About
Maria Panopoulou, actor, saxophonist and theatre graduate, works across the stage, the screen, live music and teaching.
Maria Panopoulou is an actor, saxophonist and theatre graduate who works across the stage, the screen, live music and teaching. Born in Athens to a Greek-American father and a Greek-Australian mother, she grew up in Petroupoli speaking two languages from the start: English, learned from her parents and spoken with an American accent, is as much her native language as Greek. She holds Greek and Australian citizenship.
On stage she has played Boris, a male role, in Dejan Dukovski's The Powder Keg, directed by Theodosis Skarvelis (Under the Bridge Theatre, 2025, eight performances), and both Christos and Eleni in Dimitrios Koromilas' Maroula's Fortune, directed by Pantelis Dentakis (Peiraikos Syndesmos Theatre, 2025). In June 2026 she was the onstage musician in Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, directed by Anastasia Rizou at the Rektifie Theatre, and in October 2026 her first play as a director, Chara Kaptani's A Mirror of Four Women, opened at Skini Brecht-2510, with Maria also playing the Daughter. Earlier roles include Electra in Pavlos Matesis' Voui (2021) and the guests in Strindberg's Miss Julie (2022).
On camera, she played a character in Tragoudosavros' music video Metronomos and a supporting role opposite Maria Kavogianni in a Nerdula video for the ComicDom comics awards, where she also worked as production assistant. Charis Gioulatos directed both, in 2026.
Music runs alongside the acting. She has studied alto saxophone at the Municipal Conservatory of Petroupoli since 2018 and is now at Higher level. She plays with the Petroupoli Philharmonic Band, which has taken her to international festivals, and with the band Prin2Wres, and from February to October 2026 she played with Salty Waters. She also sings.
She holds a BA in Theatre Studies and a Certificate of Pedagogical and Teaching Competence from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; her thesis, on the myths behind Ibsen's Peer Gynt, was presented at a young researchers' conference in Nafplio. She trained as an actor at the Higher Drama School of Peiraikos Syndesmos (2022-2025), with teachers including Pantelis Dentakis, Theodosis Skarvelis and Giannis Stollas. She has also attended the National Theatre of Greece's International Workshop on Ancient Drama, a Vakhtangov School masterclass, a Michael Cacoyannis Foundation seminar on ancient drama and FOCCCCUS: Performing Arts, an Erasmus+ programme in Lithuania.
At the Municipality of Petroupoli summer schools she has taught drama and music to primary school children, each time building a performance with them from scratch.
2026 also brought a documentary about love in ancient Greece and a film. Next, she wants to take both her performing and her teaching further.
- Based in
- Athens, Greece
- Citizenship
- Greek and Australian
- Languages
- English and Greek, both native. American English accent
- 2022-2025
- Higher Drama School of Peiraikos Syndesmos
- 2017-2022
- Department of Theatre Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
- 2018 to present
- Municipal Conservatory of Petroupoli
Backstory
In her own words.
My family likes to say it started before I was born. While she was pregnant with me, my mother went to the theatre all the time. I can't vouch for that, but I do remember that school plays were my favourite part of every school year, and that feeling never really went away.
I grew up in Petroupoli, on the western edge of Athens, in a bilingual home. My father is Greek-American and my mother Greek-Australian, so English came from them and Greek from everyone else. I have two passports, I still switch between the two languages without thinking, and my English has an American accent.
I ended up studying theatre twice. First at the University of Athens, where I read theatre history and wrote my thesis on the myths behind Ibsen's Peer Gynt, which I later presented at a young researchers' conference in Nafplio. Then at the Higher Drama School of Peiraikos Syndesmos, where I finally got to do it rather than write about it. Some of my favourite parts so far have been men: Boris in The Powder Keg, and Christos in Maroula's Fortune, in a production where I also played Eleni. I still read Meyerhold and Grotowski for fun.
Music has run alongside all of it. I started alto saxophone at the Petroupoli Conservatory in 2018, joined the Philharmonic and later the bands Prin2Wres and Salty Waters.
At seventeen I started working the ticket desk at AthensCon and I've been back every December since; comics and pop culture were never that far from theatre for me. My first summer job in theatre was at the Petras Festival, and I've spent summers since teaching drama and music to kids in Petroupoli.
2026 is when it all came together: a documentary about love in ancient Greece, a film, Cyrano de Bergerac with my flute on stage, and my first play as a director. The rest of the time I'm usually knitting, cooking or making something with my hands. What I want now is more of all this, on stage and in the classroom.
