The challenge of directing a great director
After 10 years as a director, she is directing another director, and a leading director to boot: Lefteris Voyiatzis who, after 20 years in the theater, is for the first time entrusting someone else to direct him. Alongside this, the National Theater has invited her to direct «Antigone» this summer at Epidaurus, with a lead actress of the stature of Lydia Koniordou. And to think that when Niketi Kontouri first began to direct, exactly 10 years ago, she was not yet quite sure that this was what she wanted to do in the theater. Her many years of study in New York had, of course, equipped her for setting up a production, but, having started out as an actress, she didn’t anticipate directing. «Although when I started to direct I saw that it was better, that I am happier directing,» she says today. In early 1992, while pursuing her acting career, she read that Yiannis Houvardas was open to proposals from young directors for the Theatro tou Notou, which he had just started up. She went and found him, and he thus gave her the opportunity to direct her first play, «Der Kontrabass» by Patrick Suskind, with Lazaros Georgakopoulos. And this led to directing many other plays in the years that followed; «my favorite work,» she says even today. «This is how the road opened up for me. I owe a lot to Houvardas. He’s one of the few people in the theater who, whatever they proclaim, they actually do it. «How many of us, actors, directors, started off there. It’s a great talent to be truly open to others and not just be ‘me, me’ all the time.» Directing won her over. «I saw that it expressed me more. Knowing how an actor operates from within, I can work with their souls.» She adores them, «but we, of course, also have our arguments. I have a stubborn Epirus mentality and so you can’t make me change my mind. When I want a certain result, I insist.» All was rosy at the start, but then things got more difficult. «When I began to expand and do productions for a wider audience, mainstream theater, the National Theater, then they all started to become much tougher with me; a woman who, from out of the blue, had the gall to tread on the territory of a male profession. Especially with ‘Medea’ at the National Theater, with Karofyllia Karabeti. They were very cruel then. There was a desire to slur me personally, not just to judge my work. It wasn’t just the critics; there was a whole climate within the theater.» Did she consider giving up directing at that point? «Not for a moment. I became very bitter, but this just fired me up to continue.» She also had the support of her husband, the leading set designer Giorgos Patsas. «Yes, he helped pave the way for me. But the best thing is that we live together. We both love the same thing so much; we understand each other’s work, each other’s sorrows and insecurities. We can laugh at our artistic hysteria and outbursts. He’s my support.» Collaboration with Voyiatzis As one might expect, many of her productions are collaborations; «Medea,» and now «Nora,» with Voyiatzis. Given the myth surrounding Voyiatzis, that he imposes a very demanding level of work on his collaborators, did the proposal to direct him not frighten her? «What frightened me,» she says, smiling, «is why an artist like Lefteris Voyiatzis wanted me to direct him. I felt a great responsibility – to direct a director, and Voyiatzis to boot. With his own perspective on the theater, his own language. But ultimately, Voyiatzis does not just dearly love the theater, but the people with whom he works. Very much. Unbearably so sometimes! There were moments when I felt we couldn’t communicate. «He makes so many demands. He doesn’t hold anything against you; it’s not personal, it all stems from his drive to discover what isn’t showing. And this is where the great lesson lies. It’s a watershed for me, this collaboration with Voyiatzis. I am gaining so much.» Would she say that she is sharing the direction of this play with Voyiatzis? «I would say that this is a play directed by me with the assistance of Voyiatzis. Look, as far as the production as a whole goes, we had no disagreements. On the other hand, he didn’t refute my responsibilities, and I wasn’t so blind or arrogant as to decline the suggestions of someone like Voyiatzis. «It would be so stupid! In any case, about 90 percent of his suggestions tied in completely with what I wanted to do. And the play is based around him. The role he plays, Mr Peter, is the play.» One could say that «Mr Peter’s Connections» is an autobiographical work by Arthur Miller, as well as a survey of the social and political changes in America over the 20th century. He wrote it five years ago, at the age of 82. Mr Peter is an old man, over 80, who gets lost in his reveries as he dozes off one day. Contemplating his life, he recalls faces that were of great importance to him, dead and alive, and he sees the past through the present, and vice versa. Love, lust, values, history – these raise questions that demand an answer. «It’s very different from the other plays of Miller that we know,» says the director. «His writing here is reduced, elliptical. We need a magnifying glass to discover the text ‘beneath.’ It’s reminiscent of Beckett and Pinter, but with a great emotional richness at the same time, a very tender play. It’s an anguished survey of life, on the threshold of death, a painful process, but also seasoned with humor and warmth. From the point of view of direction, it is a very difficult play.» She talks about the creative collaboration shared by all those involved, working around the poet Maria Laina’s translation: Patsas (set design, costumes), Nikos Kypourgos (music), Lefteris Pavlopoulos (lighting), and, above all, the actors: Yiannis Dalianis, Alexandra Pantelaki, Theodora Tzimou, Gerasimos Michelis, Christos Loulis, Emily Koliandri, and Eleni Kokkidou. «It was a joy to work with such actors. When the pressure’s over, we’ll look back over this experience,» she says. Antigone Perhaps this will come sometime later, because immediately after «Mr Peter’s» premiere, «Antigone» awaits her. She is pleased, but also a little awe-struck. «It’s the second tragedy I’ve directed, after ‘Medea,’ which played for three years, and toured abroad. Nikos Kourkoulos made it possible for me to see the play several times, and so improve certain things. I learned a lot that way. But, the anxiety remains the same. «Now I am more sure about certain things. With ‘Antigone’ I felt as though another door was opening beyond which a lot of light awaited me!»
