Rare is the theatre that can appeal to audiences of many generations. To all continents and cultures, to ghettoes of London, to immigrant ghettoes of New York and Detroit, and do so as successfully as to the halls of Oxford and Cambridge, the mansions and huge theatres of New York. Audiences are different everywhere. But the essence of it, the approach, the energy remains the same.

“And that’s a marvellous thing – we are all so different but yet so similar.”

On this particular level of immediacy, the level of raw humanity where the issues of life and death are discussed, of honour, justice, love, duty, rights and wrongs, one’s own God, one’s own voice within – like in the play Socrates Now – you are fighting them with humour, with a kind of naughtiness.
That is how, in a few words, founder and director of New York’s Elliniko Theatro, Yannis Simonides, describes Socrates Now, the play that will be embarking on its Australian and New Zealand tour this March and April, in organisation with Sydney’s Theatro Productions.

The timeless classic is an 80 minute solo performance, based on Plato’s Apology of Socrates, which captures the essence of Socratic ethics in an engaging manner and through a humorous dramatisation of the philosopher’s defence to a guilty verdict and death sentence.

“It’s a very intense, interactive, Socratic discourse with all the bells and whistles that come with it. It is challenging and fun. In the spirit of Socrates, who was serious on one hand, and very intense and challenging for the citizen or interlocutors, but who was also fun, naughty and complex and imaginative, we try to keep that spirit in the play and in the discourse that follows every performance,” Simonides tells Neos Kosmos.

“This is about somebody who put his life on the lines with kefi, with a certain energy. And that energy and honesty is appreciated by the audience.”
In the Apology, reported to us by Plato who witnessed his mentor’s trial, Socrates firmly defends himself – rather than apologising in the contemporary meaning of the word – against politically motivated accusations of not believing in the gods of the state, and of corrupting Athenian youth.

“He doubts everything, doesn’t attack anything, just questions. He feels that by questioning you strengthen anything that you questioned – if it survives the questioning; and if doesn’t survive it – you examine and revalue it. He teaches the young to question – instead of them rebuilding the glory of Athens, they are following this barefooted, smelly old man. The gods of the state of course want to kill him. As they would in any era,” Simonides says, drawing a parallel with our modern society and Socrates’ teaching, still relevant nowadays.

“I don’t mean to be sacrilegious, but there is Snowden, the Anonymous, there is poor little soldier Manning who is going to rot in the American jails for the rest of his life. These are people who put their lives in danger, they all share the self-sacrifice – not because they don’t want to live, not because they are martyrs, but because they consider it essential for the society.”

Asked if playing an ancient philosopher for 80 minutes in a solo show was overburdening for him, Simonides modestly says he has been privileged to be doing it for so long.

“You could just imagine a piece that in an hour and a half contains the most important messages distilled from all religions and all political thought that has been put forth in that time so it can survive on the stage. It hasn’t changed; it is what it is. So what world would it be if you were hit straight through the eyes like a bullet with our most essential truths?” Simonides puts rhetorically.

And in today’s ever-changing world, and in the search for a life of meaning, the words of the great Ancient Greek philosopher – “I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world”;”Let him who would move the world first move himself” – seem to be more pertinent than ever before.

To back up the essential truths that Socrates Now carries, and when opportunity arises, Simonides likes to tell the story of a woman’s pair of glorious eyes which he recalls with a delightful memory, when he performed at the American College of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. The young woman asked him: “Prof Simonides, I’m a devout Muslim, and I just heard you tell us things that I thought only existed in my Holy Book, in Kuran, and you are telling me that it pre-existed by a thousand years and from a pagan culture – not a monotheistic but a pagan, polytheistic idolatry.

Would you be ever so kind as to help me marry the two in my heart?”

“That’s the marvellous thing that this performance has given me,” Simonides continues, “a self-examination and education. The older I get, the more I’m in agreement with him that when he said ‘I know one thing – I know nothing’, he meant it. He meant actually – I know so little.”

But, as much as the play is a matter of life and death, as serious as life can get, Simonides tells it’s as lighthearted and joyous as life is. And funny.
When they ask him why does he portray Socrates in that way – he simply responds:
“I have never met a wise man who was not funny.

If you are not humorous, you really take yourself too seriously. And if you take yourself too seriously, you are everything but wise.”

TO ELLINIKO THEATRO

Yannis Simonides’ impersonation of the eccentric yet magnetic personality of Socrates has captivated audiences around the world with its humour, immediacy and simplicity.

Or, as the Luxembourger Wort wrote, the play is “a superhuman effort on the part of the actor in a splendid coordination of text, movement and speech”.
Socrates Now premiered in New York in 2004 and has since been performed over 300 times in 15 countries. Leading universities like Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh have combined the performance with interactive seminars on Socratic ethics and how they apply to our world today, led by Simonides himself.

An Emmy Award winner, Yannis Simonides was born in Constantinople. At the age of three with his mother he moved to Athens and when 19, he disembarked to the States to study.

“All my years in Athens I was not allowed to feel a Greek. I was a Turkish citizen as far as Greeks were concerned. The mentality was – ‘we need to have a minority. We are not going to allow the Greeks that come to Greece to migrate to be fully Greek’. I was brought up as a Greek of diaspora, feeling like a second class, and the pain was enormous. Then I managed to get a semi-Greek citizenship, because I had so many fellowships and scholarships to go to the US that I said ‘I’m not going as a Turk’.”

Simonides says the pain and the distance travelled with him to the States. And when you have a distance towards something that you love – you re-examine it. That is – distance is not oppressing you.

“I fell in love with Greece, and Hellenism, everything… Then nostalgia hit, because as soon as I was in Yale the Greek junta was established so I couldn’t go back for 10 years.

“But the love affair remained – the more Americanised I was becoming, the more Greek I was becoming.”

To be the Head of Drama department at New York University that he took at a very young age, Simonides had to be fully functioning as an American. But it was through his art, through his studies, his nostalgia, that he fell in love with Greece all over again.

Inspired with the model of the now renowned New York Shakespeare Festival, that started on the streets and was than given space in Central Park, he decided to do the same.

“I thought, who would have been in a better position than me – totally bilingual and bicultural, good education… Shakespeare in the park – Greeks in the park.”

That was how the non-profit theatrical organisation Elliniko Theatro was founded in 1979, the institution that would later be described by Greek icon Melina Mercouri as “the longest living and most accomplished theatre of the Greek diaspora”.

In its 35 years of continuous success, the Theatro has brought the entire Greek repertoire to its diverse American audiences – from classical to Hellenistic, to Byzantine and early post-Byzantine, revolutionary, temporary, and also Greek American.

Though trained and functioning in the American theatre, having studied in the best historically theatre school in the States, at Yale, being assigned chairmanship and professorship at NYU and being ‘mainstream completely’, as he puts it, Simonides gave it all up, “to build a theatre first, Greek theatre second”.

About his decision to found a Greek theatre when already fully integrated in the new society, he says:
“I am not interested in preserving and supporting, putting forth Hellenism as a chauvinist thing – I am putting it forth as a question. It’s a departure point for exploration. Thousands of years ago, some fantastically original thoughts on every aspect of human life were born in that space. And that is a world of treasure, it’s something to use to pose questions with. That’s what interests me.”

In 2015 it will be 50 years since Simonides first stepped on American soil. He still carries grudges about the Greek American diaspora, for the fact they have not used their ‘extraordinary resources’ to support, to put forth Hellenism as an offering to mankind through their role as Greeks of the diaspora.

“I’ve been here, I’ve said it, I’ve lived it; I’ve been one of their harshest critics. I say their, because I cannot consider myself part of it. I am not Greek American – I am Greek and I am American.

“We stand apart. That is the dual nature of the Greek. But study it, honour it, analyse it, use it, create new generations of Greek Americans that are Americans but they can also be dedicated to Greece.

“Diaspora- that is one thing that in my old age I try to contribute to – linking of the diaspora and its communities around the world. We don’t know what the other Greek diaspora is doing.”

For Yannis Simonides and his team, the end of the theatre’s 35th year is just the beginning.

Now the Elliniko Theatro is entering a new phase in its life with two centres – a centre theatre in New York, and another theatre starting in LA. Other cells are evolving in London, Istanbul and Athens.

“I hope the Australian Greek and other diasporas can take this model and follow it.”

Up to now, the following performances of Socrates Now have been confirmed:

Hellenic Museum Melbourne: 7, 9, and 10 March. Performance in English.
Seymour Centre York Theatre, Sydney: 14 and 15 March, in English.
Factory Theatre Greek Festival of Sydney :16 March, in Modern Greek with English subtitles.
A special performance will be given at La Trobe University, Bundoora Campus.
Every performance is followed by a discourse with Yannis Simonides.
Upon request, performances will be coming up in other cities in Australia and New Zealand. To provide support and sponsorship or to host this performance, contact Theatro Productions on info@theatro.com.au