The year looks busy for Margaret Thanos. Five months in Sydney, seven months London and a stint in the United States. All this is after a brimful 2022.
“It was easily my biggest year,” Thanos tells Neos Kosmos.
In 2022 she directed two plays and a short film. She started a production company, and if that was not enough, she co-founded an arts bar, then moved to London.
Thanos won the Sandra Bates Director’s Award, and will assist in directing two of Sydney Ensemble Theatre’s works.
“This opens me up to mainstage theatre. I have worked in the independent sector for the past three years as a director, and for five years as an actor – now I will move into professional theatre making.”
Thanos wanted to be in theatre since she was a child. “I love what I do, and I have done it since I was seven.”
She was fortunate to land a role at a large show just after finishing high school. “I was only 17 and it kickstarted my career. I met lots of people that were important in the industry and many who helped me.”
Activism and art
Her new company, Queen Hades Productions, looks for “the intersections between activism and art,” says Thanos.
“I am specific about not not directing anything that doesn’t have a social justice message. I know that some people disagree with that, but I think that being apolitical is a choice, too.
“There’s lots of room for work that is entertaining and work that is solely there to make us laugh, or make us cry. But I think that ultimately we’re dealing with people and people are political who make choices, people make up the world and the problems within it. It is hard to separate politics from stories about people.”
Thanos wants to tell stories through acting that change the narrative in how her own ‘role’ is portrayed.
“In my directing process I strive to deconstruct that idea of the male director. When I began directing my only kind of measure for what a director was would be the big famous ones, like Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino and Fincher.
“We have this vision from Hollywood and theater of male directors as these sort of brutal characters that seek to really break you down and create what they want out of you […] Whereas I think the best environments that I’ve been in have been more dominated by feminine energy, friendly and open.”
She does not equate feminine with identifying as a woman
Thanos, supports feminine energy in the workplace, and has co-founded an arts bar with three men as partners. She is proud of the culture the venue named after the Greek word ‘meraki’ .
“On the bottom level there is an art gallery, on the second level there’s a cabaret live music performance space and then on the top level there’s a 50 seat theater.”
Thanos wants Meraki to be an “artistic hub” with more than one art form. She intends the venue to facilitate the crossing of boundaries.
“I think that creates this environment where as artists, we’re not exposing ourselves to different kinds of forms of art.”
Activism and politics
Thanos is of political pedigree. She is the daughter of former Labor federal politician and academic of Greek Cypriot heritage Andrew Theophanous and she has toyed with the idea of following her father’s footsteps into politics.
“Coming from a family that has been very invested in politics in Australia, I haven’t ruled it out , but for now I want to create and am content doing that.”
As a member of Plan International’s Youth Activist Series for 2021, Thanos was part of a delegation that handed a set of recommendations into the former prime minister Scott Morrison.
With over 1,300 signatures collected, the recommendations sought to address the culture of sexism and misogyny in Australian politics after allegations of rape and sexual harassment some years ago.
“There was a lot of focus on ministers at the time. But I think the reality of parliament and politics is that hundreds of people work in those buildings[…] And in making your workplace safer for women it is important to have more women around in general.
“I think a lot of young girls would be hesitant to think about a career in politics, I definitely was for a long time, I still am,” she says.
Rediscovering culture, a two-way street
Thanos decided to change her last name for various reasons. “I grew up experiencing this annoying thing where people would mispronounce my name and I wanted to be able to establish my own identity.”
She decided to follow acting after high school. “When I got caught in that big cast, I was like ‘this is the moment where I have to decide if I’m going to change my name and played around with so many different versions of what it could be, including a Swedish name – my mum is Swedish – but ultimately I just cut out a few letters.”
Thanos has not connected to the Greek Cypriot culture as much as she would have liked to and is addressing that now.
“I grew up in an Anglo Saxon way. That’s no one’s fault. I am a product of migrant assimilation and racism and those kinds of things.”
She visited her Cyprus, her father’s birthplace and it made her feel the need to discover that part in her she says is “missing.”
Reconnecting with one’s ancestral past is a process of giving as much as receiving.
“I hope that I can bring what I gain in places like London and the U.S., back to Australia, I can bring what I gain to the places where I’m from as well.”
