The present essay forms part of a more extended research project that on the one hand discusses the concept of intercultural theatre and on the other explores the influence the Western paradigm exerted on the reception and performance of Ancient Greek drama in the case of Greek and non-western stage readings. The part of the project presented in this essay develops the argument according to which a crucial factor in the Greek stage readings of Ancient Greek drama has been for a long time the “hegemony of the Western paradigm”. Formulated in Western Europe, this paradigm was from the beginning based on the perception of Ancient Greek drama as part of the European cultural heritage and not as belonging to a foreign (“other”) cultural tradition. In this light, every contemporary ‘intercultural’ stage reading that European directors attempted was not received by Western and non-Western critics in the same manner as other stage productions of non-Western texts they had directed. The hegemonic role that the Western paradigm held in Greece, from the interwar years until the last two decades of the 20th century, mainly informing the performance style of the National Theatre, has been challenged in several cases from a very early period. Such was the case of Eva Palmer-Sikelianou who attempted at an early stage to use some underestimated but still visible intercultural elements. Such is also the case of several directors during the last decades of the 20th century (among them K. Tsianos, S. Hatzakis, St. Tsakiris and occasionally Th. Terzopoulos), each serving different aesthetic or ideological purposes.
