Yana Zarifi (also known as Yana Sistovari) is the artistic director and co-founder of the international London-based theatre company Thiasos. Thiasos’ productions of classical Greek tragedies and comedies highlight the musicality and colour of ancient Greek theatre performance by drawing on Asian and European theatre and dance languages with an emphasis on the chorus, which has always been at the heart of Yana’s work. Notable examples include adaptations of Euripides’ Hippolytos, Bacchae and Cyclops, which include enactments of lament, trance and satyric (goat)dancing. These performances were created through collaboration with the Algerian designer Abd’ElKader Farrah (1998-2005) and artists from Central Asia, Indonesia, India, modern Greece, and Italy (Sardinia). As a visiting Getty scholar (2006-7) Yana also developed research on Islamic and pre-Islamic performance which informed Thiasos’ production of Aeschylus’ Persians. She also is also an academic consultant to Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices in Poland.
Her current project, Dancing in Aristophanes i-Clouds and AI, will première in 2025.
She has authored papers and articles about the ancient Greek chorus, ecstatic maenadism, lament and satyric dance in ancient and modern Greece. She has contributed chapters to publications including The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre (2009), The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World (2010), Choreonarratives (2021).