Paul Capsis picked up the ACON Media/Arts/Entertainment Award for outstanding contribution to the performing arts as an actor, singer and cabaret artist, and for many years of donating his time and talent for various LGBTI charity fundraisers.
“I was pretty thrilled, and honoured, to be honest,” Capsis tells Neos Kosmos.
It’s a big deal if the (LGBTI) community thinks of you to honour you in that way, because for me that connection to the community started such a long time ago.”
The award gave Capsis time to reflect on this community, and his contribution which started more than twenty years ago. He says that although his career kicked off after starring in the Ana Kokkinos film Head On, based on the novel Loaded, by Christos Tsiolkas, he’s honoured that his work still resonates with the community.
“I don’t know if I am a voice for the community,” confesses Capsis, who maintains he just “get(s) on with (his) work.”
“But if people feel that what I do somehow connects with them then that’s great – that’s a positive thing.”
Capsis says he was somewhat emotional when he accepted his award from ACON – a New South Wales leading health promotion organisation specialising in HIV and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) health.
“I was standing up there accepting my award and had a flash of all the people who I knew when I was a young person who were also like myself starting out working it all out but they died from HIV AIDS, young and they didn’t get the chance, and I thought of them – and I was quite emotional – I wasn’t excepting that to happen.”
The past month has been an emotional journey for Capsis, who recently visited Greece for the first time in his life. He spent three and a half weeks on the islands of Rhodes and Kastellorizo and was inspired by the land of his ancestors.
“I had so many mixed emotions, I was very emotional when I got there because of my family,” he explains.
“I felt a deep connection there; a deep connection to the land… I felt like I was in God’s country, I felt I was in paradise, in the most incredible place on Earth – the water, the beauty of the place.”
Even though Capsis’ family doesn’t originate from either of the islands, he felt a connection to spend time there as an introduction to the Hellenic Republic, but adds he has a “strong urge” to go back to Greece and “discover more”.
“I’d meet Athenians and they were very different from the islanders,” he says of his impressions of the islands.
“The island culture is very intense, I found, but I fell absolutely in love with the land – with the water in particular and with the history.”
As for the crisis, Capsis says he wasn’t exposed to the feeling that Greeks in Greece were suffering at the hands of austerity measures and lack of tourism. He says many people did comment that there weren’t as many tourists as previous years, but the islanders didn’t seem to be phased by this. As he says, “I didn’t feel a desperation from the people there. I felt like people are getting on with it, and it was as if they were saying ‘what crisis?'”