Mission
MASTERSKAYA is an artist-led performing arts production company. Through adaptations of both classical and contemporary works and the reimagining of characters across race, ability and background, MASTERSKAYA’s mission is to challenge assumptions about who gets to inhabit stories, create space for different perspectives, engage audiences with controversial social issues and promote meaningful public discourse.
Who We Are
Founded in Athens by Marilena Kalaitzantonaki, MASTERSKAYA is an artist-led nonprofit production organization.
Working across the performing and visual arts, with theatre at its core, MASTERSKAYA develops and produces work that uses artistic practice as a space for encounter, questioning and wider social conversation.
Approach
Our work often begins by looking again at what is already familiar: a story, a character, an image, an assumption. We are interested in shifting perspectives, reimagining characters and approaching subjects that are difficult, overlooked or rarely discussed openly. In doing so, we create new contexts for stories and the people who inhabit them, allowing unexpected readings and conversations to emerge.
Collaboration
MASTERSKAYA develops its own productions and collaborates with artists and cultural organisations from initial concept through production and presentation. Each project brings together different practices, perspectives and experiences, creating a shared professional space for experimentation, exchange and work that can continue to resonate beyond the stage.
Founder
Marilena Kalaitzantonaki
Set Design · Costume Design · Visual Arts · Production
Marilena Kalaitzantonaki is a scenographer, costume designer and visual artist based in Athens. She studied painting, scenography and costume design at the Imperial Academy of Arts (Repin) in Saint Petersburg, where she completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies. During her studies, she worked at major theatres in Saint Petersburg, including the BDT, the Mariinsky Theatre and the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
Her artistic practice moves between scenography, costume design, painting and art direction, spanning theatre, dance and film. She has collaborated, among others, with Onassis Stegi, the National Theatre of Greece, the Greek National Opera and the Athens Concert Hall, and was a member of Dimitris Papaioannou’s scenography team for Transverse Orientation and INK. For the past four years, she has been part of Christos Papadopoulos’ team, touring internationally with Larsen C and My Fierce Ignorant Step, presented at major venues and festivals around the world. In film, she worked as Art Director on Sofia Exarchou’s ANIMAL.
Her recent theatre collaborations include HAMLET machine, Oedipus Rex, The Life, Old Age and Death of a Working-Class Woman, Antigone Project and The Earth Gods. As a visual artist, she has presented solo and group exhibitions in Greece and internationally, while her works are held in permanent collections.
She is the founder of MASTERSKAYA, through which she develops her personal artistic practice while also organising and realising theatrical and interdisciplinary productions and collaborations.
Collaborators
Sofia Antoniou
Director · Stable Artistic Collaborator
Sofia Antoniou grew up in Volos, Greece. She studied Directing at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece and Psychology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Her directing credits include Phaethon – An Opera in Three Acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully, a co-production of the Greek National Opera and the Municipal Regional Theatre of Kavala, presented as part of the Philippi Festival; Earth Gods by Kahlil Gibran, as part of the “All of Greece, One Culture” programme; Hamlet (machine), based on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine, at Poreia Theatre; The Life, Aging and Death of a Working-Class Woman by Didier Eribon, at the Athens Epidaurus Festival 2025; Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles, in a solo version; Antigone Project, based on Sophocles’ Antigone, in collaboration with the En Dynamei Ensemble, a group of people with and without disabilities; Lulu by Frank Wedekind, at Anesis Theatre (May 2022); Stigmata by Dimitris Daskas and Thalia Griva, at the Municipal Regional Theatre of Kozani (December 2017); Iketiria by Panagiotis Rizos, at the Municipal Regional Theatre of Kozani (May 2017); and Their Name Is… by Rachel Corrie, at the Municipal Regional Theatre of Kozani (April 2016).
She has organised and led theatre workshops for children, teenagers and adults, as well as for people with disabilities. In 2021, she directed her first short film, The Girl Who Couldn’t Sleep, which received the Best Short Film Award at the Silence is Golden Festival in Belgrade. In 2024, she conducted a workshop on Ancient Greek Drama at the Carlo Goldoni Academy in Padua, as part of the National Theatre of Greece’s artist exchange programme.
Her artistic interests encompass both classical texts and contemporary dramaturgy, with a particular focus on poetic texts that engage with social and political questions and speak directly to the present. She is currently writing a new play, August, which explores the rape of a minor and the question of justice.