#banou

My heart melted 🥺 I love Alpine for this article.

Her powerful voice resonates across the empty theatre. Actress and director Fotini Banou is preparing for a performance, “even though we don’t know when we’ll reopen,” she says. In mid-March, the Greek government decided to close cinemas, theatres, museums, archaeological sites, schools, universities and essentially all common spaces (except for supermarkets, pharmacies, hospitals and doctors’ offices) in order to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the country which has seen 4,279 cases to date, including 203 deaths. A scenario similar to the one that occurred in Italy would be a disaster for Greece, where the health system has suffered under ten years of austerity policies.

Since 18 May, the Acropolis of Athens has once again been accessible to the public, as are all of the country’s archaeological sites and museums. Open-air cinemas have been open to the public since June. Indoor theatres, however, remain closed. Banou and her colleague Dimitris Alexakis are currently waiting for official authorisation to reopen the curtains at TV Control Center (also known as KET), a theatre for artistic, social and political experimentation they founded together in the Kypseli district in the heart of Athens.

I may change my lioness cubs name tbh