Part Two:
The Professors Have Souls Too… 

The other theatrical show which particularly moved me is Pandeli Horn’s The Fyntanaki, directed by yet another paid-by-the hour professor, Korina Vafiathou.

The story unfolds with the main characters standing in a courtyard; the poor, the insignificant and the honest on one side, the femme fatale, the rich exploiter, the insignificant nouveau riche on the other.

Here we deal with a touching attribution of feelings where the spectator is led to a progressive awareness of the social status and its rules, which many times determine human relations in a psychologically coerced and corrupt manner.

The director comments in the program:

“Our creed is to always respect our public. For this we begin our tour with a diachronic play, by one of the leaders of the Greek theatre, Pandeli Horn. We transport it to the 50s, a little after the end of the civil war, a difficult time for our homeland.

“Someone to talk about during this period is the curious Mr. Yiavrousis, the moneyman in the play, who speaks with a foreign accent, a reference to the foreign factor, which during that period makes its presence known in our homeland. We believe that the memories of the old-timers will awaken while the young will get to know an unknown period though the situations are perhaps a little familiar.

“And it’s this invaluable information that the theater brings to our society. It’s a gate that leads people to the knowledge and realization of situations and conditions that otherwise they would not have known.”

The players acted in difficult roles that demanded concentration, co-ordination and continuous vigilance. The final result convinced us of the success of the objective sought by the director: respect towards the public, as the audience spontaneously applauded all through the duration of the play.

All primary and secondary actors competently filled the requirements of their difficult roles and they all contributed to the play’s success.

I congratulate them all - in both plays.

I wish them well and don’t anyone be intimidated because . . . “beauty will save the world” – Dostoyevsky.