Mid 70s 20 year old at the time Vangelis Theodoropoulos met Ellie Papadimitriou at the Kedros publishing house where she worked. Over time, they became friends, even though she was in her 70s. “I remember her house on the first floor, at a dead end on Fokilidou Street, where she lived with her mother. He gave her and her piano a good room to play in, while Ellie kept a small room for herself. I remember her squatting on the bed.” says “K” famous director.

When he was already a student at the theater school of the Athens Conservatory, Elli Papadimitriou invited him to Patmos one summer and put him up in a hotel where she herself rented a room. She was interested in staging her outstanding play, “East”“who worked on it with obsession, from edition to edition every decade, on the anniversaries of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, not sparing throwing away everything that did not contribute to the theatricality of the work. Ellie gave me directing instructions! But then I wanted to be an actor. It took 15 years before I took up directing.”

Last summer, the director presented The Orient in just two performances at the archaeological site of Tiryns as part of the All Greece is Culture program. Now Anatoly regularly enters the National League along with Manolis Mavromatakis, Eleni Uzunidou, Michalis Titopoulos, Apostolis Psychramis, Dimitris Kapooranis, Tasos Misirlis. The work was of great importance to the author. When she left for the Middle East during the occupation, this was the only manuscript she took with her. In Cairo, he first published it in 1941 and revised it every ten years: 1952, 1962, 1972, 1982, on the anniversary of the Asia Minor catastrophe.

“Ellie gave me directing instructions! But then I wanted to be an actor – it took 15 years before I moved on to directing.”

For historian Ioanna Petropoulou, who chronicled the life of the poet in Ellie Papadimitriou: Woman of the 20th Century (published by Hermes) and curated an exhibition of Papadimitriou’s photographs at the Benaki/Ghika Gallery, “Anatoly” is a frontier. project. Poetic drama in free verse, where the germ of theatrical speech is present. The poet gives the floor to eyewitnesses. “To the women of the settlements, to the widows of war, to the cleaners who are accompanied by the last captive, soldier, sailor, and also to that young man who, on his first ikmad, throws his letters in order to learn the sign – to become a warrior.”

Refugee

Papadimitriou was born in Smyrna before 1900, in an urban prosperous family, in a family environment where, according to I. Petropoulos, “women had equal access to knowledge, participating equally with men in society, which also determined her education.” In the events of 1922 he studied agriculture in Great Britain. Later in Greece, he devoted himself to the problem of refugees, traveled everywhere, recorded testimonies, oral histories, photographed, joined the left, took part in the anti-fascist struggle in the Middle East, was imprisoned, took an active part in the resistance, in the refugee, in the arts. She died in 1993. The last time V. Theodoropoulos saw her was in a nursing home with severe dementia.

How difficult was it to recreate the play he performed at the archaeological site and now puts on in a closed space? All rehearsals were done at the National Theatre, – says the director, who for the first time took up the design of scenery together with K. Politis. “I was very influenced by the ancient Tiryns. So we discovered the original stone wall of the building, which was sheathed with plasterboard during the construction of the theater. We removed it at the beginning of the season. The scaffolding that the show’s actors can climb and the protective screen make up the set.” A group of refugees at an archaeological site during a memorial ceremony in memory of their lost homeland.