Quadruple Opening | Athens | June 7

The Athens-Epidaurus Festival (aefestival.gr) is inaugurating its program at the cool Pireos 260 venue with a feast of shows for the week starting on June 7. On Stage D, avant-garde Russian theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov is making his Greek debut with a performance expressing his opposition to Moscow and its invasion of Ukraine. “Der Wij,” featuring Russian, Ukrainian and German actors, each performing in their own language, encapsulates his opposition and indignation. On Stage E, local talent Natasha Triantafylli presents “Marshall Plan – Α Path of Perspectives,” which is inspired by the report for Greece compiled in 1947 by US delegate Paul Porter, in which he described a country “in the grip of a gray, unrelieved, profound lack of faith in the future.” Another Greek director, Giorgos Koutlis, is taking over Stage H with a rerun of Marius von Mayenburg’s “The Dog, the Night and the Knife,” described as a “paranoid and brutally funny parable of our absurd reality.” Last but not least, there’s a dance performance at Stage B, from the Thessaloniki-based En Dynamei Ensemble, returning to Pireos 260 with “The Utopians,” a show created in cooperation with internationally acclaimed Viennese choreographer Michael Klein. There is also a mini-jazz festival taking place on June 7-9 in the venue’s open area.