Mill of Performing Arts

2021 - year of TRANSITION 2021 is a milestone year for the global community, the cultural sector and especially the performing arts that have suffered from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s Mill of Performing Arts festival is changing, developing and aspiring to track and capture the transition. How? 1. As a thematic axis of the festival's 8th edition, TRANSITION states our wish to research on the ways, frameworks, conditions, processes and collaborations that will allow the contemporary performing arts, the creators and the cultural sector in general to transit to the way-out, to the next day of post-covid-19 era. 2. Responding to the inevitable and swift redefinition of the relationship between the performing arts and the screen, and the ever-increasing production of such works, the festival devotes part of its program to screenings of films and videos that explore and deepen this relationship (Mill of Performing Arts ON SCREEN). 3. Together with Volos Festival and the Comedy Festival of Trikala, Mill of Performing Arts created a festival network in the region of Thessaly, in order to coordinate their activities, and pioneer a strategic partnership with a national impact. THE FESTIVAL The Mill of Performing Arts is an annual festival for the performing arts. It takes place every year at the end of September, in Larissa (Greece), at the premises of the industrial monument “Mylos Pappa“, which includes scenes and stages of theatre, dance, music, puppetry and cinema, but also less conventional, indoor and outdoor spaces that can host performances, concerts, rehearsals, workshops, installations, exhibitions and all kind of cultural events. The aim of the festival is to highlight the contemporary trends of the performing arts, to promote inclusivity, accessibility, artistic diversity and original creation and to bring artists and audiences into creative dialogue, turning challenges into opportunities. The program of the festival includes theatre, dance, music, dance theatre, music theatre, performance art, contemporary circus, puppetry, stand-up comedy, exhibitions, installations, fine arts, photography, seminars, workshops, concerts, screenings, street arts, interactions, symposia etc. Mill of Performing Arts was held for the first time in September 2014, as an initiative of SMouTh (Synergy of Music Theatre) which was embraced by the Mayoralty of Culture and Science of the Municipality of Larissa. Since 2016, the Mayoralty co-organises the festival together with SMouTh who is holding the artistic coordination. In 2018, in collaboration with the Greek National Opera, the festival hosted the national meeting of music theatre companies. Since 2017 a part of the festival is dedicated to the inclusion and accessibility, and in 2020 it was fully accessible.