Young Tsitsanis comes to life

Award winner Giorgos Skabardonis talks about his novel-turned-script, now being staged in Thessaloniki

By Iota Myrtsioti - Kathimerini

The back cover of award winner Giorgos Skabardonis’s novel “Ouzerie Tsitsanis — 22 Pavlou Mela” revives the prevailing atmosphere at the beginning of 1943 in Thessaloniki: the occupation, the Jewish ghettos, espionage and hunger. The ouzerie situated at 22 Pavlou Mela Street remained open in the center of the occupied city and composer Vassilis Tsitsanis, who was 28 years old then, wrote some of his best songs amid this nightmare, or maybe because of it.

The State Theater of Northern Greece is now staging a play based on the novel at the Lazariston Monastery’s Socrates Karantinos Stage — the play opened recently, following an actors’ strike. So Skabardonis has returned to the theater, this time to transform yet another of his novels into the script for a play. The adaptation, which followed director Sotiris Hadzakis’s approach, was not easy, due to the particular era, the large number of characters in the novel — which had to be reduced (from 80-85 to about 40 people) — and the large orchestra, which performs the songs that Tsitsanis wrote between the fall of 1943 and October of 1944 in Thessaloniki. The writer had to take all that into account in order to transform the novel into a play that would cover all the tension, the events and the people who marked that period.

“It is neither a documentary nor a simple narration, it is a poetic revival of that era through a personal look and thoughts on the fate of people, especially that of a great artist who experienced the adversities of history,” said the author.

The ouzerie is the play’s meeting point where revolutionaries and black market dealers meet and where dreams and contacts are made. The leading character is Tsitsanis (played by Alexandros Moukanos), who is joined by his fictional brother-in-law Andreas Samaras (Antonis Frangakis), a waiter at the ouzerie and a carpenter who has joined the resistance and has a Jewish lover. His double identity and the parallel unfolding of events result in a colorful narration of the times. “This is not straightforward narration,” explains the writer. “The play’s main features are questions about art, war and history and the transition from fun to great tragedy, from poetry to horror and from logic to surrealism, which I think describe what life is about.”

Tsitsanis is seen through reality and fiction. “In the middle of the difficulties of war, were questions on ideology, creation and participation, loneliness and homeland, love and daily absurdity, the surrealism of survival in wartime, the weapons, resistance and the extermination of Jews, in which an artist tries to think and create an oeuvre that he carries like destiny.”

Tsitsanis is the recipient of all the tensions, which he transforms into songs. Therefore, the music also plays a leading role. Fifteen of Tsitsanis’s songs are interpreted on stage by musicians and actors, while the music Evanthia Reboutsika wrote especially for the play provides the musical background; it bridges transitions and maintains and strengthens the action.

Lazariston Monastery, 25-27 Kolokotroni, Stavroupolis, tel 2310.652.020/589.102.