New York.- By Vicki J. Yiannias
Yannis Simonides, former chair of the acting program at NYU, is a well-known in the Greek community as the founding artistic director of the Greek Theatre of New York, the former executive director of Hellenic Public Radio, and the Emmy award-winning producer of the TV documentary A Light Still Bright, about the Greek Orthodox community in Constantinople. Now he is gaining international stature, as well, with his solo performance, The Apology, in collaboration with Broadway and stage veteran Loukas Skipitares.
The Apology, based on Plato?s original work and translated into English by Skipitares and Simonides, is the re-enactment of Socrates? self defense in the Court of Athens before he drank the hemlock.
Since its premier at the Holy Trinity Archdiocesan Cathedral in New York in 2003 The Apology (director Loukas Skipitares, costumes by Oscar and Tony winner Theoni V. Aldredge, percussive support by Caryn Heilman) has had such a singularly successful history in view of its diverse settings — currently it is playing worldwide in both Greek and English (and soon in Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and German) making a leap into the mainstream with an astonishing variety of applications. Among them: corporate internal management-improvement at Microsoft and the Swiss bank UBS, the Annual Conference of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, and the Committee for Human Rights at the United Nations, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Winchester universities in the UK, Aristotle University, Thessalonika and other engagements too numerous to list, at theaters, schools, churches, libraries, festivals, and conventions.
Performances of The Apology at ancient sites (more coming up) have been stunningly successful. In a comprehensive review of the performance at Ephesus (part of the Archaeological Institute of America & Travel Dynamics International?s Voyage into the Classical World cruise), Jonathan Kalb writes in his article “Socrates Unbound”, (April 2007 issue of American Theatre magazine), “No one who was present will ever forget Simonides-as-Socrates entering at dusk on the steps of the Celsus Library at Ephesus…”
Some significant appearances scheduled: Athens, July – August 2007, twice daily, at 8:30 and 10:30, Scholiou 8, Plaka; Cyprus, October 5, at the University of Cyprus and the A.G. Leventis Foundation. 2008: the Maria Tsakos Foundation and Montevideo University, Montevideo, Uruguay; the Maria Tsakos Foundation and the University of Tokyo, in Tokyo, Japan, at the invitation of Captain Panaghiotis Tsakos.
If you haven?t yet seen The Apology, catch the next New York performance on October 13, 2007 at the New York Children?s Museum exhibition Gods, Myths, and Mortals.
In spite of this breakneck performance schedule, Simonides is on a creative roll with new projects. “My life is coming full circle, and in a good way.” Simonides told The Greek News, “Soon I and the institutions and colleagues I am working with and support are poised to write some interesting, new, and unique chapters in theatre and Greek literature in the USA, Greece, worldwide, and certainly in the best interests of the Greek Diaspora.”
Simonides has revived the original Greek Theatre of New York (1979-1994, which “approached the classical, medieval and contemporary Hellenic repertory with “discipline, delight and occasional irreverence”. Elliniko Theatro, incorporated in 2006 as The Greek Theatre Foundation Inc., a New York-based non-profit, bilingual performing arts company whose purpose is to develop, produce and support classical and contemporary Greek drama internationally.
“Elliniko Theatro is pleased and honored to serve the continuity of the splendid tradition of The Greek Theatre of New York,” said Simonides. Some of current projects of Elliniko Theatro are Refugee, an original ensemble piece with music, The Memoirs of General Makriyannis: A Bi-lingual Reading/Performance by Yannis Simonides, and CAVAFY: Passions and Ancient Days: A Reading /Performance by Yannis Simonides.
Refugee, constructed and directed by Simonides in collaboration with singer Gregoris Maninakis and the Mikrokosmos Ensemble, is slated to premiere in English as a work in progress at the Maliotis Center in Brookline, Massachusetts in September. The work explores the themes of genocide and of population displacement through the prism of the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 and the Burning of Smyrna.
In The Memoirs of General Makriyannis, Simonides presents (in Greek and English), excerpts from the memoirs of General Makriyannis, the legendary military leader who at a young age emerged as a key general of the Greek Revolutionary army, and afterwards as one of the founders of the Modern Greek State and a formidable politician. The performance is accompanied by recorded ?kleftika tragoudia? and a power-point presentation of images of the Revolution.
CAVAFY: Passions and Ancient Days intends to bring to life a man who is considered to be one of the most important poets of the 20th century. By paying homage to the theatricality of Cavafy?s voice and gesture, his private universe and public persona, Simonides “attempts to arrive at the moments of the poet?s inspiration to peer at the workings of his lifelong struggle with adversity and of his ultimate liberation, and to sculpt these findings on stage in a manner that may shock the audience into a recognition of humanity’s possible redemption through the power of love, art, irony and the pleasures of learning.”
