For MENTOR in Culture, site-specific performances do not constitute a parallel or fragmentary artistic activity. On the contrary, they express in a very substantial way the very core of our logic: the belief that culture acquires real value when it activates the relationship between people, place, memory, and contemporary life. Since its founding, MENTOR was shaped through the need to approach culture not as static content for presentation, but as a living process of participation, interpretation, and social connection.
In this context, site-specific performance is not just an artistic format for us. It is a methodology that allows us to work with space as an active interlocutor. Archaeological sites, monuments, museums, historical and industrial landscapes do not function as a neutral background, but as dramaturgical collaborators that bear history, traces, silences, symbolisms, and open questions. Through this approach, the performance is not simply “placed” in a space but is born from it, enters into dialogue with its memory, and invites the audience to experience it again, not as a spectator from a distance, but as a participant in an experience.
The site-specific practice interests us precisely because it shifts the center of gravity of the artistic experience. The performance does not exist independently of its place: it draws from it its dramaturgical energy, its emotional charge, and its symbolic density. The space becomes a co-shaper of the work: the routes, the materialities, the traces, the pauses, the sounds, the atmosphere, the sense of proximity or distance are transformed into active elements of the experience. Thus, the audience is not called simply to watch, but to find itself inside a process of experiencing, coexistence, and interpretation.
This has particular importance today. In an era in which cultural heritage is called to prove anew its living social significance, and in which cultural organisations seek more substantial ways of connecting with communities, the site-specific performance opens a different path. It does not treat heritage as a closed narrative, nor the spectator as a passive recipient. On the contrary, it creates the conditions for the place to become once again a public field: a space where one can feel, reflect, question, recognise silenced histories, and see with new eyes the relationship between then and now. Through this process, issues such as identity, displacement, collective trauma, exclusion, the ecological crisis, or social transition are not presented as abstract themes; they become experiences that are inscribed in the body, in space, and in memory.
There lies the methodological and philosophical point of departure of MENTOR in Culture: theatre and performance acquire particular power when they encounter a place, when they enter into dialogue with its memory, when they incorporate the experience of the route, and when they leave room for participation and co-signification. What mobilises us is not the simple representation of the past. What interests us is its activation as a living tool for understanding the present. This is why every such action for us is at the same time artistic, research-based, social, and deeply connected with the public role of culture. In several of these actions, this connection is also expressed through the dramaturgical and writing contribution of Panos Giokas, CEO of MENTOR in Culture, which functions as a bridge between the methodological approach we follow and the shaping of the final artistic narrative. For us, the value of theatre is not exhausted in the stage act, but is expanded when it becomes an experience of space, when it follows a route, when it activates the body, when it meets collective memory, and when it leaves room for participation, emotion, and thought.
The actions that follow constitute characteristic examples of this approach in practice. Through them, it becomes evident that the site-specific performance can function both as a form of contemporary artistic expression and as a tool of cultural activation, learning, social connection, and re-signification of heritage. Precisely for this reason, for MENTOR, these are not simply performances, but ways for more lively, more open, and more meaningful relationships to be created between people and their places.
Mystery 20 Performing Arts Initiator – Narrative Archaeology, directed by Gemma Hansson Carbone and with artistic curation by Michail Marmarinos, was presented in three cycles, from 2022 to 2024, at the Archaeological Site of Eleusis, as a complex art action within the framework of the programme of 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture. Through the conjunction of performing arts and archaeology, the work explored ways in which archaeological information can be transformed into lived experience, activating the space as a field of narration, memory, and participatory interpretation. MENTOR undertook the execution of the production in all phases of the work, from 2022 to 2024, supporting the development and implementation of a methodology that connects artistic research with cultural heritage and the living experience of place.
As Above So Below, directed and choreographed by Apostolia Papadamaki, was presented in 2022 at the Kabeirion of Lemnos, within the framework of the Ministry of Culture programme “All of Greece, One Culture”. Through the dramaturgical curation and scriptwriting of Panos Giokas, the work connected the myth of the Κabeiri with the memories of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, activating the archaeological site as a field of living memory and contemporary reflection. MENTOR undertook the organisation and execution of the production, as well as the communication of the action, contributing to the creation of an experience in which the place functioned not as a background, but as an essential part of the artistic narrative.
In 2023, the performance The Oracles of Water, directed and choreographed by Apostolia Papadamaki, was presented at the Archaeological Site of Delphi, within the framework of the programme “All of Greece, One Culture”. As a modular, interactive, and participatory site-specific performance, it connected, in dramaturgy and texts by Panos Giokas, climate change and the global water crisis with the mythical background and the worship of Apollo at Delphi, activating the space as a field of reflection. MENTOR undertook the organisation and execution of the production, as well as the communication of the action.
metamorphoSEA, directed by Sjoerd Wagenaar, was presented in 2023 in Eleusis, within the framework of the European project Ulysses European Odyssey, of the Creative Europe programme and of the artistic programme of 2023 Eleusis ECoC. As a site-specific walking performance, it invited the audience to a contemporary Odyssey through the coastal, post-industrial landscape of Eleusis, connecting the memory of the place with contemporary questions around environmental destruction, oblivion, and transformation. MENTOR undertook the execution of the production, contributing to the implementation of an experience in which the landscape functioned as an active field of lived experience and artistic narration.
As A Shadow, As A Dream, a commission of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, was presented in October 2024 in the spaces of the Museum’s permanent collection, directed and choreographed by Apostolia Papadamaki. Through the dramaturgy and original scriptwriting of Panos Giokas, the work highlighted the story of Queen Thessalonike as a narrative that enters into substantial dialogue with the present day, illuminating issues of power, violence, exclusion, and timeless women’s struggles, while activating the museum space as a place of experience, participation, and living dialogue with the audience. MENTOR undertook the execution of the production.