6. The show is characterized as a farcical comedy. Do you think this particular style in this story has the power to convey messages better than a different text style would? Following that, how much does humor and the comic element ultimately affect our approach to how we perceive everything that happens around us?
V: At the time, for that group of people, this genre found us very excited. It wasn’t because we wanted to send a message and we were looking for a way, but for the “entertainment” for someone to come energetic from his work and come out having laughed a lot. That’s what we liked the most at the time.
I: I think we started off a bit unorthodoxly. Usually, in theater someone starts off by reading a book, having an idea, a message. Our target was very “childish”. We said “I want to play with Vasilis!”. We didn’t read the play and wanted to send a message· we just found it. And I think that ultimately the message that we sent is exactly what we did on stage: have fun, play, life is a game.
That’s what people liked: they saw some people on stage to become bigger than life itself, having so much fun, having so much love and contact with each other, that people wanted to become a part of it.
That was the way we started the play and that’s what was finally conveyed, not any other “message”. That we make comedy a way of looking at things.
7. The play was written by Gogol in 1836. Besides the great gap between the human existence of now and then, it has managed to become a timeless piece and seem more relevant than ever -perhaps even the issues it touches upon are more relevant today than in the past. What do you think is the strongest message the play sends?
I: Classic plays, I think, are always relevant, because at their core the issues they deal with are so common to us all. The myth of Icarus, Romeo and Juliet, these plays will always be relevant.
V: Those that have survived -what we call classics- have survived for a reason. This particular play has something isolating dramatically, which in the end allowed us to focus on something more universal and timeless. It is a very specific condition: an inn room in which Gogol has some people- like hamsters- interacting from noon to night. There is not so much “spread” in social descriptions of the time- something that exists in other works of Gogol, more elevated than “The Players”. They are just humans inside a room with a very strong need to take something that the other has.
The simplicity of the play helped bring it to today and so we can exist as complete characters, without feeling like we are in a play of the time with very restricted elements, keeping some “gogolic” elements, but to a certain degree. Of course, a myth was needed to take the audience somewhere far away from here, however, only to return in the end again. It’s like a vehicle that is slowly deconstructed and eventually seems like Ilias and Vasilis are simply extreme.
8. The show refers to a world where everyone looks out only for their own interest, they look at how to damage the person next to them and how to save themselves only. What questions do you think something so “negative” and “black” might raise to the people that watch this in relation to human nature?
V: I don’t know if the viewers were also troubled by that. Mostly, I think they saw souls in an extreme state of will, in an extreme state of purpose. When this becomes an object of study for the viewer, it can make them work in a number of ways: on one hand he can realize something and we can “cure” him. On the other hand, you can push him into illegality and ruin his life.
We mainly tried to put “sharks” in the cage and see what would happen. Even little kids like to see the edges from a safe spot which is fun. I think it’s interesting. A clown is always funny.
9. George Koultis, the director of the show, refers to you as “… people for whom the game is a way of life, like a deeply rooted childhood habit, which cannot be abandoned, regardless of age. And with this as the “fuel” of their soul, they play theater, music and often each other.” The “game” was mentioned as an attitude to life, but in the performance there is talk of a different “game”, dark, ugly, a game of exploitation. How easy or difficult was it to get these two kinds of “game” to come together so harmoniously on stage?
V: On the one hand the game in a very positive way and on the other hand the game in a very negative way…. Again we enter moral dipoles. It should not be surprising that the positive play and the negative play coexist, for this exists in a comedy – for example, the protagonist falls from two stories and, when he should have died, gets up and moves on. So you put all the negatives in the pot, because this is your chance to do it. If everything was positive, no one would laugh.
I: No one would laugh and there would be no story!
V: There must be conflict, and the worse the conflict, the better. This is the comedy engine, nothing else.
10. Your characters have a completely different profile, but in the end, they both become victims of deception. This is the element that connects them at the end of a very powerful project. Was their ending ideal for you or would you have expected something else?
V: The fates of one and the other seem unrelated. And yet… It was written to do just that. You have to catch a hero, bring them up, throw them down, bring them back up and bring them down again. This must be done – the more the merrier.
What else could have happened? Too many things, but we don’t answer that in the theater. We tell stories. Yes, everything could be done, but if everything was positive, we wouldn’t have a project. If Romeo and Juliet don’t die and stay together, in love, you don’t read it, you don’t care. Shall I tell you a story about two who fell in love and left? I’m bored, I don’t want to.
I: Unless you say that if we love our roles so much… (laughs)
V: It is what we call “the theater of play”. It’s like having a puppet and wanting to “beat” it, spoil it. Because that’s how comedy occurs. If someone doesn’t step on banana peels, you don’t get the opportunity for comedy.
For me, that was my problem with my role: I was too serious in relation to the others, without the writer giving me many comedic circumstances. I was cool, watching being a little absent. We struggled to find banana peels to step on, to be in the comedy game. So things are written as they should be. We can’t imagine a better version…
I: Or maybe a worse one, that would be worth it…
