Conversations in ten questions 97: Anestis Azas
Photo: Giannis PapaioannouIn 2024, Anestis Azas, the playwright (though Azas has conceived the original concept, he co-authored the script with Gerasimos Bekas and Michalis Pitidis) and director of The Republic of Baklava, returned to Istanbul with his new play, The Dogs, which also premiered at the Athens Epidaurus Festival and received the first place in the Audience Award category. The Dogs is a political allegory blending Aristophanic comedy with film noir; it centers on the killing of a husky in the town of Arachova, bringing a team of canine detectives to the stage to investigate the crime. With The Dogs, Azas once again poses a fundamental question: in a society where the powerless are routinely subjected to violence, in whose hands does justice truly reside?
Born in Thessaloniki in 1978, Anestis Azas moved to Berlin after completing his theater studies at Aristotle University, where he went on to study directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts. He served as an assistant to both Dimiter Gotscheff and Rimini Protokoll; indeed, it was through the juxtaposition of these two figures that Azas’s own methodology emerged almost organically; on one side, weighty, text-embedded existential inquiries; on the other, the rigorous investigation of reality characteristic of documentary theater. Azas is a writer-director who has blended these two approaches to discover his own distinct voice. Furthermore, as a result of his long-standing collaboration with Prodromos Tsinikoris, the duo has produced a series of plays since 2011 that bring to the stage themes such as Greece’s economic crisis, migration, identity conflicts, and privatization policies; between 2015 and 2019, they also co-directed the Experimental Stage of the National Theatre of Greece. Indeed, Azas’s first encounter with Istanbul audiences took place in 2019, with the production Clean City, which was presented as part of the IKSV Theater Festival. In this humorous documentary theater piece, which uses a performance that is at once witty and incisive to dissect the "cleanliness" discourse that emerged at the height of the Greek crisis, (a rhetoric that scapegoated immigrants for all of society's "filth") the duo turned to the stories of five female cleaners hailing from Albania, South Africa, the Philippines, Bulgaria, and Moldova in order to answer the question: who, in concrete reality, actually cleans the city?
We had previously hosted Tsinikoris in our Conversations in Ten Questions series in the context of Clean City. Our conversation with Azas, however, we were finally able to hold this June, in connection with the two plays set to be presented at Paribu Art. We recommend that you do not miss The Dogs, to be staged on June 2–3, or, in particular The Republic of Baklava, which will take the stage on June 6–7.
What is the essence of theatre in your opinion?
There is a parabel from a film by the Romanian director Radu Jude, which refers to cinema, but I think it also applies to every form of art; it applies perfectly to theater, and refers to the myth of Perseus and Medusa: Perseus cannot look directly at Medusa because if he does, her gaze will turn him to stone. To face her, he uses a shield; Medusa is reflected on the surface of the shield, and thus Perseus can fight her. Perseus’s shield is the function of art: we cannot look directly at the horror of the world; we can only confront it through its reflection. Art—theater, in our case—offers us this reflection.
Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?
Absolutely. At the same time, however, I believe that the process of creating a work of art can be transformative, primarily for those who create it, not necessarily for those who consume it. I’ve worked many times on productions with non-professional performers, and during the rehearsal process we immediately notice changes in people’s behavior; you see that through the rehearsal process, their perceptions and approach to certain issues also change.I remember in a project with a large group of people, there was a very conservative, right-wing man—we might even call him a racist—, who, after a few days of rehearsals, had become very close friends with a foreign woman; he realized that what he hated wasn’t so hateful after all. But life anyhow changes us; our experiences and our engagement with what we do change us. Think of the people who have experienced war. I believe in the therapeutical function of art. Perhaps our engagement with art can heal us and give meaning to our lives, in the sense that we have an opportunity to give expression to our senses and emotions.
When you are working on a piece, what sources inspire you? Do dreams play a role in your works?
Everything plays a role—everyday encounters, songs, movies, dreams. I would say, however, that I don’t believe so much in inspiration, but rather in discipline, work, and perseverance in whatever you do. Basically, when I’m working on a project, I like to immerse myself completely in the process and delve into that labyrinth of ideas, images and arguments, as if I were digging in a tunnel, until something valuable, something meaningful appears.
When do you decide to give a title to a work you are working on if it already does not have one?
Sometimes it comes spontaneously; sometimes the title comes first and then everything else, as was, oddly enough, the case with The Republic of Baklava, one of the plays we’ll be performing at Paribu. Other times it needs a lot of trials and refinement; you have to poll your friends to see which title piques their interest, but in the end, the title doesn’t matter that much.
What matters is the play.
Are there any artist or person whom you think influenced your art most? And if there is such an artist or person, who?
Off the top of my head, I’d say I really love Jarmusch’s films, Francis Bacon’s paintings, and rebetiko music. In reality, though, there are countless artists I admire, and I love “borrowing” elements from everywhere.
When you consider the current state of the world in every sense, what is the most important and urgent issue for you as an artist?
The injustice that prevails in the world, the fact that wealth has been concentrated in the hands of a very, very small group of people—tech feudal lords—who can do whatever they want, with the result that we are heading toward a global oligarchy. As if democracy comes to an end. As a politically minded individual, you feel terrifyingly powerless in the face of this situation. As if barbarism is returning with a vengeance, now aided by technology.
Furthermore, in our time, we cannot ignore what is happening in Gaza and the wider region of Palestine. It is the first coordinated attempt at ethnic cleansing by a Western state in the 21st century; this causes immense sorrow, bewilderment, but also anger. Especially when you see that all Western states have accepted it with cynicism. Why is it so difficult to reach a peace agreement and give this people a piece of land, so they can have their own country? Shouldn’t this horror end at some point?
On the other hand, however, beyond the world’s major problems, I believe that artists are always in a state of inner crisis; if things within them were peaceful and serene, perhaps there would be no need for expression. In my case, my personal anger, based on my lived experience, is largely directed against the petty-bourgeois, racist, Christian narrow-mindedness—that is, the dominant environment in the country where I live, Greece.
You create works that span classical texts, contemporary plays and documentary theatre, often with a strong socio-political focus. How do you navigate the tension between documentary theatre, using ‘real’ material, testimony, investigation, and the need for dramatic form and metaphor in your work? When you pick a social issue, how do you decide what to keep literally and what to transform poetically?
Although I am indeed inspired by reality and I am doing documentary theatre, I think that when I start working on a project with my team—that begins usually, by developing a new text—we always begin with the simple questions, the ones we all learn in our first year in the drama school: who is speaking? What are they saying? To whom are they saying it? Where are we? It certainly helps to set limits and rules; usually, limits free the imagination, and in the end, the principle that “less is more” holds true. I strongly believe in what we call collective creation; I try to create conditions during rehearsals that are creative for the actors and the rest of the crew, so that they can express themselves and give their best. From there on, the dramaturgy develops through discussions within the group and the feedback we get from the rehearsal itself. Whatever we may say, however, nothing in theater has ever been resolved by discussing it; we seek practical solutions on stage and make decisions accordingly.
In The Dogs, your choice to have dogs as protagonists investigating violence inflicted by humans suggests a reversal of typical hierarchies. How does this animal-perspective function as allegory in the piece, and what does it reveal about human society, vulnerability and collective action?
Dogs is an allegory and can be read as a response to a series of judicial cover-up scandals that have particularly preoccupied public opinion in Greece recently. Dogs are animals we love—smart but also funny creatures that sometimes do very silly things, animals that can also become wild and dangerous if you don’t respect them. The play is based on a true story, but it then explores various ideas about justice that go beyond the specific incident. The idea that the dogs themselves are the protagonists of this story—the detectives who will solve the murder of one of their own—is simply an attempt to speak the language of the fairy tale. The dogs will try to overturn the existing hierarchy and punish the perpetrator- a human- in their own way.
You have been in Istanbul with three of your works; Clean City (2019), The Republic of Baklava (2023) and most recently The Dogs (2025), the last two of them featuring the Turkish actor Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu. Could you tell us about how you two met and your collaboration over the years.
We met when I was looking for a lead actor for the play The Republic of Baklava from Turkey: The basic idea was to explore nationalism today through the perspective of a mixed-nationality couple—a Greek woman and a Turkish man—who met in a neutral Western country but decided to live in modern-day Greece. The project is also a mockumentary; although the premise is fictional, we present it as if it actually happened, so I absolutely needed a lead actor from Turkey who could bring that lived experience to the role. A mutual friend of ours, Alexandra Kazazou, who had conducted some workshops with actors in Istanbul, introduced us, and then I remembered that I had seen Cem in a Netflix series, The Ottomans, where he played Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in a series that recounted the fall of Constantinople. I thought this was a good sign and a nice irony for the Greek audience—to have Mehmed the Conqueror in the play! It was fortunate that, despite his usually busy schedule, he was able to come to Athens for rehearsals. We subsequently became friends and collaborators, as he is a great actor with immense talent and, at the same time, a wonderful person with whom we share a similar approach to theater and the world.
The version in Turkish was published in unlimited.
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