Elli Papakonstantinou

Elli Papakonstantinou is a stage director, playwright, visual artist and cultural manager based in Athens, Greece. 

BA in directing at the University of Thessaloniki (Greece) M.A. and M.Phil in Drama and Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London (UK).

Elli creates performances with an emphasis on music, opera, new media and philosophical discourse and is the artistic director of international theatre company ODC Ensemble. During the crisis in Greece, she engaged herself beyond her “usual” role as stage director to become politically engaged entrepreneur and connector of different actors in society. She has founded and managed ‘Vyrsodepseio’, a 3.000 sq.m. bottom-up cultural space in Athens (2011-2017) and sat at the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Broadcasting Coorporation for two years.

Elli has lived in the UK for over a decade and has created and presented her work in international festivals and venues like: Edinburgh Festival, LaMaMa E.T.C., Prague Quadrennial 15, National Theatre of Greece, Inauguration Ceremony of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. In 2004, she spent Spring at the Music & Advanced Media Department, at Princeton University with a “Fulbright Artist’s Award 2004-5” and a “Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Fellowship”. Elli has been commissioned by and presented site specific big scale projects at the European Capitals of Culture “Valetta18” and “Eleusis21”. She has also been credited with a “First Prize Award” at the Edinburgh Festival, (UK) and a “First Prize Award” for the REP, Birmingham (UK). Her last creations Revolt AthenΣ and Cave tour internationally. 

Elli is currently a visiting scholar at the CCRMA with a “Fulbright Award 2018-19, Stanford University, USA for her upcoming creation Oedipus: Sex with Mum was blinding, supported by the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Neon foundation and the Warburg Institute, University of London. 

She is also commissioned by Festival de Regionen to present new work inside the Concentration Camp of “Mauthausen” in Austria (july 2019).