IAKOVOS KAMPANELLIS
The Greek playwright, novelist and poet Iakovos Kambanellis
was born in 1922 in Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades, the island traditionally
identified with Dia where, according to myth, Theseus landed with Ariadne
after she had aided him to kill the hideous Minotaur in the Cretan Labyrinth.
In 1935 Iakovos’s family moved to Athens where he has resided ever since with
the exception of an unbearably long period that – as we shall see – he spent
in Germany against his own will. As a teenager he had to work during the day
and was not able to go to school regularly, he could attend only erratic evening
classes and was not able to get a high school diploma.
In 1940, while World War II was ravaging, he joined the anti Nazi Resistance
movement and fought against the Germans who had occupied Greece, till a moment
came when it was necessary for him to escape. After an unsuccessful attempt
to flee to the Middle East, he tried to reach Switzerland via Austria, but
here the Germans caught him and deported him to the nightmarish concentration
camp of Mauthausen where he remained until May 5th 1945 when the Allied Forces
liberated the camp.
Back in Athens Kambanellis realized that Greek theater was enjoying a thriving
period mostly thanks to the performances of Karolos Koun (1908-1987), a stage
director who left his inimitable imprint on Greece’s contemporary history
and also on Kambanellis’s personality and work. Born in Prousa, in Asia Minor,
Koun was naturally possessed with that peculiar oriental ethos which became
such a characteristic trait of many of his theatrical works. In the 1930s
he staged in audaciously experimental ways comedies of Aristophanes and Euripides
using school children as artists. The drama schools he founded (“Laikì
Skinì” 1934, “Art Theater” 1942), produced many gifted actors.
Kambanellis was amazed by the emotional power a theater performance could
exert even over a person like himself, a man who having spent years in a concentration
camp, had seen all kinds of atrocities. It was then that he understood that
theater would never come to an end and that this ancient art belongs to the
future as well not because playwrights, actors and directors want it to be
so, but because people, who constitute the audience, will want it to exist.
This optimistic vision regarding the future of the art of the theater derives
from the instinctive, psychological need each one of us has for theatrical
performances. This immemorial correlation man-theater goes back to the time
when the first human beings started to commit to memory their experiences
and represented them in their imagination. In other words, every man and woman
has both a natural necessity and the potential talent to act.
Kambanellis would have loved to become an actor, but since he did not have
a high school diploma he was not allowed to enroll for a drama school, he
decided to start writing. This turned out to be quite a judicious decision
because since his first play Dance on the grass was staged in 1950 and received
immediate acknowledgement, he has written more than fifty plays both for the
theater and the cinema. Some of them, like The seventh day of creation, The
courtyard of miracles, The age of night, A fairytale with no name, Three cheers
for Aspasia, A comedy, The Supper, Letter to Orestes, are being continuously
performed in Greece and abroad and have been translated into many languages.
Kambanellis proved to be an excellent renewer of ancient mythological types
by creating poetical narrations that comply – up to a certain extent – with
the message of ancient myths that he modernizes and transfigures through the
prism of his own personal emotions. But in spite of his own interpretation
and imprint, the essence of myths continues to perform its function.
In A comedy, for example, Kambanellis tackles a modern topic through the prism
of Greek mythology: the subject of this play is the tourist exploitation of
Hades, the Underworld, whose permanent residents – Pluto, Persephone and other
deities – become the managers and stockholders of a multi-national corporation
whose central aim is to promote the tourist development the Underworld by
turning it into a new Mykonos.
In the dramatic monologue Letter to Orestes, Kambanellis gives his own account
of events described by Aeschylus in his monumental Oresteia, introducing into
the classical text the subtlest nuances of meaning, and we – the audience
– are left again with harrowing doubts and uncertainties.
Kambanellis’s contribution to Greek cinema as a producer has also been substantial.
His name is connected with avant-garde directors to whom we owe movies such
as ‘Stella’ directed by Kakoyannis and ‘The Dragon and the river’ directed
by Koundouros. He has directed his own the ‘Canon and the nightingale’.
In 1963 he wrote a book entitled Mauthausen, his only prose work, in which
he gives an account of his experiences there. The book starts with the liberation
of the camp by the Americans and goes on through the months that followed
before the prisoners were finally sent home. The author recounts the story
of an extraordinary love affair between two former prisoners. Although the
events narrated are all real, they sound like an odd fairytale.
His collaboration as a poet with some of the most distinguished composers
like Hadjidakis, Theodorakis and Xarchakos, has considerably contributed to
enhance the quality of Greek song.
Kambanellis is a member of the renowned Academy of Arts and Sciences in Athens
and a member of the Hellenic Center of the International Theater Institute
and its Board.
The works of Iakovos Kambanellis in Greek are published in Athens by Kedros Publishing House
A. BAKALOPOULOS-HALL, Modern Greek Theater: Roots and Blossoms, Athens 1982
S. CONSTANTINIDIS, Existential Protest in Greek Drama During the Junta, Journal
of Modern Greek Studies, 3/2, 1985, pp. 137-144.
P. KOKORI, “Kambanellis’ The Courtyard of Miracles: A Refashioning of Theatrical
Tradition.” To Yofiri: Journal of Modern Greek Studies 12 (1992)
Iacovos Kambanellis in Bulletin Franco-Hellénique, 31, Paris 2000,
pp. 34-36
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