Sitting in the theater of Taormina

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Sitting in the theater of Taormina

Published: 03 Dec. 2025, 00:05

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Kim Myung-hwa

The author is a playwright and director.

I recently visited the ancient theater in Taormina on the Italian island of Sicily. Built in the third century BCE by Greeks who ruled the region, it is often called the Greco Theater, though later Roman expansions left the site with an uncommon blend of Greek and Roman forms.

The ancient theater of Taormina on the island of Sicily, Italy [WIKIPEDIA]

For actors and directors, ancient theaters are places of pilgrimage much like the Vatican is for Catholic believers. I had not set out to see the site, but since our travel route overlapped, I asked my companions for a brief detour and went alone to what felt like a sacred space.

The open-air theater stands high on a cliff. Ancient Greek theaters on islands, like those in the Thira region of Santorini, were often built on elevated ground as a defensive measure. Taormina’s theater follows the same logic. Below its stone tiers, the Ionian coastline unfurls, with Mount Etna rising behind the stage.

Yet the audience does not feel the precarious height. The massive semicircular seating, which serves as its own acoustic shell, wraps around visitors. A gentle transition between the cliff face and the seats softens the openness. Sitting near the top, just below the sky, it became clear that in theater, the true center is not the stage but the audience. The stage was not a shrine to be looked up at but a platform to be viewed from above.

Someone began to play a flute. Despite the thousands of seats surrounding me, the delicate notes reached my ear without distortion, even against the sound of the wind. The theater’s famed acoustics proved true. Listening to the flute while seated on the worn stone steps, looking out across the stage and the landscape beyond, I felt time collapse. Past and present, nature and art, even the self, blended for a moment or seemed to empty out entirely. Perhaps this is what impermanence feels like.

Returning home, I found the turmoil surrounding the first anniversary of the emergency martial law declaration waiting for me. Travel offers its own joy, but it is even better when there is a home to return to. Now it is time to go back to colleagues who continue to make theater amid turmoil, and to the audiences enduring it with us. They are my home.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.