- What does theater mean to you?
(they laugh simultaneously)
Ilias: My favorite kind of questions. What is theater? What is theater for you, Vasilis?
Vasilis: Can you repeat the question please?
I: Yes, I’m buying time so I can think.
For me theater is something different depending on the moment you are in life.
V: I like theater. I like art in general, but theater is very much alive. It has an immediate engagement and a game with others. It’s a playground and a place where you can do your psychotherapy at the same time, where you fight with your ego, with your narcissism.
I: It’s palimpsestism.
V: We dress up and we pretend we are princes, so there’s probably something wrong with us to a certain extent. (laughs) For the “Players” specifically, the most decent thing we can say is that theater is a game.
2.What was your reaction when you read the script of the play and even more so when you discovered the elements of the character you were to impersonate, since it’s perhaps quite far from the profile of the “average”, “prudent” person?
V: We learnt about that play from George (Koutlis), the director, who is also our friend, when he suggested that we do it. I think we all thought we were reading something very functional, something that created nice characters, with contrasts and the right comic situations to play with.
Besides that, the fact that the characters were “negative” is not something so original, or a kind of “taboo” that we broke -in comedy it’s common that there are negative heroes and that’s why you worship them.
Every actor wants to impersonate such heroes. Accordingly, viewers become very attached to them. Because these “negative” heroes have something that ultimately humanizes them. I wouldn’t say that Gogol emphasizes that element so much, however comedy as we “made” it, proves some things in relation to people in general: how we react, how we go very low to earn something we want, how we obsess over an idea and we want to implement it. These are familiar feelings.
I: It was very nice…
V: Did you like it Ilias?
I: Very much! (laughs)
3.The main point that the text deals with is the wear and the passions of human existence. Apart from greed, which is a great flaw of the characters of the play, what do you think is the greatest weakness of the role each one impersonates, and what could have been done differently, if they didn’t have that?
I: I think the common element of all of us, or at least the one we chose to illuminate, is the addiction part. Addiction can happen both in gambling and in something simpler, something that I repeat, that I want again and again and I can never get enough of it. Definitely, if these characters didn’t have the element of addiction there wouldn’t be no play.
V: Beyond the general “umbrella”, in each of these “Players” there are weaknesses, which either arose from the play, or were reinforced from who we are and how we bring the roles in the scene. Everyone in the excellent “game” they play also commits blunders, exceeds certain limits and pays for it, reacts in the wrong way at the wrong moment…
My character possesses an overzealousness, without any limit: doesn’t know when to stop, a megalomania pervades him, he is thinking too much about “Colpo Grosso”. He is prone to arrogance and that’s why the moment he has it all and is at the highest level, the author makes him lose it all.
I: My character on the other hand, is the complete opposite: the role of Vasilis has more to do with the love of cards, the perfect trick… while mine is possessed by something so simple, that is hunger· his weakness is so simple: he doesn’t have anything to live for, he doesn’t have a little bread to eat, so he is forced to enter this world and do whatever it takes so he can feed. I think he would do everything to survive.
4.The interactivity is a strong element of this play that perhaps makes it quite different than what we are used to seeing on a theatrical stage -actors flying through the audience, music and sound effects are produced at that very moment live on the stage. How differently has such an intense interaction with the audience possibly pushed you to interpret your roles?
V: Very much and very little at the same time. Firstly, I wouldn’t say that the element of interactivity is anything new, since it has been in the Revue for years now. Maybe it’s just been limited in recent years.
In “Players” George made a condition that feels like being in a live club that has an element of action in the middle. He built a structure that embraces the audience. Thus the “fourth wall” was broken and acting ceased to be done behind closed doors. Everything was now in the sunlight and that attracted people -whereas when this wall was there it was like there was darkness on one side.
It’s something like the job of the musician· when you are live, you don’t just play your songs pretending like others don’t exist. There is a give and take. We envied this and wanted to bring it to the theater.
I: George accordingly has something like this in mind for the structure of the show. But we did too, because we were in a moment after the pandemic, I remember from the rehearsals already our need to run all over the place. We couldn’t bear to not communicate with the public, to not bring things upside down. All of it was very well connected in the end.
Another cool element is the cheating part. The theater itself is a deception, but in which there is an accomplice: we say that now we are going to pretend to play something and you’re going to see it and believe it’s true. A beautiful relationship is created from the fact that while I play I look at you and we know it’s not true but it is a little bit. It’s a strange relationship with the audience, a relationship between truth and lies.
5.Playing cards -a central theme in the play “The Players” is a matter of luck. Do you think this luck follows people in the course of their lives or the choices we make are rather more “set” like a “theft” perhaps in what we call “fate”?
I: I don’t know, however what happens in the play is not a matter of luck. Even though the cards are supposed to be a matter of luck -that’s why you can get an innocent to play, because it’s a game and I can’t cheat. In the performance, however, what we see dominating is not luck· it’s a predetermined plan, an organization and its execution, its failure, the on-the-spot reconstruction and management of a new situation.
If I think philosophically about this question, I might say that there is not so much luck. I think in the end, work wins everything. With effort and the right timing, things will happen.
V: Don’t you feel that some things that have happened are a matter of luck? You were born in a family that had certain things, while simultaneously they lacked other things and you were also raised with a certain way. Isn’t this luck?
Yes, we live in luck and at the same time we have will and organization and action. The result of work is always admirable…
I: So you’re saying that luck exists, but you can also push it?
V: You can push it. However, what you’re saying about work is right. That’s what Ihareff does in the end, praising his work, his art and his acumen. But eventually he is tricked by some who may not have been so into the deck nor had a great idea but had the right cunning thought at the right time.
