Ange Arabatzis’ new show draws on his Greek name, Vangelis—a kind of cover and licence to unleash the id. Vangelis Unleashed opens June 18 at Melbourne’s Butterfly Club.” The performance marks the culmination of a three-year creative journey that began in 2022 with Untitled.

Back then, each performance started with a single word from the audience—a trigger—which Arabatzis built upon, weaving a story shaped by spontaneous answers to random questions. It was a perilous path for an actor: unscripted, uncontained, and without a safety net.

“It was all born of a single word trigger,” says Arabatzis. The “journey,” as he calls it, continues into its third year. “It’s been quite the journey. I needed time to sit and reflect on what has come up during the performances and try and get to some kind of core expression.”

Vangelis Unleashed, he says, is “a culmination of my previous shows and, as the title suggests, it will be an unleashing of sorts.”

Arabatzis, a Melburnian, trained in New York under Jon Shear—director of Urbania and a Grand Jury Prize nominee at the Sundance Film Festival. The actor’s dedication to theatrical improvisation places him far from the comfort of scripts and structure. He has appeared in numerous television series, and has made his own films such as The Truck, (2019) A Chance (2019), Where the Heart Is (2010) and Word of Mouth (2010) and stage plays like Wages of Fear, (2016) over the last 15 years.

Arabatzis – filmmaker and theatre artist – holds a Masters from VCA Melbourne University, and his work explores intimacy and alienation, through absurdism and dark comedy. He has also appeared in numerous short films such as THE TRUCK, One of his many characters is Manny Cockaflopoulos, an irreverent Greek know-it-all which however comedic hits hard at the Greek male trope.

Theatrical improvisation, he admits, is dangerous. “There is no safe space, no script, and no turning back. It can be a form of theatrical death if not navigated well.”

Arabatzis thrives in chaos and deliberately curates absurdity as a self-confessed fanboy of Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and Ionesco, Arabatzis says, “They guide me.”

“I thought my approach was unique but actually, it had been done before—it was absurdism.”

“It forced me to think about what I had to offer and why one would have the nerve to get up on stage and improvise a show and invite people to pay money to see it.”

Although he’s been doing improv for years, he didn’t initially realise that’s what it was.

“I started acting classes and took to it naturally—us ethnic fellas, when we’re with our mates hanging out talkin’ shit, we riff.

“There’s a musicality to it, a rhythm, and in a sense, doing these solo shows is an extension of that—telling stories, jokes, switching characters, philosophising.

“But it has the absurdist element to it,” he adds.

Arabatzis says he can “switch and go in any direction.”

“The energy in the room can go from jovial to sinister—that’s what is exciting to me.

“Whacking this wild horse and having it take off, and there’s me hanging on for dear life.

“I’m shit-scared and excited at the same time.”

While absurdism shapes the form, his curated improvisation is also a deep dive into psychology—his own and others’.

“When I’m up there, ideas come from memories but also from people I’ve met, things I’ve said and done, a nugget of wisdom, a crazy person on the bus that triggers a thought,” he says.

He likens the process to the arcade game Frogger—”trying to leap from one slippery log to the next in order to get to the other side, and the logs are ideas, memories, and confessions.”

Arabatzis has attempted to write a solo show, but finds it emotionally and creatively limiting. Instead, he prefers the leap—no script, no parachute.

The notion that a performance must be “about” something frustrates him.

“I’d rather get up there and discover what it is I need to express at that given time and run with it.

“It has been likened to live painting. I thrive on the pressure to come up with something on the spot, on stage, in front of an audience. It makes me focus in a way that is actually liberating from the usual brain chatter.”

In Vangelis Unleashed, Arabatzis doesn’t just perform—he dives headfirst into chaos, memory and meaning, daring audiences to join him in the freefall. Catch it from June 18 at Melbourne’s Butterfly Club.