Acclaimed South African comedienne Irini Stephanou gets to the heart of leading Greek tragedienne, Lydia Koniordou
Lydia Koniordou has been hailed as the greatest contemporary tragedienne in Greece. In the ancient theatre of Epidaurus in Greece, she has commanded audiences of 13 000 people. Her reputation is based solely on her work in the theatre. This humble diva has no need of cinema or television in order to be a star.
As part of the first Greek cultural month in South Africa, she took the leading role in The Fonissa – which literally means “The Murderess”. The play is based on a short story by Alexandros Papadiamantis written in the early part of this century. It is the story of a woman living in a small village in dire poverty who, as an act of mercy, kills her female grandchildren. She wants to spare them a life dependent on a good dowry (prika) or a reasonable marriage proposal.
In Greek peasant society, until very recently, life for a woman without a good dowry was a life of unending physical labour, continuous childbirth under the control of a patriarchal, unsympathetic and sometimes even cruel husband.
Sotiris Hatzakis, the director of the play, says this play should be seen as an “elegy staged as a tragedy – a tragedy of everyday people with universal ramifications. What comes to the surface is the uninterrupted course of Greek civilisation, from Homer’s poetry and classical antiquity to modern Greek times.”
Growing up as a Greek South African woman, I was imbued with an awareness of the importance of a dowry and the moulding of one’s identity as a quiet, good girl (kali kopela). These increased your chances of finding a good Greek husband. A good marriage would seem to validate one’s existence.
Is this still so for women in Greece? Koniordou says, “Of course now for women especially in big cities, more and more young people marry for love . That is a common thing now – to marry for love and not an economic contract.”
On meeting this tragedienne, her dramatic black eyebrows, java coffee black eyes and the presence she exuded confirmed that she could be both a Greek goddess or a Greek caf owner’s wife in Roodepoort – or anywhere.
She sees the purpose of her work to be a vehicle for generations of untold stories: “I don’t know these women that I portray, but they express themselves through me. They were given a mouth to speak – speak about what they’ve been through, something that was denied them. I really feel that through these personae – big personae, like Fonissa, Macbeth, Oedipus, maybe even Ham in Beckett – there are generations of human beings that are denied to sing their own song and they speak through you.
“You are just a medium, you are a nobody. You are just a mouth, you are the vacuum vessel through which all these mouths speak, all these dreams which never came true come to speak their story.”
In a workshop with South African actors, she reminded us of why we became involved in the theatre in the first place. Her opinion of the purpose of tragedy cuts to the core of our humanity: “Tragedy helps us to recognise elements of our own existence. All these characters are not an isolated case, they are condensed forms of qualities of our existence, needs, tendencies, sides that we are born with and fight all our lives within our existential agonies of who we are, where we are, where we’ve come from and where we are heading.”
She reminded us that the role of the poet has always been the same, to pose questions.
“All these major questions are basic to ourselves because we want to give meaning to our existence. These same questions and dilemmas were put in front of these poets and they created stories around them, quite recognisable and even if one can’t understand exactly why, they still stir you within and help you open your eyes to find your own answers. They don’t give any answers, and like any good poet does, they place dilemmas in front of you and help you see what opposing forces also work within you.”
And she linked the purpose of art to our everyday lives: “When you see the basic questions in front of you, it’s very relieving, you don’t feel so lost, so helpless about our fate as human beings. Often all we see is our tiny hole, our sitting room with our TV set, and we are led to think that we don’t have any force to put our fingerprints on a wider scale.”
She reflected on the meaning of tragedy and comedy and the purpose of art and theatre in our lives: “Through tragedy you go beyond death, good or bad. This light on your existence is like a soothing medicine and, by seeing your life, you can keep living more creatively and know where you are heading. I think the more conscious one becomes, the more one feels free of this crushing machine that grinds you in history. If we don’t have the chance to ask why, then our life is bleeding – our life wants to know why, otherwise we are just fertilisation for coming generations or leaves that will make the soil rich.
“Comedy is like saying thank you for being alive – and whatever happens, we will stay alive. We don’t have deaths in comedy, but comedy also has tragic elements. There is definitely a feeling of nostalgia in comedy. A feeling that – at least in Aristophanes – there is a bitter feeling of Utopia. That all this wonderful life is there but at the same time it is being denied. We’ve put bars on our existence. In Aristophanes they act with false sexual organs and with this feeling of open sex energy that is denied in everyday life, but they are allowed to do it there.
“All in all, the Dionysian spirit is important. Theatre is ritual – a circle to remind us of life and death. In theatre, Dionysius is born, dies and is reborn, like Christ. That’s why theatre won’t die.”
She reminded me that the need and spirit of expressing stories, prika or no prika then and now, will always live. Thank you, Lydia.