Biography
Lena Kitsopoulou was born in Athens in 1971 and graduated from the Art Theater Drama School in 1994 and has since worked as an actress in the theater and the cinema. Her first collection of short stories, "Bats" (Kedros Publishers) came out in 2006 and won the Debut Author Prize of the Diavazo magazine. Two more short story collections have followed since, "Big Roads" and "Fish Eye" (both from Metechmio Publications) as well as the novella "M.A.I.R.O.U.L.A.", initially written as a monologue for the National Theater, which has since been translated into a number of languages and has been performed in various theaters around the world (England, Spain, France). Lena Kitsopoulou writes and directs for the theater. Her play "Athanasios Diakos – The Return" (Athens Festival, 2012) was awarded the 2013 International Authorprize in Stückemarkt, Heidelberg. Her play "Little Red Riding Hood – First Blood", which was performed in May 2014 in the Onassis Cultural Center and the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, was also presented as reader’s theater in the Saint Gervais Theater in Geneva. Her play "A Day like Any day in a Flat (…) or The Futility of Living" (Art Theater, 2015) was performed in December 2016 in the Saint Gervais Theater in Geneva. In October 2016, her new work "Antigone – Lonely Planet" was presented in the Onassis Cultural Center of New York. Apart from her own plays, she has also directed plays by Grigorios Xenopoulos ("Hail Nymph"), Yorgos Chronas, ("The Woman of Patras") and Federico García Lorca ("Blood Wedding", Athens Festival, 2014). In February 2016, she directed Ibsen’s "Hedda Gabler" in the Oberhausen Τheater in Germany. Her plays and other works are performed by various theater companies in Greece and abroad. In May 2017, she wrote and directed the play "Tyrannosauri Rex" for the National Theater Experimental Stage. The updated version of “Antigone-Lonely Planet” was staged at the Onassis Stegi Upper Stage, between December of 2018 and January of 2019. The play was performed at Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, and then at the Public Theater, New York, as part of the “Onassis Festival: Democracy Is Coming” (April 2019). In December 2019 her first solo exhibition with paintings and sculptures, entitled “Between my Legs,” was presented at Breeder gallery. Her new play, “CRY,” will premiere at Théâtre Saint-Gervais, Geneva, in December of 2021.
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