Rena Georgiadou

She was born in Athens, the daughter of the architect and restorer of Byzantine monuments Konstantinos Georgiadis and the opera singer Niki Iliadou. She studied scenography, costume design, and art history at the School of Fine Arts in Rome and foreign languages at the University of Rome. She was the first woman to hold the position of Head of the Technical Department of the National Theatre of Greece (2001), a role and responsibilities she had previously exercised on a smaller scale as Head of the Technical Department of the state unit in the traveling Thespis Chariot (1975).

From her early steps, she connected architecture with scenography, considering it as a basis for complex theatrical constructions. Her interest in architecture developed when she decided to study the peculiarities of octagonal Byzantine churches, which also formed the subject of her dissertation: The octagonal Byzantine churches. Architecture and mosaics.

After completing her studies in Italy, she returned to Athens and taught at the Athens Technological Institute – Doxiadis School (1965 – 1968), while simultaneously making her first professional scenography in the theater, in the Greek Scene of Anna Synodinou, in Pirandello’s play Lady Marlì (1966).

At the beginning of her career, she worked for four years at the state television RAI TV (1969 – 1973), thanks to the Italian ENI scholarship, gaining significant experience and technical knowledge. She belonged to the generation of women of the ’70s who made a dynamic entry into scenography and was the first woman to work on a production with her own stage design – at the State Theater of Northern Greece with the performance Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides, at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus (1972).

She collaborated with all the state theaters (National Theater, State Theater of Northern Greece, Opera, Municipal Regional Theaters) and many private theater companies (Antigoni Valakou – Alekos Alexandrakis, Vasia Panagopoulou, Giorgos Kimoulis, Theater “Under the Bridge”, etc.). She also worked with most Greek directors: Kostis Michaelides, Thanos Kotsopoulos, Andreas Philippides, Nikos Hatziskos, Mitsos Lygizos, Alexis Solomos, Spiros Evangelatos, Andreas Voutsinas, Kostas Tsianos, Giorgos Messalas, and others.

She has designed sets and costumes for more than 120 works of international and Greek drama, as well as for major television productions such as: The Last Farewell, Against the Wind, Bridal Rehearsal, Love Arrived a Day Late, and others.

She taught scenography at the Drama School of the National Theatre for twenty years (1988 – 2008).

She passed away on 20/8/2019.

Source: National Theatre of Northern Greece