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Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou
Walter Puchner Bio

Walter Puchner

Professor Emeritus of Theater Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Walter Puchner was born and studied in Vienna, but has spent most of his years in Greece. He is Professor Emeritus of Theater Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, co-founder of the Department of Theater Studies and an honorary member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has written more than 100 books in Greek and has published about 500 studies and more than 1000 book reviews on the history of Greek and Balkan theater, Greek and comparative folklore, Byzantine and modern Greek studies as well as on the theory of theater and drama. He has also authored 25 collections of poetry, prose and critical essays.

Ancient tragedy had a mechanism that starts with hubris, which involves a human being, a mortal, transgressing the laws of the gods and being punished for it. And, today, we are in a parallel situation, in the sense that we are breaking the laws of nature, the absolute standard.