Bertolt Brecht

A fond farewell to distinguished journalist Spyros Payiatakis

Spyros Payiatakis, a cosmopolitan journalist, long-time theater critic for Kathimerini, foreign correspondent and pioneer of digital reporting, died in Athens on Wednesday.

He was 79 and had been in frail health for several years.

Born in Thessaloniki on April 1, 1939, Payiatakis studied at the city's Anatolia College before leaving to study architecture in Berlin.

Baal | Athens | February 1

The Goethe Institute in Athens hosts Greece's first-ever screening of "Baal," a controversial 1970 TV movie based on Bertolt Brecht's play, written and directed for the screen by Volker Schloendorff and starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Sigi Graue and Margarethe von Trotta.

German actress Gisela May dies at 92

German actress and singer Gisela May has passed away aged 92. May is best known for her performances of political songs by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Born in Wetzlar, Germany, in 1924, May was the daughter of actor and writer Käte May and writer Ferdinand May and attended drama school in Leipzig from 1942 to 1944.

The Threepenny Opera | Athens | September 29

The Athens Concert Hall presents a screening of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's "The Threepenny Opera" from London's Olivier Theater on Thursday, September 29, in a new adaptation by Simon Stephens. The musical is directed by Rufus Norris, while the cast is led by Rory Kinnear, Rosalie Craig and Haydn Gwynne. Admission costs 15 euros (8 euros for students).

Humor festival starts in ?zmir

The second İzmir Humor Festival will start May 26 with a host of talks, workshops and film screenings.

The festival's honorary guest this year is Muzaffer İzgü, while there will also be an exhibition curated by humor historian Turgut Çeviker of cartoons in Soyut magazine.