Martha Frintzila

Martha Frintzila was born in 1972 in Elefsina (ancient Eleusis), west of Athens, and grew up there. She studied music and theatre, and in 1993 began working as a professional actress. Her first roles were at the National Theatre of Greece, in Euripides’ Medea directed by Nikos Charalambous and George Orwell’s Animal Farm directed by Dimitris Potamitis. In the following years she appeared in Sophocles’ Electra directed by Lydia Koniordou (1996), Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (1997) and Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis (2002), and in Alexandros Papadiamantis’s Η Φόνισσα (The Murderess), directed by Sotiris Hatzakis at the Politeia Theatre from 1998 to 2000.

She has also directed since 1996. In 1999 she became director of the company Δρόμος με Δέντρα (Road with Trees), and from 2000 to 2009 she co-ran the Kratiras arts space in Athens. In 2010 she began running Baumstrasse, an independent space for theatre, music and workshops in the Votanikos district of Athens, and in 2012 the Attiko School of Ancient Drama, which has held seminars in Elefsina. She taught acting at the National Theatre’s drama school and has given lessons in traditional Greek song since 2002. Abroad, she has worked with Princeton University, Stockton University in New Jersey and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

As a singer, Frintzila moves between traditional song, rebetiko and Greek art song. Her earliest recording credit is Vasilis Skoulas’s album Αναστορούμαι (I Remember, 1998). From 2003 she performed with the composer Thanasis Papakonstantinou and sang on his live album Τα ζωντανά (The Live Ones, 2004). She later gave concerts with Maria Farantouri, Tania Tsanaklidou and Lena Platonos, and shared a live programme with Haris Alexiou in 2010. She is the lead singer of the Kubara Project, and her own albums include Η Μάρθα Φριντζήλα τραγουδά Θέμο Σκανδάμη (Martha Frintzila Sings Themos Skandamis, 2011) and a live recording with the pianist Takis Farazis (2014).

In the theatre she has directed Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles, often for festivals connected with Elefsina. Her Βάκχες (The Bacchae) was staged at the Aischyleia festival in Elefsina in 2013 and in 2017 at the Ancient Stadium of Epidaurus, with music by Vasilis Mantzoukis; she directed, acted and sang. In January 2021, with theatres closed by the pandemic, the National Theatre streamed her Μήδεια – Medea’s Son(g)s from its new Research Stage, in a translation by Nikoletta Frintzila; she directed it and played Medea herself. The English subtitle plays on the words sons and songs. Before the stream she compared theatre on a screen to a wedding or a baptism that relatives follow only from their screens.

Frintzila’s influence runs through teaching as much as performance. Baumstrasse in Votanikos is home to her company Δρόμος με Δέντρα and hosts workshops on traditional song, the voice and ancient tragedy, alongside concerts by other musicians. The Attiko School of Ancient Drama began in 2012 in Elefsina, the town of the ancient Mysteries where she was born; its seminars now take place at Baumstrasse. The National Theatre’s digital archive, searchable through SearchCulture.gr, keeps the credits and Karol Jarek’s photographs of her Medea.

A task for learners: read her Greek sentence «αυτό είναι και το θέατρο: ένα μυστήριο που δεν υφίσταται χωρίς μάρτυρες» (that is what theatre is too: a mystery that does not exist without witnesses) aloud twice, first pausing at the colon, then running straight through, and note which word each version stresses.

• In 2007 the ARTE series Visages d’Europe devoted a documentary to her, Bienvenue chez Martha (Welcome to Martha’s), by Timon Koulmasis and Iro Siafliaki.
• In February 2015 she gave a demonstration of Greek songs titled Α-Ω (A to Omega) with student musicians at Princeton University.
• The 2021 livestream of her Medea offered optional English subtitles, so viewers abroad could follow a Greek tragedy performed in Modern Greek.