From an artistic and professional point of view, this is a good period for Orestis Chalkia. Rehearsals for the play “Death in Venice” directed by Giorgos Papageorgiou have already begun at the Poreya Theatre. Maestro has been discussed as several Greek series and is sailing the seas of Netflix. At the same time, information was recently leaked that the 30-year-old actor will star in Hippolyta, directed by Katerina Evagelatos in Epidaurus.

However, these days (and until February 14) he settles a sweet “waiting”: he plays in “Doxa Koini”, a stage conversation of love poems based on Empiric’s “Eis din Odos ton Philhellinon”, staged by Dimitris. Tarlow and text composition by Stratis Paschalis. The show was interrupted due to the pandemic and is now returning to the Course Theatre, giving Orestis Halkias the opportunity to continue his thread again. “When the show you like ends, you say: “Oh, now, if we started, I would understand everything, if I caught it now, I would tell the story that I want to tell, very correctly,” the actor explains . and continues: “What happened between them – which for many was a blow to the human soul – brought maturity to the way I perceive the poetic text, and made me treat it more consciously, more fully. Poetry, of course, is inexhaustible; there is no single reading of it. Whoever listens or reads a poem is a new poet.”

Of all the verses that sound in “Doxa koina”, “Marabou” by Nikos Kavadias evokes special tenderness in him. Especially when combined with the soundscapes of Leda Maniataku, “Marabou” is perceived by an actor who also makes music as a “punch in the heart”. Moreover, his lyrics tell a tragic story, while the whole performance “lays the groundwork for revisiting how we fall in love”, or, as Orestis Chalkias says half-jokingly, half-seriously, it works “like a poetic element of love.”

Cancel “is”

The television caricature of a homosexual is nothing more than an embarrassment to society by the fact that a homosexual is just a human being.

In the adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, which also inspired Visconti’s film of the same name, he is fascinated by something similar: “the disillusionment of ‘being’ that one feels in front of the beautiful. Whatever idea you had about yourself before, it is erased and only an object of desire remains, ”says the actor, referring to the story of a writer who is attracted to a young man who is vacationing in the same hotel as him.

Halkias does not impersonate any of them and does not want to reveal more. He reminds us that, unlike television, theater approaches such topics in a much more respectful manner. “The television caricature of a gay man is nothing more than a public embarrassment about the fact that a gay person is just a person,” he says, adding, “Now the writers are starting to understand this – and not only after Christopher.”

“Christoforos” is, of course, Christoforos Papakaliatis, the creator of “Maestro”, where Chalkias plays the young homosexual Antonis. What was the most important thing he learned from being on the show? “It taught me how to work in a team and hold the hand of my collaborator, not just the actor, so that we are ready at any moment to say what we want. For example, we needed to shoot some scenes with a certain aesthetic, with a certain foggy light. What happened when the sun went behind a cloud. We could wait half an hour for this to happen, and the fact that we had to get to the set at that moment and get the right result gives you the opportunity to focus in seconds and be in the right state.”

Does Orestis Chalkias, a KTHBE theater graduate who came to Athens a few years ago, hope that the Netflix screening of Maestro will open up new opportunities for him abroad? “Of course I would love it, I would dream of doing Maestro or making films in different parts of the world,” he concludes. “This does not mean that I rub my hands and think: “Now it will be a mess.” As long as I’m lucky enough to do this job, tell stories and make people think, love and move, that’s enough for me. If I can do it on a larger scale, then why not?”