When Renee Pittakis he talks about the day he took the exam in Artistic theaterIt’s like describing a painting. “I got tanned after summer baths on Hydra, in a bright orange dress, lipstick on my lips, a necklace around my neck. The girls went to the exams informed. Unpainted, dressed in black and dark. They started painting me, I refused. I wanted to be myself.”

He laughs at the audacity and naivety of youth. “I told them, ‘I didn’t prepare a monologue, only poetry, because I give to the university.’ But there, on the stage then, something strong struck me. Later, my father also worried about the results, unable to see how his little girl suffered. He went down to the theater and, with all his secular nature, introduced himself to Hatzimarkos and asked him. That’s how we were informed early that I was dead.” Why not the National Theatre? “Of course, we thought about it. But it coincided with the day when I was giving a report at the entrance exams to the university. Father suggested:” Do you also go to Kuhn? And let’s not go to the theater as often as to the movies “.

“State – Saturn”

On April 20, we will see Reni Pittakis on the main stage of the National Theatre, where Dimitris Karanzas is staging Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, translated by Dionisy Kapsalis. This is the fourth collaboration with the 36-year-old director, whom he admired even before they started working together. Now she plays Juliet’s nanny, Nena, “a woman baked into life, in fact, her mother, who had a great soft spot for her. A woman who stands tall but ultimately follows the system to survive.”

In the place of death, the rivalry between the two powerful families of Verona and the highest love unfold. “In a world of decay and mutual destruction, where one moment we have extreme cruelty, and the next moment – inaction. The Capulets and the Montagues bequeathed their hatred to the younger ones. Romeo does not participate in this violence, he is closed, lonely, sadness attracts him. Juliet is also out of family rivalry. They meet at a Capulet feast, an explosion of swagger, and fall in love. But their love becomes death, a way out of a reality that they cannot stand,” says the famous actress and finds similarities with our time: “Today, society roars insidiously, bile overflows, and violence breaks out over weak victims. We mourn the abuse, the tsunami of daily violence while the state looks like Saturn devouring its children, as shown by the lack of prevention in Tempe.”

Grimly describes the landscape and Dim. Karantzas notes in the performance: “An existential place (banquet hall? Crematorium? Public space?) a place of inactivity where only violence, patriarchy and imposition flourish. In this place where men are taught to kill and women to “lie on their backs”, the two central figures of the play, Romeo and Juliet, put up strong resistance, break free from the norm and construct their own place – the place of poetry and imagination – and they defend love as an escape from a universe of hate that has lived for centuries (to this day).”

The family did not interest me at all, perhaps because the marriage of my parents did not work out. And the marriage with Mimi was so that my father would not be upset, because we wanted to live together.

Reni Pittaki, who had been in the theater for fifty-seven years—forty of them at the Technis—was one of those girls who, she told me earlier, broke the mold of the city. In Stew Coon, she felt free. Today he is not optimistic about the future. “Will my generation ever believe that in old age we will have war and a constant nuclear threat on our side? However, the economic crisis, pandemic, abuse, degradation of education, crime in Tempe also fell on the backs of the younger generation.”

In Renee Pittakis, one admires her talent, the characters she unearths, the ease of interpretation, the subcutaneous humor in discussions, the way she mentions ups and downs and cycles of depression, her innate kindness. “I wasn’t sure when I decided to go to the theater and I wasn’t ready when I got on stage. I was not mature enough for my first role, Ruth in Pinter’s Turn in 1966.”

He speaks fondly of Exarchia. Her father came with his family from Smyrna, her mother was an Athenian with roots from Argos. After the wedding, they had Reni and her twin brother, who died at six months. The school started and ended in Arsakeyo with intermediate stations, schools in Serra, Kozani, Trikala, Larissa due to the movements of her military father. “I liked the changes, the hike in the mountains of Northern Greece, in the anastenaria, camping by the sea. I met undeveloped and beautiful Greece. Dad was going to bring the yearbook. He was right, but not in the cliques that dreamed of power and a coup. He was demobilized sometime in the 60s when we returned to Athens.”

Let’s face it, I was in a place where boys were a danger. There were times in the theater when a lot was hidden. They feel good and come out.

He talks nostalgically about his mother’s house in Exarchia, with its loggias and dripping tiles, the roof overlooking the Acropolis, where he climbed to see the horizon and sing sou Vembo. “My parents were happy when we moved into a modern apartment with heating and a bathroom in Victoria Square.”

“I wasn’t sure”

She survived the loss of her brother through the pain of her mother. “She was melancholic, she had mental problems, and her marriage to her father was not suitable. I knew great love and security, all for the sake of my daughter, but on the other hand, I experienced the misunderstanding that they experienced. There was no significant connection between them.” They weren’t strict parents, “security was heavy, I was an only child.” So the theater was a way out, although it also had a “pearl of archeology.” After all, her great-grandfather was Kyriakos Pittakis, one of the pioneers of the formation of Greek archeology, initiated at the age of 18 in Filiki Etayria. In 1822, when the Greek revolutionaries were besieging the Acropolis, and the besieged Turks were taking out a pencil from the ancient columns, from the joints of stones, for volleys, the besiegers, as Manolis Andronicus wrote, “at the suggestion of Pittakis, they sent volleys to stop the destruction.”

She heard many stories from her aunts about her great-grandfather, and also about her grandfather, Stilponas Pittakis, a scholar from the evangelical school of Smyrna. “A journalist, he also wrote poetry. I recently found his play in a thrift store. Dad also had an artistic nature that choked her. He drow. I liked his pastels and some watercolors. On the Hydra, when we were swimming, he painted in oils, and Dassin filmed Phaedra with Melina and Anthony Perkins. Mom taught poetry. My parents were sensitive, but what a shame, an inconsistency. She married to live, and he married to wear slippers. They accepted my choice, they just put pressure on me not to leave the university.”

In the theater, she found a way to overcome her shyness. The disciplined environment of the Art Theater helped her stay focused. “We also went to other people’s rehearsals, like going to school. The boys were also engaged in physical labor in the theater, the girls were women. We were betrayed.”

How did they protect a beautiful girl in the theater? “Let’s face it, I was in a place where boys were a danger. There were times in the theater when a lot was hidden. They are doing well, and they are coming out into the light,” says Reni Pittaki. It is now known that ashtrays were thrown at the Art Theater, tables were turned over, there were frictions and conflicts. Also, Kun didn’t want a relationship between his actors so they wouldn’t become dissonant. He had Reni as a daughter, and she as a second father. She accepted her orange dress for exams, as well as her relationship with Mimi Kouyumtzis. He became best man at their wedding, and when they broke up, Kun tried to get her back.

Incompatible Parents

“The family didn’t interest me at all, maybe because my parents’ marriage didn’t work out,” she says confidently today. She did not aspire to motherhood. “I have a weakness for independence. And the marriage with Mimi was so that my father would not be upset, because we wanted to live together.

She was not offended that Kuhn’s will about the future of the Art Theater did not include her name. “He was annoyed, so they told me that I tried to work in television, although he did not. He did not want us to work outside his theatre. I wanted to spread my wings. In addition, the Art Theater was a male environment.” Were there fights? “There was intrigue. It upset me, but I did not bend, I had a center and goals.”

In the summer, her goal is relaxation. In November, Albi’s “Three Tall Women” with director Robert Wilson awaits her at the Municipal Theater of Piraeus. Their first meeting “was like a master class in palpation. Not a lot of text and dialogue. He works differently, with movement, lighting, music.” So the sea and the horizon are needed, “for Wilson’s discipline is the church.”