After returning from the front, he begins his first reviews with a byline in January 1915, in the daily Nea Hellas (New Greece), which was supporting Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos.

Apart from his columns in the daily press, he collaborated from 1927 with Costis Bastias' newly published literary review Ellinika Grammata (Hellenic Letters).

There he joined the closely knit ideological circle of the magazine, consisting of Costis Bastias (publisher), Yannis Apostolakis, Politis' older first cousin, mentor and later professor of literature at the University of Thessaloniki, Alexandros Delmouzos, prominent educator and proponent for the instruction of demotic Greek in the school system, K. Th.

The circle supported the "demotic" (vernacular) language, Greek cultural traditions, German idealism, closely linked to the Enlightenment and was critical of rampant nationalism and communism.

The playwright Miltiades Lidorikis presided over the new company, with the poet Pavlos Nirvanas, the stage director Spyros Melas and Politis on the board.

[4]In 1925, when the Greek Actors' Union decided to create the "Professional School of Drama", Politis was appointed professor of repertoire and acting and from 1927 he started staging performances.

He also tried his first open air performance of ancient tragedy, Euripides' Hecuba (1927), with Greece's famous actress Marika Kotopouli and her troupe, in the all marble Panathenaic Stadium, build in the 1890s for the first Olympic Games of modern times.

He immediately started working with the poet Ioannis Gryparis, who was Secretary of Letters and Arts in the ministry, since the 1922 revolution of republican officers, that had forced King Constantine I to abdicate.

An ardent supported of a new state National Theater, Gryparis had been in the ministry for the past eight years, but for a short thirteen-month period (June 1925 – July 1926) when he was removed by the Theodore Pangalos dictatorship.

Already in 1923, he had told Fotos Politis that he had decided to go ahead with the creation of a National Theater,[7] while in 1924, he gave an interview to Costis Bastias, where he describes with precision all the problems that had to be met for such an undertaking, like the building, financing through a tax on gambling and lotteries, the cast and the administration.

By mid-November 1931, the chairman of the board, theater historian Nicolaos Laskaris, resigned, feeling bypassed by the small, hardcore decision making group of Politis, Gryparis, Bastias and poet Pavlos Nirvanas, a member of the Artistic Committee.

[9]In August 1931, just prior to the inauguration of the National Theater, Politis travels to Germany and Austria to be informed and brought up to date with the latest developments in Max Reinhardt's productions.

But, Politis reduced the importance of the protagonists, creating harmonic and disciplined ensembles, far from the hastily prepared and improvised productions, having to train the cast in a new acting method.

Costis Bastias describes for us how demanding Politis was: During the July and August recess, the actors of the National Theater took part in three rehearsals per day, including Sundays.

To these nine hours, if we add the time spend at home to study the plays for their better understanding and to memorize their lines, one can realize the labor involved for the director, the actors and the understudies.

The inaugural performance of the newly renovated National Theater with Aeschylus' tragedy Agamemnon and a one-act comedy by Gregorios Xenopoulos was a great success.

His repertoire included Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Molière, Goldoni, Schiller, de Musset, Ibsen, Zweig, Shaw, O'Neill, as well as modern Greek playwrights like Demetrios Byzantios, Gregorios Xenopoulos, Pantelis Horn, Spyros Melas and Alecos Lydorikis.

For Politis, this was his way to uplift an audience by bringing it in contact with the masterpieces of theatrical art from all over the world, from the ancient Greek tragic poets to the contemporary playwrights.

[11]The novelist, playwright and columnist Angelos Terzakis, who played a major role in the development of the National (Royal) Theater since 1937, as general secretary, director of repertoire and director general in succession, remarked concerning Politis' preferences in the repertoire and staging, that he had certain specific beliefs: He struck a blow without mercy against the french "théâtre de boulevard",[12] that equated the theater stage to a nightclub scene.

[13]The National Theater received innumerable attacks in the press because of its hostile attitude against the popular Théâtre de boulevard, its views toward the all-mighty leading actors and its repertorial selections, especially the limited number of contemporary Greek plays.

He supported the struggle for the Demotic Greek language to prevail, the strict adherence to the texts without unwarranted alterations, the European avant-garde movements in the theater, which he knew quite well, and the stage director's predominance, as the foremost head of the artistic creation, who interprets the playwright, and with his baguette conducts the actors, set designers, costume designers, musicians, choreographers, to bring about the desired result.

The theatrical tradition that Fotos Politis created at Greece's National Theater, was continued after his death in 1934 by Costis Bastias and director Dimitris Rondiris.

From 1935 until April 1941, when the Axis Powers occupied Greece, the tradition, as well as the fame, of the National Theater grew by leaps and bounds, with Bastias becoming director general (1937), and the passing of a new law that gave him the authority to act more or less independently, despite the existence of a dictatorship, and Rondiris, perfecting his exhaustive teaching methods and his unique staging inspiration.

It began with Alexandria and Cairo in the spring and after returning to Athens left again in June and July to perform Sophocles' Electra and Shakespeare's Hamlet, at Oxford, Cambridge, London, Frankfurt and Berlin carefully balancing the two sides which by the end of that summer would be at war.

Concerning Dimitri Rondiris' stage direction the reviewers wrote that he surpassed the wildest dreams of his teacher Max Reinhardt, while Richard Prentis noted: The Greek acting of Hamlet the other night came off magnificently.