Harry Pavlidis has been working as an actor for 22 years, but he’s finally playing the part he feels he was born for. Literally.
He has just been cast as Stavrakas in the reprise of Cafe Rebetika!, the musical theatre show by writer/director Stephen Helper, which is based on the Greek exodus from Asia Minor in 1922, and subsequent alienation back in Greece.
But for Harry, this is much more than a great part in a great play: for him the performance is a very personal one, because Stavrakas’ story very much mirrors that of his father’s father, Harry Pavlidis (the first).
“My grandfather experienced all this,” he says. “He was living in Trapezounta, on the Black Sea. In 1922, when he was removed from his homeland, he lost his mother, his father, his sister.”
It was just recently that Harry sat down for coffee at the Dendy in Newtown with Helper. Harry’s manager had told him that a great play was coming up based on the Catastrophe, and asked was he interested?
“My antenna popped up. Then when we met, he [Helper] told me about his vision, his passion. I was amazed that a non-Greek was doing this. About a week later, he’d chosen me to play the lead role.”
He was overwhelmed when he first read it. He hadn’t seen the play, but thinks this is a good thing. It has allowed him to take his own history into the show without it being distorted in any way by a previous interpretation.
Because Harry uses the stories of his grandfather’s experience to fuel his performance in Cafe Rebetika!, it creates an actor’s back-story that the audience never sees, but that enables him to generate the stoic suffering that Stavrakas exhibits.
But more pertinently, it is also his way of paying homage to his grandfather, sole survivor and patriarch of a new branch of the family, whose first born are all named in his honour.
This is Harry’s first singing role, which is ironic because his earliest acting jobs were in opera, Baz Luhrman’s La Boheme and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for instance, however those parts were dramatic rather than musical. But this also allows him a nod to his mother’s father, a beautiful singer who performed before dignitaries all over Europe.
Having also learned to play traditional Greek instruments for Cafe Rebetika!, this is clearly a profound and humbling experience for an actor who already knows his craft inside out. You can hear the depth of emotion in his voice.
“This is very close to home for me. Honour is an understatement, this is the pinnacle of a twenty-two year career.”
Cafe Rebetika! is on at the Arts Centre, Melbourne from 3-13 November.