Third year of success for the “American” on a new mounting at the hospitable “Michael Cacoyannis Foundation”. What’s new for the spectators this year to see? What new thing is it that you get, as a creator, from your contact with the masterly text of the Skiatthian author?
“The American” is a journey with the Skiathian author as a fellow-traveller, which lasts almost three years. The performance has travelled until now practically all over Greece and the public feeling was excellent, which proves in the best way the people’s need today for anything authentic and real. We ‘re coming back with a new mounting for the little theatre in Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, with new lightings and a new musical instrumentation but with an absolute respect on the author’s speech, having as a main vehicle this almost twisted game of rapid alternations of all characters of this masterly story. The narration “converses” with the music, which is specially composed for this performance by the composer Lambros Pigounis, who performs with me in the Black Box stage. Every evening we live the magnificent story of the tramp, wandering Greek refugee Giannis Mothonios who returns to his birthplace, Skiathos after 20 years. Every time we perform, I realize how contemporary Papadiamantis’ speech is, how close the author stands to the simple human being and finally how opportune he is 100 years after. For me, as a stage director and actor, was practically the first time that I grappled so energetically with a Greek text and felt how few set means are needed in the end, in order to have an authentic theatrical pact, when honesty and fantasy exist and when the audience becomes a real play-mate with the performers narrating a story.
You are being transformed on the stage; you “wear” many different characters. Which is the one that touches your heart the most, the one that moves every single time?
The characters in the Papadiamantis’ novels are not “shadows”, the writer carries an ultimate love for the rejected and humble ones, for the outcasts, the ones that Papadiamantis approaches like heroes even if they have just a short part in his writings, and this is because the writer has as his own centre his love for the human being. Considering this point of view, the challenge is really tempting to be “transformed” through narration into all the persons who live and breathe within the Papadiamantis universe. It is impossible to distinguish a person. All characters move me, they have their own life, their own existence: from the children singing carols, or the old-mother who wonders about her single daughter’s destiny, or the drunken porters, the grim lodger, captain – Anastasis, the old – cafeteria owner Reader and of course the main character, the “American” Yannis Mothonios, who despite the fact that he is a man of few words, makes us feel completely his emotional oppression.
How difficult and at the same time interesting is to bring a play with formal Greek on the stage?
It is so magically theatrical for me this journey into the Greek language through the characters of this Christmas story: from the Papadiamantis - narrator’s formal church language, the Skiathos island people’s local dialect, the “semi-Greek” of the main character, the naval terms being heard in Italian by the likable captains in the coffee shop. All these fast alternations of this tuneful, shining and rich language of Papadiamantis, which sounds really magically nowadays, inspire and liberate us. The images emerging from the sharp, penetrating sight of Papadiamantis are quite cinematic. The audience has no difficulty to follow the story of the poor immigrant, moreover be identified with the main hero as his story unfolds before the audience’s eyes. The happy, bright end of the story – one of the brightest moments for Papadiamantis- praises love that overflows the heroes’ souls as well as the audience’s that feels moved in every performance. Is there any greater satisfaction for an actor and a musician on stage?
You are the one who initiated the theatrical “movement” for Papadiamantis in the theatrical proceedings three years ago. How do you feel that many other efforts followed, always based on the work of the all – times writer?
Believe me; I didn’t start working on Papadiamantis just to work on a classic writer. A neo-Hellenic theatrical text that could reflect our times, I was looking for and I couldn’t find it. Perhaps this is a sign of our times as well as the declining years of our democracy. It was then that “American” crossed my mind, the text I was reading during my school years and I realized that this text talked straight into my soul. The continuation happened with the emblematic and quite tough story “A Dream on the Wave” that has been presented in the line of the Athens Festival 2011, and fortunately will be repeated in 2012. There, there was a different approach since the cinematic images and the watery set by Eva Manidaki have been integrated in the Papadiamantis universe of the wonderful story. It does not impress me at all that many other directors followed since he is a really endless writer and quite different from story to story and from novel to novel and is quite a challenge to cope with. Besides I do believe that an experience with Papadiamantis makes you see better and more clearly. I do feel happy that in this terrible financial coincidence following 20 years of newly wealth and moral decline, Papadiamntis turns to be a light of culture into this dark storm of our land. Since even the National Theatre of Chouvardas rediscovered the Greek text after so many years of German occupation, then we are on the right way…
(www.mcf.gr)
