ANDREAS SKOURTIS 

Keynote Speaker

​

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Andreas Skourtis is a Greek-British award-winning practicing architect, a scenographer and an academic.

www.performingarchitectures.com 

 

A Greek-born London-based practicing architect and scenographer, I am founder of Performing Architectures (www.performingarchitectures.com), a studio that creates real and virtual environments by designing, devising and producing scenography-led performances, installations, and buildings.

I studied architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, drama at Theatre Lab in Thessaloniki, and hold an MA in Theatre Design / Scenography from Wimbledon College of Arts.

I am lecturer in scenography at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama since 2013. I  have previously taught at the Theatre Studies Faculty - University of Peloponnese, and I often visit other universities and organisations for lectures and workshops, in the UK and abroad.

Through practice, research and teaching, I explore ways of using different spaces and architectures as scenographic tools in theatre and performance.

I often work as a scenographer/-initiator/-leader of performances or installations, sometimes inspired by biographical and every-day-life subjects. Theatres, abandoned buildings, urban outdoors locations and landscapes, homes and flats, a bar and my olive grove, are all spaces that I have explored and used in designing for performance. I also collaborate with directors as a designer in theatre productions, investigating how to use a theatre building as a ‘found space’.

Recent works include the exhibition design of  Staging Places  at the Prague Quadrennial and the V&A; the design of Antigone commissioned by the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, directed by Konstantinos Ntellas, and performed in the Ancient Epidaurus Theatre; the architectural design of A New Performing Arts Centre for the international school of Uganda in Kampala - the new building will be completed at the end of 2021 and includes a 460-seat auditorium and new facilities for the drama, dance, music and visual arts departments.

I designed the new studio theatre of Athens National Theatre, a flexible-retractable-transformable space that won a ‘Gold Medal for Best Work in Theatre Architecture and Performance Space’ at the Prague Quadrennial 2011.

I am a RIBA Chartered Architect, a member of the Managing Committee of the Society of British Theatre Designers, a Fellow of the Advance HE (former Higher Education Academy), and co-chair of the Performance Design Educators Collective (www.pdec.org.uk).