OYL has created a workshop setting in northern Greece in the small mountain village of Papingo. We create the majority of our productions in month-long (or longer) retreats where the actors, designers, and production team live, work, and create together, alongside some of the most stunning scenery in the world. This unique experience allows for everyone involved to completely abandon themselves to the work at hand. Plus, where better to build productions than the birthplace of theater?

Read on for what a few of our members have said about working in Greece:

Danny Bernardy (Actor): "Workshopping abroad is beneficial to me personally. Certainly the atmosphere of retreat helps me release my inhibitions as an artist and I feel blessed for the opportunity. Here's why: When you wake up every morning with the same people, bumping into each other with sleep in your eyes waiting for your turn in the bathroom, sharing the same dinner table and divvying up household duties, you are bound to break down fundamental walls of discomfort. My mother always said, “you never really know someone till you live with them."

This is an entirely unique experience and a fantastic display of resourcefulness, courage and trust. The resources and logistics to get artists from the US to a small village in a foreign country… the courage among all of us to do controversial and challenging material in a very foreign and isolated situation… the trust and faith has to be in place ahead of time for all of us."

Jessica Applebaum (Production Dramaturg), after workshopping Phaedra x 3:

"I've never had an opportunity like this. I do not know of any company in New York that offers its actors and designers the opportunity to live and rehearse and engage themselves in the community they are working in. One night, the theater where we were supposed to perform was double-booked. We could have easily said, “Oh well, let's take the night off.”  But we had made such a connection with the village where we were staying—the locals would hike up the mountain and watch us as we rehearsed outside or sit on the stone wall as we ran scenes in the little square—that our immediate thought was to move the performance to the square. With no advertising or promotion, and just the sounds of music and our actors performing we gathered an audience of children, grandparents, and even the stray dogs who would follow us from rehearsal to our house. During the scene where Theseus yells at Hippolytus, one of the dogs actually came ‘onstage’ to defend Hippolytus (who liked to feed him at night) from his dad. I've never experienced moments like these in New York—it was brilliant."

Mike Riggs (Lighting Designer):

"I wouldn't have believed it until I tried it, but there is something quite perfect about creating a lighting design in a place where there is hardly any electriicty, let alone a theater or equipment to work with.  Develpoing a design in Papingo gives me an opportunity to explore every idea -- including plenty that won't make it into the production -- in a purely theoretical way.  Papingo is a place where we can explore the what and the why of design without worrying too much about the how.  We never short-circuit our ideas with practical considerations in Papingo, and by the time we do turn our attention to the practical, we've got such a strong commitment to the ideas that we always manage to find a way."