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Existential Protest in Greek Drama During the Junta

1985; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 3; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mgs.2010.0046

1086-3265

Stratos E. Constantinidis,

Theatre and Performance Studies

Existential Protest in Greek Drama During the Junta Stratos E. Constantinidis In his book Modern Greek Playwrights (1975), Giorgos Mihailidis indicates that pre-Civil War Greek drama has been studied largely in terms of style. He cautions that analyzing postwar drama as a manifestation of Romanticism, Naturalism, Surrealism, etc., will trap it under labels that fail to describe its diversity and significance. Mihailidis , however, does not propose any alternative categorization of modern Greek plays when divested of the various "-isms". Aliki Bacopoulou-Halls has suggested one way to address this issue in her book Modern Greek Theatre: Roots and Blossoms (1982). She divides modern playwrights into two groups: prewar playwrights such as Nikos Kazantzakis, Angelos Sikelianos, and Kostis Palamas share visionary aspirations about rebuilding the world; their postwar successors, on the other hand, such as Iacovos Kambanellis, Loula Anagnostaki, Giorgos Skourtis, Costas Mourselas, Stratis Karras, and Pavlos Matesis, express an overwhelming disillusionment with life and human nature. Despite her dichotomy, she maintains that the postwar group has inherited a legacy of "existential commitment" (1982:84) from the prewar group. She uses Cavafy's poem "Thermopylae" (1979:9) which praises idealistic commitment to struggle in the face of inevitable defeat, to characterize the protagonists of the prewar group of plays. She then proceeds to suggest that: This same existential stance is the informing principle of postmodern Greek drama which has aimed at delineating the new Greek identity in the context of a wider "space," the absurd world. Contemporary dramatists consider the existential act as the only justification of human existence and like Orestes in Sartre's The Flies seek to find freedom and happiness 'on the other side of despair' (1982:101). In short, she sees a continuity from prewar to postwar plays of the persona who fights without fear or hope for a new world. The term "existential commitment" is employed here to refer to the sort 137 138 Stratos E. Constantinides of character attitude which is perhaps best exemplified by Kazantzakis ' Christopher Columbus. Columbus gave up the easy life to carry Christ—Christopher in Greek means just that—across the ocean because he believed "that a great soul can create the nonexistent," augmenting man's horizons (Kazantzakis 1969:57,28,39). "You have saved your petty self, Isabella," Columbus tells the Queen of Spain, "by subjecting it to a noble idea" (1969:68). Bacopoulou-Halls' allegation that post-Civil War characters retain the attitude of existential commitment, however, seems an overgeneralization . This paper will show that "existential commitment" does not carry over to many postwar plays that she mentions. Some examples of these plays, produced mainly during the junta era, are: Kambanellis' Odysseus, Come Home (Athens Art Theatre Company, 1966), Skourtis' The Babysitters (Athens Art Theatre Company, 1969), Mourselas' Dangerous Cargo (Lineos-Fotiou Theatre Company , 1970), Karras' The Escort (Thessaloniki State Theatre Company, 1971), Anagnostaki's .4rc/om'o (Athens Art Theatre Company , 1972), and Matesis' Ramon Novaro's Ghost (Athens National Theatre Company, 1973). These I will call plays of existential protest in order to distinguish them from the prewar plays of existential commitment. Of course, the few plays discussed here do not exhaust the list of existential protest plays, nor do they represent all Greek drama of the period. To keep things in perspective, it should be recognized that the plays of existential protest—in most instances—were not popular with the mainstream middle-class audiences and the totalitarian government for two reasons: first, they deviated from the official ideology and the acceptable products of the theater market; second, they abandoned the facile code of realism because they refused to imitate reality and thus perpetuate repressive models. Instead, they evolved, as a sign of protest, a highly personal language which was often incomprehensible to general audiences. In spite of their smaller audiences , though, existential protest plays are important for the new elements they introduced to Greek drama. The following analysis will contrast the characterization found in existential protest plays with that found in prewar existential commitment plays in order to illustrate the discontinuity. Although both types of plays share a discontent with the basic structure of life and of human nature, the characters and the way they...