Σαίξπηρ: Ό,τι προτιμάτε – Δραματική Σχολή Ωδείου Αθηνών

Twelfth Night, or What You Will plays at Megaron's Nikos Skalkotas Hall on 4 June 2026, staged by the Drama School of the Athens Conservatory under director Maria Savvidou. The fifteen-actor cast doubles roles through the evening — masks visible beneath masks — and the production sits inside the Megaron Underground series, which puts conservatory and student work on the venue's smaller stage.

The Athens Conservatory has been training musicians since 1871, and its Drama School operates as a parallel institution, sending each year's graduating cohort onto the Megaron stages as their final professional showcase. Maria Savvidou directs. Nikos Chatzopoulos provides the Greek translation — he is among the most-staged Shakespeare translators working in contemporary Greek theatre, with versions of The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Timon of Athens, and Troilus and Cressida circulating across the National Theatre and the regional repertory. Chatzopoulos translates as an actor, not as a philologist, choosing words that fit an actor's mouth and revising during rehearsals — which makes his texts the standard reference for productions like this one, where the cast is still learning to deliver Shakespearean rhythm in Greek.

The crowd splits two ways. Families and friends of the graduating actors fill the front rows knowing every entrance and every cut. Megaron regulars track the conservatory's annual showcase to watch the next generation move from drama-school exercises into professional repertoire — they will compare this Viola to last year's Antigone in the lobby afterwards.

What you watch is Shakespeare's most generous comedy of disguise — Viola washes ashore in Illyria after a shipwreck, dresses as a man, falls in love with the duke who hires her, and is loved in return by the duchess he has been courting. The play depends on the audience knowing more than the characters do, and the pleasure comes from watching the trap close: who is fooled, who half-knows, who pretends not to. Savvidou's rotating-mask staging adds a second layer — these are actors playing actors playing other actors, the fifteen-strong ensemble passing roles between them so the joke lives in the casting itself.

If you want a polished National Theatre production with a household-name lead, this is the school showcase, not that. But if you want to watch fifteen graduating actors take a single shot at the largest stage they have shared, this is the night the cohort exists as a cohort before the casting calls scatter them.

The Skalkotas Hall sits inside the Megaron Mousikis complex on Vasilissis Sofias and Kokkali, two minutes from Megaro Mousikis metro. Curtain at 21:00. Tickets are €15 standard, €10 reduced, through webtics.megaron.gr — the Megaron Underground series traditionally fills, and the smaller hall reaches capacity faster than the box office expects. Arrive thirty minutes early; the lobby flow at Megaron narrows at one cloakroom and queues form fast against the curtain.

A graduating cohort plays Shakespeare once together — after the curtain falls, professional casting calls scatter them.