July 2025

Belonging through creation, under the open sky.
In the stone-built village of Mikro Papigo, where mountains frame ancient trails and time feels suspended, the OYL Philos Retreat offers an experience that moves beyond the traditional bounds of art. From July 28 to August 12, 2025, artists and participants will come together not simply to observe creation, but to be part of it, in the living heart of Zagorohoria.

For more than twenty years, Ianthe Demos, Artistic Director of One Year Lease Theater Company, has returned to this landscape, cultivating an idea where art and community grow side by side. “When we arrive there,” she reflects, “it feels like coming home.” In Papigo, rehearsals are open, performances unfold in village squares, and theater reclaims its original character as a shared act.

At the center of this year’s retreat is Arms, a new work by Lisa Sanaye Dring, inspired by Lysistrata. It is, in Demos’ words, “a plea for peace, an invitation to imagine a world where peace is possible.” Participants will witness the shaping of this production and accompany its journey through Epirus, Ioannina, and the ancient site of Corinth.

“We have lost, as a society, the idea that theater was always a public event,” Demos observes. In Philos Retreat, she and her company seek to revive that ancient spirit — where art belongs to everyone, and the distance between stage and life dissolves into one