“Since childhood, I have worked alone a lot. So I’m not afraid not to go on stage, I’m afraid not to imagine, not to dream in the theater. Lukia Michalopoulou does not strive to be constantly present and does not strive to do several things at the same time. Maybe that’s why in everything she plays, she leaves her mark.

As it happened in 2019 in Thomas Bernhard’s production of Ritter, Dene, Foss directed by Maria Protopappa, as well as in Edward Albee’s play The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? Directed by Nicorestis Haniotakis. This time, “in a year of great upheavals”, as he characterizes the season that has begun, Chaniotakis is staging it in Jean Cocteau’s The Voice of a Man, which is performed every Tuesday at the Mikros Horn Theater from Monday in October. 17.

This is one of the works that she knew from childhood. Who doesn’t want to do it? Simone Signor, Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann, Julia Mishenes, Denise Duvall, Renata Scotto, and Felicity Lott in the opera are among the protagonists who performed this monologue, one of the most important one-act plays of our century, as it used to be. described which Cocteau wrote in 1930. Pedro Almodovar from The Human Voice inspired women on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Michalopoulou did not want to be influenced by other interpretations. But he remembers his years in drama school, where he first heard an audio documentary with Ellie Lampety. It was one of her biggest theatrical hits of 1978.

As a child, you think not only about what you want to play, but also about whether it makes sense to do it, especially when there is so much going on around you.

“Everyone is something unique, there is no second, the main thing is not to be afraid, to give. Especially at a time when it prevents us from imagining, falling in love, ”says the actress. Her character is a young woman talking on the phone with her lover, who leaves her after five years to marry another. He experiences the pain of love, struggles with passion, pretends, laughs and cries at the same time, suffers from adoration, betrayal, rejection. And yet, for the protagonist, the matter is bright. “Cocteau suggests living in the red, even if it hurts.”

She is also touched by the fact that her heroine does not hide. “She is completely defenseless. This is a text that does not allow you to play with your comfort, although it belongs to the areas in which I have been practicing for years.”

The monologue as a process does not frighten her. “It’s like I’m working alone, like I’m inviting you to my house to see me. It became interesting to me whether such a monologue is interesting to the post-quarantine world, in a new difficult economic period. As a child, you think not only about what you want to play, but also about whether it makes sense to do it, especially when there is so much going on around you. The fact that we live in an age of great fear of exposure was the reason for me to play this monologue. After the virus, we have a heating problem. People think: “I will go to the theater and wear a coat?”. We have a new fear that we don’t know how to deal with.”

The Human Voice puts you face to face with your fears. The heroine is a generous woman and devoted to a man. The phone call the viewer is watching is their goodbye. “It is gratifying to see this in our time, which does not allow devotion and faith in something. Her own faith for a man. It motivated me towards the text.”

Her stage partner is the telephone. “That was the hardest part of the rehearsals, how it would look like I was talking to someone. For a whole hour, the viewer hears only his own voice. The speech is sketchy, it’s terribly difficult for him to speak, I needed to present the dialogue in a way that was convincing. The heroine is talking on the phone, trying to gain time so as not to hang up. That’s where I started. The big question at work is whether technologies bring us closer or further apart. We experienced this a lot in quarantine and understood better when we returned. I was touched by the way my character handled the loss. In her terrible weakness, she is terribly strong because she does not hide.

I want to be a contributor

Michalopoulu’s colleagues know that in addition to teamwork, she also devotes a lot of time to personal preparation. “That’s 70% of an actor’s job. It’s not related to the specific director I’m working with, it’s my own work. I’m not interested in being an actress-performer. I want to be a contributor. To be able to choose a project or participants, to organize something, to propose, to inspire.” However, he does not want to direct.

On Mondays we see her at the theater, but there is also Kazantzakis’ Captain Michalis, a film directed by Kostas Charalambous, in which she plays Vahelio.

Since 2004, space seems to still have that same momentum. “Even sharper and more specific,” he says. “I’m interested in thinking about the next play I’m going to play to be more interventionist.” When she graduated from drama school, there were poles of inspiration around her, such as the Cycladic Street Theater of Lefteris Voyatsis, the Kefalonia Theatre, Amore, the Art Theatre. “Today everything is more confused and scattered. In our time, we do this, and it is up to us what can change. I don’t care at all about being an optimist. Let’s be belligerent…”