Dimitris Rontiris

Dimitris Rontiris, also spelled Rondiris, was born in 1899. Sources name either Poros or Piraeus as his birthplace, but he grew up in Piraeus and remained closely attached to the port city all his life. He turned to the stage and later studied abroad, where he worked with the director Max Reinhardt and became his assistant, an experience that shaped his taste for large, carefully drilled ensembles.

In the early 1930s he joined the newly founded Royal Theatre in Athens, today’s National Theatre of Greece, as a director and drama teacher. After the death of Fotos Politis in 1934 he became its chief director, a post he held until 1942 and again from 1946 to 1950. In 1939 he took the company to London with Hamlet and Electra. In 1957 he founded the Piraikon Theatre (Πειραϊκό Θέατρο) in cooperation with the Municipality of Piraeus. With this company he presented ancient tragedy in Greek ancient theatres and on tours in Europe, North and South America and Asia; in 1963, for example, the company was a guest of the Berliner Festtage (Berlin Festival Days). His final production was Sophocles’ Electra in 1978, forty years after his first Epidaurus Electra. He died in Athens on 20 December 1981.

Rontiris directed a wide repertoire, including Shakespeare: his 1937 Hamlet at the Royal Theatre had Alexis Minotis in the title role, with Katina Paxinou and Aimilios Veakis. His decisive work, however, was in ancient tragedy. In September 1938 he staged Sophocles’ Ηλέκτρα (Electra) at Epidaurus, the first modern performance of ancient drama in that theatre. It began in the late afternoon, without scenery or electric lighting, before about 3,500 spectators. Paxinou played Electra, Eleni Papadaki Clytemnestra and Thanos Kotsopoulos Orestes, and a reviewer praised the synchronised movement of the sixty women in the chorus.

In 1949 his Ορέστεια (Oresteia) at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus cast Marika Kotopouli as Clytemnestra, and in 1954 his Ιππόλυτος (Hippolytus) at Epidaurus became a landmark of the newly established festival. The chorus was at the centre of his method: large, rhythmic and strictly disciplined, mostly choreographed by Loukia Sakellariou. In an interview he explained that one interlude in Electra used steps taken from the Greek dance syrtos, adapted to the play. Critics admired this precision but sometimes found it cold, and some felt that chorus and actors were not fully united. At the Piraikon Theatre, Aspasia Papathanasiou became his Electra in productions that toured abroad, including London in 1961.

Scholars see Rontiris as the founder of the National Theatre’s tradition of staging ancient tragedy, later developed by Alexis Minotis and Takis Mouzenidis. In Piraeus he is remembered as the city’s own teacher of ancient drama: in 2016 his daughter donated his archive to the Municipality of Piraeus, and in 2017 the central stage of the Piraeus Municipal Theatre was named after him. The National Theatre’s digital archive holds programmes, photographs and press reviews of his productions. Try this: find a photograph of one of his Electra productions there, then describe the chorus in two Greek sentences, one saying what it does and one saying how, for example Ο χορός προχωρά αργά προς το κέντρο (The chorus moves slowly towards the centre). Then compare your sentences with his own explanation of the syrtos steps.

• The 1938 Epidaurus Electra was played in daylight, starting in the late afternoon, because the site had no electricity.
• He worked as an assistant to Max Reinhardt, one of the leading directors in Berlin.
• His Piraikon Theatre was a guest of the Berliner Festtage in 1963.
• The central stage of the Piraeus Municipal Theatre has carried his name since 2017.