“No one will ever be alone again”: Performances of Precarity and Solidarity amid the Greek #MeToo

This essay considers how #MeToo’s recent iteration in the Greek context has stirred trouble in the theatre, instigating a politics of resistance against obdurate histories of injustice against women’s bodies in the industry whilst also creating spaces for solidarity among performers and theatre makers. My main intention is to examine how the above issues form part of the same ecology of precarity that dovetailed when the Greek #MeToo began to take force. In doing so, I will first focus on two recent major incidents occurring in the country’s flagship state theatre, the National Theatre of Greece, which involved two of its former male artistic directors in order to discuss how debates around precarity and exclusion in the theatre industry were unearthed. I will then shift focus to Greek artists’ self-organizing tactics through the examples of the activist network Support Art Workers and the Actors’ Trade Union who have started developing codes of conduct and strategies to challenge the devaluation and feminization of artistic labour. The article will further make reference to specific developments across the international theatre industry that connect to the tenets of the #MeToo which offer apertures for progressive change in the field of Greek theatre and its institutions.