Picture this. A Melbourne summer night spent by the river amidst trees, watching ancient Greek classics.
Let’s make the scenario a bit more specific. You have the option for a comedy, tragedy, or both, and plays are performed in both English and modern Greek.
Why not talk practical too? Tickets are affordable – after all you’re in an open air theatre – and it doesn’t matter that you’re sitting far away from the stage.
You can see from high above and acoustics are great; even a whisper on stage is heard through to your back row seat. Those Ancient Greeks knew a thing or two when building amphitheatres.
If this sounds too much to ask even in 2022 multicultural Melbourne, you are probably not familiar with Fairfield Amphitheatre’s history.
Theatre had its most recent comeback at the open-air venue in February this year, with the premiere of a play by the Greek Community’s Creative Centre of Drama and Arts.
It was the first event taking place at the Fairfield Amphitheatre since being granted Heritage Protection, following community mobilisation for the cause.
READ MORE: Fairfield Amphitheatre granted Heritage Protection
But the bilingual theatre scenario described above is real. It was happening back in the 80s in Melbourne under the name ‘Epidavros Summer Festival’.
The idea was spearheaded by Stork Theatre’s Artistic Director Helen Madden, then a Monash University graduate and mother of three.
Madden and daughter Cassandra at the bluestone Fairfield Amphitheatre, 1986
Madden made it her cause to locate the ideal spot for an outdoors theatre space. She found the right fit in Yarra's riverbank at the Fairfield park. Here, with son Don and daughter Cassandra at the site, 1982. Photo: Stork theatre.
“I came out of university fired up with ancient Greek theatre, and I thought, well I’m going to put on ancient Greek theater,” Helen Madden tells Neos Kosmos.
“But there was no space for it in Melbourne. And that time there were the token sort of performances of ancient tragedy in the mainstream companies occasionally.”
Token meaning “only in English, in theatre palaces, that were exclusive, expensive and intimidating to go to.”
The opposite of what Madden had learnt ancient Greek theatre was meant to be: popular, festive, non-exclusive. And she wanted to recreate that.
Poster from the Epidavros Summer Festival's inaugural year. Photo: Stork Theatre.
The concept was to make it inviting for audiences, sort of “like going for a picnic” as well as affordable. A bilingual festival format was chosen with two plays back-to-back per day.
In its 1983 launch, the festival featured Euripides’ Medea in Modern Greek followed by Aristophanes’ popular comedy Lysistrata in English.
The following year the bilingual program was reversed.
No subtitles for the Greek play though.
“That was beyond our budget,” Madden recalls with a laugh.
“Everyone was asking ‘would the English speaking audience sit through a play in modern Greek?
“They did. Because it was a magic night. People knew that something special was on that hadn’t happened in Melbourne before.”
Iphigeneia in Aulis was staged as part of Epidavros Summer Festival in 1984. The Euripidean tragedy was performed in English. Photo: Stork Theatre
The second play of the 1984 festival program, Ecclesiazousi by Aristophanes, was directed in Modern Greek. Photo: Stork Theatre.
At the heart of the initiative was the Epidavros Theatre Group’s vision, backed by Greek community members and a progressive Northcote council to establish a theatre tradition different to the cultural status quo of the time.
“Our aim was to reestablish ancient Greek theatre as popular theatre.”
“We were in Northcote, where the third of the population was Greek migrants still coming in. And a lot of them women, who weren’t speaking English yet. So we knew if we wanted to be successful, we’d have to put on a play in modern Greek. And it was their culture anyway.”
The vision was endorsed by Melina Mercouri, then serving as Greece’s Minister of Culture.
During her visit to Melbourne in 1983, Madden met with Mercouri.
Inevitably the conversation initially centered around that year’s performance of Medea at Fairfield Amphitheatre, a role the Greek actress herself had played at the ancient Greek theatre of Epidaurus just a few years before.
“She said ‘Tell me about Medea. What was the interpretation of that idea? How did you do it? What was the feeling in the audience?’,” Madden remembers.
“And she discussed how one of her major policies as Minister for Culture was to bring the great works of Greek art into the rural and regional areas of the Greek mainland and the islands. To allow all Greeks to participate in their culture. And that she saw what we were doing in Melbourne and Northcote was a model of how it could work in the Greek diaspora.”
Madden says they shared a common understanding with Mercouri of ancient Greek theatre being “the most democratic form of theatre when it’s done in this traditional way.”
“Because it makes it available to people who otherwise wouldn’t go to the theater.”
By 1985 the Festival’s success led the council seek funding to build a permanent amphitheatre on the site, replacing the pop-up scaffolding set-up.
The pop-up scaffolding theatre on the Yarra riverbank preceded the construction of a permanent amphitheatre on the site. Photo: Stork Theatre, 1983
Medea at the pop-up scaffolding amphitheatre in 1983. Image from original footage
State and federal support was strong, as well as support from the Greek government.
The result? a 500-seat theatre modelled on the original one of Epidaurus, Greece.
Including a dedicated ticket booth and dressing rooms, the Fairfield Amphitheatre reportedly remains Victoria’s only professional outdoor theatre venue and Ancient Greek amphitheatre.
Madden secured its first five-year season, followed by commercial sponsorship programs that kept the venue a vibrant community hub until the mid 90s.
But following the transfer of guardianship to the newly-formed then City of Yarra, the amphitheatre gradually fell into disuse.
This was partly due to knowledge about the significance of the space being lost after the amalgation of Northcote council into Yarra, according to Madden.
READ MORE: Homer’s ‘The Iliad’, a triumph at Fairfield’s amphitheatre
The problem, she says, comes down to the treatment of the venue as “a theatre for rent” inhibiting the availability of a full season required for performance companies to run their programs.
“A person can ring up and book it for say a Saturday night next year.
“But if a professional company comes in, music, theater, opera, whatever and see that Saturday night booked in the middle of a season they walk away. That militates against being a successful professional performing arts venue. So you need to have someone to program.”
Asked if she would up her hand up for that again, Madden smiles.
“It needs someone young with a new vision. And there are so many artistic people in Melbourne capable of doing this job.”
After securing Heritage Protection status for the Fairfield Amphitheatre, a delegation – including Madden from Stork Theatre, representatives from Athenaum and Shakespeare in the park theatre companies, Greek Community of Melbourne President Bill Papastergiadis, Federal MP Maria Vamvakinou and Victorian MP Kat Theophanous – is pushing for the next step: putting the venue back into good use. Photo: Supplied.
Jim Claven, Kat Theophanous, Helen Madden and Bill Papastegiadis at the Fairfield Amphitheatre. Photos: Jim Claven
She is nevertheless determined to continue advocating for the theatre to return to its former glory.
“There is a significant push now. The Greek community, the performing arts and theater communities, and the broader Melbourne community are banding together and we’re thinking of having a delegation go to Yarra Council and ask them what their vision is for the space.”
In Madden’s 100+ pages submission to the Victorian Heritage Council last year, supporting the case to grant Fairfield Amphitheatre protection status, a good chunk of supporting documents were reviews of plays in mainstream Australian press.
Some performances, like a version of Euripides’ Bacchae by renowned Greek director Theodoros Terzopoulos, left a mark visible even years later.
It was brought from Athens for the Antipodes Greek Festival in 1987 and premiered at Fairfield Amphitheatre, before shown at the Athenaeum.
“Those extraordinary performances remain etched in my memory[…] Terzopoulos was the first artist to show me how powerful theatre can be,” critic Alison Croggon was writing in a 2010 piece for the Australian.
Coverage, Madden says, was “enthusiastic” for ancient Greek classics in an amphitheatre, which had been described by a critic as Melbourne’s ‘best kept secret’ (Melburnian, 1986).
“It still is, but why should it?
“When it’s conserved such a fabulous purpose. It could attract people from all over the state to performances that are inexpensive, open, friendly, informal and inviting. That’s how theater should be.”