Queer Places:
Glyfada Golf Club of Athens, Kon/nou Karamanli, Glifada 166 10, Greece
Athens First Cemetery
Athens, Regional unit of Athens, Attica, Greece
Karolos Koun (September 13, 1908 in Bursa – February 14, 1987 in Athens) was a prominent Greek theater director, widely known for his lively staging of ancient Greek plays.
In the 1970s and 1980s, cultural life in Greece was dominated by three gay men:
Manos Hadjidakis, painter
Yiannis Tsarouchis, and theatrical director Karolos Koun, each one crucially influencing different domains and all together inspiring Greece’s overall culture after WW2. They were all openly gay, and at the same time friends with the (very strictly straight) President of the Republic Constantine Karamanlis. On Sundays, they’d often dine together at the Glyfada Golf Club, never matter who was what or who they fell in love with.
Koun was born in Bursa, Ottoman Empire to a Greek mother and a Polish Jewish father. He was educated in Ottoman Turkey until the end of high school. He graduated from Robert College in Istanbul and then went to Sorbonne for his university education. As his family's economic situation worsened, he couldn't continue his education.
He had been praised all over Europe for his bawdy, colorful stagings of the 5th century BC political comedies of Aristophanes. In 1942, he founded the experimental Art Theater and its drama school.[1]
Koun gave premieres in Athens of works by avant-garde European playwrights such as
Bertolt Brecht and Luigi Pirandello. In 1962, Koun's production of The Birds by Aristophanes won first prize at an international festival at Paris. He also directed many plays by Aristophanes like The Frogs, Peace (play), Thesmophoriazusae, Lysistrata, and The Acharnians.
He worked with famed actress Melina Mercouri. She played Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire which was staged by Koun's Art Theater.[2] Other playwrights that Koun introduced to Greek audiences include
Jean Genet,
Federico García Lorca and Eugène Ionesco. He also directed modern and classic plays like A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Murder of Marat, and Greek plays like The Karaghiozis almost Vizier by George Skourtis and The Babylon by Dimitris Byzantios.
Koun collaborated with famous Greeks like Manos Xatzidakis, George Bakalo, Odysseas Elytis, Giannis Tsarouxis, Rallou Manoy, Basilis Rotas, Zouzou Nikoloudi, Maria Kynigou Mikis Theodorakis. Technis Theatre managed to be one of the more successful theatres in Greece and the world. The Birds travelled all over the world like other theatre performances like Lysistrata, which was presented to London with Oedipus Rex. Koun had many students who continued the theatre after
his death.
He stayed politically active all his life which had a direct impact on his not having financial security in his life. His theater was responsible for training the golden generation of Greek movie actors.
Karolos Koun died on February 14, 1987, after suffering a heart attack, aged 79.[3]
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