Yiannis Panagopoulos

Photograph: Elina Giounanli

Yiannis Panagopoulos is an actor, director and professor of acting. Graduate of the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece, the Athens University of Economics and Business (Department of European and International Economics) and the MA “Theatre and Society: Theory, Staging and Didactics” (Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Theatre Studies, University of Peloponnese) while he is currently a Ph.D. candidate with a Phd Working Title: “Cultural Democracy: How Theater aims for Social Change The example of the National Theatre of Greece”. He has worked both as an actor and director at the National Theatre of Greece, the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, the Onassis Stegi, the Athens Concert Hall, the “Karolos Koun” Art Theatre, the Municipal Musical Theater "Olympia-Maria Kallas and in the Theseum Ensemble. He has collaborated with directors such as St. Livathinos, C. Grauzinis, N. Chatzopoulos, T. Tzamargias, L. Kitsopoulou, S. Vgenopoulou, El. Pega, Ch. Kapsouli, Ar. Troupakis, T. Pyrgieris, El. Efthimiou, Ar. Laskos among others.

In 2018, he worked as an associate director of the National Theater in the play "Orphan Zhao", directed by Wan Xiaojin, in the framework of the bilateral intergovernmental agreement of the National Theaters of Greece and China.

From 2018 to 2020, he worked with Sofia Vgenopoulos at  the program "Theatre in Greek" of the National Theater, in which refugee teenagers, Greek teenagers and actors from the National Theater worked together with the aim of raising awareness and gaining encouragement through the theatrical experience of learning the Greek language. He was also a guest tutor at the program for teenagers "Meet the directors of the National Theatre."

During the period 2019-2020 he was responsible for monitoring and documenting the program of the National Theater "The Theater in the New School" in 20 schools in 8 Regions of the country while in the period 2022-2023 he was responsible for the program "Upgrading the Drama School of the National Theater".

He served as artistic curator at the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Special Olympics 2011 in Athens and as Deputy Artistic Director for the candidacy of the city of Messolonghi as the European Capital of Culture in 2021. He was also the Deputy General Secretary of the Hellenic Actors’ Union from 2022 to 2024 and Chairman of International Relations and Corresponding member of the Disciplinary Board from 2020 till present.

From 2019 to 2024 he has been teaching the course of Acting/ Improvisation at the Drama School of the Piraeus Association.

In 2021 he co-founded along with Zoe Mylonas and Dimos Klimenof the NOVUS Theatre Ensemble .

From September 2024 he lives and works in Berlin while continuing his Phd research as a scholar of the Greek State Scholarship Foundation, next to Rimini Protokoll and Hochschule für Schauspielkunst (HfS) Ernst Busch.

The Urban Non-Profit Company NOVUS Theatre Ensemble was founded in January 2021 by its members, Yiannis Panagopoulos, Zoe Mylonas and Demosthenes Klimenof after their need to implement the common, dual nature of their studies and occupations, that of the artist and the graduate of social and humanities studies.

Zoe Mylona is also an actor and director in the field of theater, with studies in social sciences and experimental multimedia application at Emerson College in Boston.

Finally, Demosthenes Klimenof , set & costume designer and performer, completes his studies in the Department of Social Anthropology at Panteion University. The members of the group are active in the field of performing arts with sensitivity to social and humanitarian issues.

Already before the establishment of the NOVUS company, its three founding members had collaborated in the field of theater repeatedly with success in productions and programs such as:

  • “Thucydides Dramaticus: The Theater of War” (2016-2017), 

  • “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men”   by David Foster Wallace (2017), 

  • “. ..Et Moralite” by Octave Mirbeau at Kefallinias Theatre (2018),

  • “Blue Liquid or The sky doesn’t look so good from Solonos” at the Experimental Stage -1 of the National Theatre of Greece (2019) etc.. 

The three of them officially set up NOVUS Theatre Ensemble with the aim of the interdisciplinary approach to the social application of the performing and visual arts, the empowerment of social groups, as well as the effort for artistic decentralization, through the networking of artists from the region and abroad.