Andreas Skourtis is a Greek-born London-based practicing architect, scenographer, and Lecturer in Scenography at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama – University of London. He studied architecture, drama, and holds an MA in Scenography from Wimbledon College of Arts. His studio Performing Architectures creates buildings, performance designs, installations and educational activities. Theatres, abandoned buildings, urban outdoors locations and landscapes, a house, a flat, a bar and his olive grove, are spaces used in past projects. Architectural designs include a New Performing Arts Centre in Uganda, and the new studio of Athens National Theatre, a transformable space that won a ‘Gold Medal for Best Work in Theatre Architecture and Performance Space’ at the Prague Quadrennial 2011. He has also curated and designed exhibitions for PQ15 and PQ19, including the exhibition design of Staging Places: UK Design for Performance 2015-19 in Prague and the V&A. He is national co-curator of the Greek entry in the Exhibition of Countries and Regions, co-curator of the UK entry in the Student Exhibition, and independent participant in the Performance Space Exhibition, at PQ23.

 

Production Title: IN[a]HABIT

 

Role: Performance designer/scenographer

 

Production Response

How can we create a scenographic toolbox – a set of design principles instead of a ‘set’ – that will allow scenography to be co-designed, co-curated and co-created through teamwork between dancers, choreographer, scenographer, and the creative team? With this question as a starting point, without a fixed narrative, or choreography, and using many rolls of paper in a dynamic design process, during several residencies and rehearsals in Athens, from November 2021 to June 2022, we created IN[a]HABIT, a contemporary dance performance that explores the way we live-in, live-with, co-exist and co-create; a scenography that can be fluid, surprising and unpredictable, using a sole material and the performing bodies, to create spatial metaphors.

 

Year: June 2022

 

Location/Venue: Synchrony Teatro, Athens, Greece

 

Credits

Company: CREO Dance Company

Author: devised by the company

Choreographer: Paulina Kremasta

Original music: Babis Papadopoulos

Lighting designer: Melina Mascha

Photography and graphic design: Panos Andrianos