The director makes use of virtual reality and AI tools so as to transfer the viewer on stage.
Yolanda Markopoulou
The unexplored mixed reality
Text: Dimitra Kehagia
Yolanda Markopoulou directs performances – often ambulant ones – in cultural venues, streets, city squares, campings, and more recently in virtual reality environments. In her own words: “It’s just another walking experience, the only difference being the digital surroundings. The medium is creating a unique experience for the viewer each and every time, and that’s where I wish to place emphasis on.”
The driving force and the guiding direction behind her projects lie in the experiences she aims to offer the audience. “In everything I do, this is the element I’m primarily interested in. That’s why Synergeio, in Metaxourgeio, where I used to showcase my work, included multiple spaces rather than a single scene, suitable for a series of different or even interconnected actions, providing the audience with a multifaceted experience.
In the multicultural neighborhood of Metaxourgeio she founded in 2009 the art workshop Station Athens, joining forces with Margarita Papadopoulou and Daphne Kalafati. Once a week, through photography, video, art therapy and theatre, immigrants and refugees, mostly adolescents, had the chance to meet up and express themselves with the mediation of art.
Station Athens is composed of refugees and immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who present personal stories to the audience, by intertwining documentary and fiction. “Mind the fact” cultural initiative offered valuable help to this endeavor, so that real stories could be presented by the very people who experienced them first-hand. Their most recent performance titled Connection Error won the 2nd Audience Award within the framework of the Grape-Greek Agora of Performance, an initiative launched by the Athens-Epidaurus Festival with the aim of systematically promoting Greek artists in the international theatre and dance scene.
In 2015-2016, when the great refugee wave from the Middle East, and especially Syria, arrived in Greece, the director consciously chose to put a temporary halt to touching upon the refugee issue in her work. The reason behind such a decision, as she explains, is that she does not wish to portray on stage what is currently under the limelight of attention in real life, opting to take her time so as to process the events.
Yolanda Markopoulou studied cinema in the USA, and upon her return to Greece she got involved with theatre, which won her over mainly thanks to the vibrant contact with the actors and the audience, the room for creative freedom, but also because the staging of a theatre play takes way less time than the making of a film. “Sometimes I get pretty impatient. Whenever I’m overwhelmed with thoughts and ideas I wish to share with the audience, or when I feel the urgent need to say something out loud and engage into a dialogue, the time span of a theatre production is closer to my desires,” she admits.
It’s a huge challenge to create material that has the power to get young people involved and bring them to the theatre. While there’s an overabundance of theatre shows, especially in Athens, it’s a shame that we lack a niche repertoire targeted to the teenage audience. Plays that are in a position to converse in the same way both with adolescents and adults.
On the other hand, cinema remains her great passion, and an even greater challenge. She has directed many short films and documentaries, and over the last years she has taken on a new genre, virtual reality films, a field she explores with great zeal. “I am really into the relation between art and technology, and what it can bring about in the sphere of public dialogue. The area of mixed reality is an unexplored field, offering so much room for experimentation.”
Always having in mind the experience offered to the audience, the director makes use of virtual reality and AI tools so as to transfer the viewer on stage. This comes as a real challenge for her, as she is particularly interested in mixed reality, that is to offer the viewer the possibility to permeate into the digital world while never losing touch with reality.
As for theatre, she firmly believes it should hold a key place in the everyday life of all people, especially children and teenagers, while stressing that a more generous state funding is needed for theatre performances to travel all over Greece. The play After the Party by Maria Zavakou, directed by Yolanda Markopoulou in the fall of 2024 for the National Theatre of Greece, is addressed to an adolescent audience, inviting teenagers, parents and teachers to take a stand before a case of online bullying.
“It’s a huge challenge to create material that has the power to get young people involved and bring them to the theatre. While there’s an overabundance of theatre shows, especially in Athens, it’s a shame that we lack a niche repertoire targeted to the teenage audience. Plays that are in a position to converse in the same way both with adolescents and adults,” she mentions.
According to her, a way to win this audience over is to accord space on stage, to make sure that what’s being portrayed there mirrors parts of their life. “Plays that can provide solutions or answers to their questions, even though it’s too difficult to compete against the moving image,” points out the director. New technologies, AI tools and live music on stage – as in the staging of Eroica – are the means through which she attempts to approach the younger audience. She enjoys starting out on a blank page and letting her work take shape in the course of time, through the ideas and the interaction of all parties involved.
During the 63rd Thessaloniki International Film Festival, and within the framework of the Immersive section, she presented the installation White Dwarf, which went on to be showcased at the Benaki Museum and in international festivals. As for her upcoming plans in cinema, the films Paradise Lost and Cappadocia Street are already at the pre-production stage.
