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Abstract
This special issue examines the use of classical antiquity within artistic, cultural, and political events under fascist regimes in the interwar period. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany promoted the production of ancient drama, alongside forms of theater modelled on Greek antiquity, organized grand-scale classical spectacles, and deployed ancient themes and classical-looking symbols and insignia at political gatherings and displays. The analyses presented in this special issue bring into dialogue the scholarship on theater and culture under fascist regimes with the growing literature on the reception of the classics to foreground the significance of performative practices in reconfiguring the classicizing mythologies of fascism. It is the hope of the guest editors that the findings presented here will contribute to the study of performances that strove to re-enact historical pasts beyond the scope of classical reception.

Abstract
The forms of popular and mass theater developed in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany reached back to classical antiquity to reinvent theater as a secular rite. At first glance, the use of the theatrical medium is at odds with the classicizing monumentality that characterized the cultural expression of fascist regimes. Theatrical performances are by their very nature ephemeral events; unlike monuments, they do not leave their mark on civic space, and can barely provide a testament to generations to come. Drawing on performance theory and cultural history, the author argues that these antiquity-inspired performances provided powerful sites of re-enacting the myth of national rebirth. Fascist regimes used open-air theaters and forms modelled on Greek theater, whilst also tapping into the notions of performance that had been developed within the traditions of the theatrical vanguard to offer the experience of a reborn past. These performances brought forth grandiose visions of classical antiquity through living bodies and helped to embed the imagined past into a mythicized present. The intertwining between the theatrical medium and classical reception allow us to demonstrate the significance of embodied practices in shaping fascism's political radicalism.

The focus of this article lies on the recent history of the Hellenic Festival, discussing the so-called new phase after 2006, when Giorgos Loukos took over as artistic director. While the Festival claimed an international profile promoting collaborations with major European festivals and theatre companies, its policies had to go through restructuring due to the raging economic crisis. The years from 2010 to the present marked a rupture with previous discourses and politics, turning the Festival into a topos of transformation and fluidity which seems to elude certain conditions of production and reception pertaining to its past history. The article presents an inquiry into the official policies as much as the artistic practices which constitute this topos, while also mapping out the emergent trends which produce its particular dynamic.