New actors need to learn passion
As Melanie Klein in Nicholas Wright’s play «Mrs Klein,» playing at the Theatro Exarcheion, Eleni Hadziargyri both psychoanalyses and is psychoanalyzed. The death of the son is the starting point for a ferocious conflict between mother and daughter. «It is one of the most important roles I have ever played, one of the most beautiful and difficult things I have had to do,» she says. From when she first trod the board (in 1942, with the birth of the Theatro Technis) until today, Eleni Hadjiargyri has covered almost all the fields and «the most important points» of theater: international, Greek, the heroines of ancient tragedy. She has taught at drama schools for the past 30 years, observing the younger generations, commenting, noting, exercising criticism and self-criticism. Then there are her many personal roles as woman, mother and grandmother. And she continues unyieldingly to play and teach. «I feel the weight of time only when I or someone close to me is ill, or when I’m depressed. Otherwise, I don’t notice the years going by. A part of me remains pure, innocent.» What helps you to stay like this? The influence of my grandmother, I think, who died at a great age. I admired her, loved her to bits, she was solid. This innocent part of me, the childlike, the pure, I owe to my grandmother. Do you feel blessed by life? Yes. Looking at what happens to people around us… Sure, I’ve had to face difficult situations, but not like other people. And I have a great faith in God. And so I won’t be misunderstood, I don’t mean religious mania but faith, deep and invigorating. The play’s program describes you as a symbol of a great era for the theater. Do you feel that that era has passed irrevocably? Yes. That period in particular is over. It had many characteristics, first of all the period itself. After the war we felt a great love for life, for people. We had a great propensity to be good, to love. Afterward the feelings began to fade, and now they have faded even more. The «I» is important now. At Koun’s, the collective mattered, the «we.» It’s perhaps gone out of necessity, since so many young actors come out of the schools each year. Through these new groups we might be able to return again to the «we.» But something is still missing: the teacher. Koun. There are many directors, but the teachers are missing and the young are struggling on their own. I worked by the side of Katerina Paxinou and Minotis for 25 years. I played with them and learned from them. I took things I can pass on to others. I’m optimistic as I see young people with passion and a real love, but someone has to give form to this passion. The theater no longer has great personalities with the stature of Rondiris and Koun. Precisely. Fotos Politis was at the National Theater for three years, and we talk about these three years as though they were half a century. Because they were packed years, he put on who knows how many plays. We talk about «the era of Koun,» «the era of Politis.» About whose era are we going to talk today? What is missing for today’s generation of young actors that yours had? I can’t really talk about my own beginning. It happened both by chance and through luck. I can, however, think of others who worked with Katerina and who were even luckier. Despite her difficult character, she helped young actors. She was both a teacher and an actor. The inspirer is missing, the miracle worker. Have you ever had psychoanalysis? Never. I read a lot of Freud as an adolescent. I never knew Melanie Klein. Now with the play I have realized just how many people undergo psychoanalysis. Young people. My students, who never dared to tell me and who now come and tell me. Not to mention the psychoanalysts who come to see the play. A few days ago a young female psychoanalyst came and found me and told me that she did not know if she should continue with her education. «What will happen if I have a boy and I start to think like Klein?» she wondered. A mother came up to me crying. «It’s a good thing I didn’t come with my daughter,» she said. They come out from seeing the play feeling almost redeemed; they realize their mistakes, things that they couldn’t see up until that moment. How do you feel? Like a psychoanalyst. When at the end I say, «I’m listening» to the girl, I feel as though we’re about to conduct a real psychoanalysis, that she’s going to begin talking to me and I’m going to listen. Just as with Chekhov’s «Three Sisters» when, as you said, you wanted to leave wearing your stage clothes? Exactly. That was a heavenly production with Koun, and we all thought the same thing: that there was a carriage waiting for us outside the theater to take us away. It’s the same now. I get home and think that I should get ready for my next appointment. I talk a lot about my problems, which I never did before. Has Mrs Klein been a definitive point in your career then? Absolutely. It’s like a summing up of my life. Did this role makes you re-examine your relationship with your son? I never knew my son. I saw a young boy who then returned from his boarding school with hairs on his legs and then a man with a child. The intervening points were filled in in my mind, with thoughts, letters. Gaps which now, with the role of Klein, are being filled in. I see where I am to blame, where the children are to blame. I don’t see these things as mistakes but as facts of life. Have you ever felt the same way about another role? Perhaps with Masa in «Three Sisters,» whom I always refer to because she also married when still a girl. I was barely 17 years old when I married Costas Hadziargyris (Author’s note: the writer; their marriage was brief). How did you first go to Koun? Skouloudi took me. Not a day goes by when I don’t mention her. We sat opposite each other. I would read from her library. She liked my voice and told me that there was a young director who was putting on Russian plays, which she thought would suit me. And she led me to Koun. So I left school. I didn’t finish it. I went to Fotopoulos’s private school and didn’t sit the exams for the leaving certificate. Hadziargyris asked me to marry him; I said yes. I don’t have a diploma from Koun, that shows I graduated from his school. But Mrs Klein hadn’t studied either… She also found herself among great teachers… Has your son seen the play? No, and I don’t want him to. I’d have stage fright. Be scared… Your career has been full; your resume is full of roles from all areas of drama. Did you try for this, did you pursue it? Not at all. My second husband, whom I was with for many years, would say that I followed the «nut-hole system.» What does it mean? That you sit in your hole, wait, and «they come to you.» I’ve never pursued anything.
