone, thanks to the famous acoustics of this ancient space, which slept under a hilltop for hundreds of years before its 20th-century excavation. This summer's Epidaurus Festival of Greek Drama features the familiar whispers--and exclamations--of Oedipus, Antigone, Orestes and Medea (whose story closes the festival, courtesy of German director Peter Stein). The program also includes a trio of plays by Aristophanes. Peace, presented by the State Theatre of Northern Greece and adapted and directed by Yannis Iordanidis, is a reminder that the world--more than 2,300 years...