The Hellenic Association of Non-profit Theater Companies (EMKETHI) is a cultural Association founded in 2012. The creation of EMKETHI addressed an urgent need for co-operation and solidarity that could enable Non-profit Theater Companies (AMKE) to be represented collectively and on a Pan-Hellenic level. In this context, EMKETHI has come to fill a gap.
Non-profit theatre companies represent the most creative and dynamic part of Greek Theatre, for the last thirty years.
The idea of associating non-profit theatre groups was warmly received by the majority of the companies. According to our latest recording in early 2016, the Association numbers 87 theater groups as members.
Today, EMKETHI is the only association that represents Greek Independent Theater as a whole.
The Association as a representative of AMKE is an independent body, open to all non-profit theatrical schemes, old and new, with or without shelter, large or small, subsidized or not, and maintains open all channels of communication to public bodies and institutions – municipal or private – relevant ministries and syndicates, as well as similar agents in other countries.
The objectives of the Association are: to strengthen the relations between its members and to represent them legitimately to any State body or institution. The long-term goal of the Association is to invite the State to formulate a long-standing policy for the theatre and for theatre education in Greece, as well as to create proper conditions for the support and promotion of Greek theater production. To this end, the Association, with its interventions and actions, has sought and is consistently seeking to highlight the special character of non-profit theater companies which – according to their statutes – have as their main object theatre art and theatre education. EMKETHI makes persistent efforts in order to open ways for the state to formulate and establish a legislative, tax and cultural framework within which non-profit theatre companies can function and expand their artistic work.
EMKETHI cooperates steadily with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture as the main State body responsible for matters of theatre policies and activities, but it also cooperates with other ministries dealing with key issues concerning its members (Ministry of Education, Labor, Finance, Development, etc.) as well as with Regional and Local (Municipalities) authorities.
Through its texts, proposals, actions, meetings and dynamic demands, EMKETHI has contributed substantially to the promotion of the Greek Theater’s issues and problems, to the feedback its members get, to the comprehension from the part of the state of the particularities of the theatrical professions and, above all, the conditions in which Non-profit Theater Companies should operate.