AEF2025: The Vegetarian

The Athens Epidaurus Festival celebrates its 70th edition in 2025, with 95 days of artistic brilliance featuring over 3,000 artists from 14 countries. From iconic venues in Athens like the Herodeion, Pireos 260, and the revived City of Athens Lycabettus Theatre, to the grand finale in Epidaurus, the festival brings the world’s top performances to Greece’s stages.

This year’s programme includes world premieres, new commissions, and exciting artistic strands such as Contemporary Ancients, which reimagines Greek tragedy, and Fierce Women in Performance, exploring gender and power. The GRAPE – Greek Agora of Performance platform highlights emerging Greek talent, while the Subset Festival brings experimental sounds to the stage. Cycles Roots revisits folk traditions with a fresh twist.

Check out our curated picks from this year's programme here.

What happens when someone quietly refuses to follow the rules of the world?

That’s the question at the heart of The Vegetarian, a gripping, surreal adaptation of Han Kang’s award-winning novel, directed by Italian theatre maker Daria Deflorian. When Yeong-hye, a reserved housewife in Seoul, gives up meat after a haunting dream, her quiet decision sparks a slow collapse — of family ties, identity and the boundaries of what it means to live.

Deflorian brings this unsettling story to the stage with her signature blend of raw intimacy and dreamlike detail. As Yeong-hye begins to withdraw from the violence of everyday life and yearns to exist like a tree, the world around her starts to shift. The production blurs the line between reality and hallucination, asking whether the life we call “normal” might be anything but.