Maria Theodorakis is very happy to play someone her age in This is Living, a new production written by Ash Flanders and directed by Matt Lutton for the Malthouse Theatre opening on Wednesday July 12.

The actor has confronted “ageism” in the Australian arts scene and this work allows her to explore a “narrative that actresses my age do well,” Theodorakis tells Neos Kosmos.

Theodorakis plays one of the three “straight women” in the lives of a gay couple that is dealing with the confronting events of a partner’s terminal illness.

Theodorakis is armed with an intimidating CV that includes work at the Malthouse Theatre, MTC and lots of television and cinema work.

She has performed in many plays, including The Spook, Birthrights, Measure for Measure, and Who’s Afraid of the Working Class. On screen, she appeared in Seven Types of Ambiguity and Newton’s Law on the ABC. She won Best Actress awards for Walking on Water and received multiple Green Room award nominations. Formidably, she holds a PhD in performance.

This is Living is living is important for her, as it challenges heteronormative assumptions of family.

“This family in Matt’s and Ash’s work is a gay couple whose three best friends are straight women, of a certain age.

“Illness is challenging the couple, and the play explores how illness impacts on family, and relationships, in looks at what family really means,” Theodorakis says.

Theodorakis sees it as “a deep investigation of what love means to them, and to their friends.”

The tragicomedy is born of real-life events and examines the deviation from the traditional ‘Australian dream’, and challenges the expectations of owning a house, getting married, and having children.

“Matt and Ash write about and real meaning, and certainly, they are not saying being the middle class, white and straight is the only form of family one can have.”

When asked if she feels ‘white’ now, and Theodorakis laughs, “Here we go. No, I am absolutely not white.”

Illness the great equaliser for Theodorakis and makes gender, sexuality, identity, and economic position irrelevant especially in the face of mortality.

“Illness can bring people together or it can tear them apart and we see that on stage.”

She acknowledges that the play is about “middle-class people” and that money can make a difference on how one deals with illness.

She adds that for Greeks in Australia as post-war immigrants “it’s taken awhile for us to reach that middle class dream.”

“We [Greeks] worked hard, we did the double shifts, migration and hard work go hand in hand,” Theodorakis says.

The conversation flips back to theatre and audiences and Theodorakis says that in Australia we are obsessed with youth even though most of the audiences are not young.

“There is a fixation with youth audiences and yet it is mainly women over 45 that go to the theatre, so why not talk of and to that demographic?”

Theodorakis does not advocate that theatre “give up on young people” in fact she believes that theatre is going to have a massive resurgence.

“Young people are always on the phone, with TikTok, etc. I’m sure that I can already hear it in my own children that they are just over it.”

“They crave immediacy and a commitment to longer narratives they want something a bit more.”

There is a salient point when she says, theatre will defiantly reconnect with the digital natives, “It’s part of our [Greek] tradition and only 3000 years old…it’s not dead.”