I wake up in the morning in a warm home.
I make breakfast for my family,
and we all sit together to discuss our plans for the day.
Actually, today’s plans will be different.
The school bags are ready.
I say goodbye to my wife, I wish her a nice day,
and take my youngest daughter to her elementary school.
I hug her,
telling her that if she needs anything today
she will have to contact her mother,
because I will be unable to speak to her.
I watch her going into the school yard.
As I drive away, she waves,
in a way that we wave to someone we will not be seeing again for years.
Half an hour later,
I park my car in an area in Athens.
I empty my pockets of various small objects,
I just keep a book and my ID, and turn off my mobile phone.
I walk towards a gate.
I press a button on this gate,
and as if by magic, this iron gate opens.
I am now in a place full of detectors.
In a control area, similar to airport security control,
when you are about to fly abroad, to an exotic island.
If I have left something in my pockets, I have to go through a second time.
I surrender my ID and my mobile phone
which they keep,
and in return they give me a card of a specific colour, and a number.
From now on, this card will be my passport on this strange island.
If I happen to lose it,
I may have trouble leaving this place.
Card in hand,
I feel that now I have to overcome my own personal limits.
It’s like being on the edge of a cliff, having to jump into the void.
The first door opens and then closes firmly by itself behind me.
A metal sound rings in my ears.
One by one, I can hear iron doors
opening and closing, I walk through scanners,
I lose count, I no longer know how many.
And bit by bit I feel overcome by a new sensation.
It’s a smell.
It’s the smell of prison.
I am now facing one last door,
which I have to open by myself,
and I need to enter a room.
In this room, 20-25 inmates are waiting for me.
I have to meet them.
My mouth has gone dry with anxiety.
I had seen a lot of films taking place in prisons.
I had seen people with ruthless and strange stares, criminals,
people you have nothing to say to,
just sitting next to them would terrify you.
All of these imaginary people,
start to swarm in my head,
entering my thoughts and threatening me.
I take a deep breath,
push the door open,
and enter.
A warm, smiling face comes towards me,
a friendly handshake disarms me.
He gives me his first name,
and then 20 more men approach me,
they also give me their first names and greet me warmly,
asking if I want a tea or coffee.
We then sit in a circle.
I look at them.
They look at me.
And then I see eager faces,
emotional and sad ones.
All those imaginary people I had come across on the outside
start to fade one by one in my mind.
“Good morning Stratis”, they say, “Welcome”.
For the last year and a half
I am in and out of the Korydallos prison.
My first project was working with the Drug Rehabilitation Centre “En Drasi”.
Five months later, we managed to organise a performance with a cast of 18
of a play called “The guest”.
The reborn person.
The new person.
This cooperation, and the script written for it,
were based on Kipling’s poem “If”.
The cast wrote their own list of Ifs.
As from last November, I am participating in a very important initiative
by the Korydallos prison, the National Theatre,
the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights,
and the General Secretariat of Anti-crime Policy
for the creation of the first theatrical workshop inside the prison,
which will be open to all sections of the prison.
This is very important.
(Applause)
When I was approached about undertaking this project,
I said yes, of course I will!
The time has come to overcome my limits, as a person and as an artist.
We then talked about what I was planning to do
regarding this theatrical group,
and then a play came to mind, by William Shakespeare: “The Tempest”.
Why did I pick this writer?
William Shakespeare had made an investment;
his main plays focused on the bad guys.
Shakespeare’s bad heroes
have committed all crimes in the penal code.
They have overstepped every mark.
But they are the ones we applaud at the theatre.
Thousands of actors every year, all over the world,
earn their salaries playing them.
In “The Tempest”, of course, not a single drop of blood is shed,
all attempts of murder are thwarted.
There are no wars, all action takes place on a deserted island,
an isolated island.
On this island lives Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan
with his daughter Miranda.
He has been banished by his brother, who has thrown him into the sea.
Prospero, during the 12 years spent living on the island,
has reached the highest goal any human can achieve.
What is that?
To be master of himself, to achieve absolute free will,
and when, with the help of the spirit, Ariel,
he invites those who wronged him to the island, by means of a tempest,
then he can do what he wants with them!
To exact his revenge, or to forgive them.
Revenge and forgiveness.
Two words which, trust me,
have a different meaning inside a prison to the one in the world outside it.
The tempest is not merely an external phenomenon,
it is also an internal one about people and choices,
about being on the edge, at the limits,
being on the edge and seeking the limits.
I am back in the room.
I look at the participants.
They are all waiting for me to say something.
You know, the hardest part for a director
in preparing for a performance, is the first rehearsal.
I sit there, wondering what I am doing here,
what do I say to these people
who have not experienced it or lived it?
Should I talk to them about plays I was responsible for?
Talk to them about theatre?
What should I tell them about theatre?
What does theatre have to do with prison?
I look at them.
I look at them and realise
that I know nothing about their past,
I know nothing about the journey that brought them into this place.
They are not actors who came here to play a part,
they are real people,
people who joined me here to share something important,
something that we will discover together.
I am not able to draw breath, I don’t know what to say.
I see a clock opposite me,
staring at me dangerously, like this one here is doing right now.
The hands are moving, measuring time,
I say, this clock is looking at me and I feel as though it’s threatening me.
We are all feeling happy by now, and we start talking about the theatre,
I talk to them about its main objective,
the study of Man.
This complex piece of machinery whose manual is still being written,
whose operation is still a mystery to us.
We haven’t yet worked out what its limits are, or how it operates.
But in the theatre we can make that choice.
The discussion comes to life, and we are already talking about
the arts, philosophy, painting, performing arts,
and suddenly I forget that I am in a prison,
and feel that I am somewhere else, like where we are now.
And then I wonder,
these people sitting here, facing me,
could very well have been scientists, painters, poets,
and I don’t understand how they have ended up in there.
And then I consider
that the limits that determine whether you will end up in prison
are very fine: a debt, a dark emotion,
a choice, a tempest, and the limit is gone.
We go straight into an intense improvisation exercise.
There is a sailor in the group, I ask him to talk about his adventures at sea.
He starts talking about the Pacific and the Atlantic ocean,
and all of us, with the sailor as captain,
we start to reproduce the conditions on a sinking ship.
It was thoroughly enjoyable!
I really felt, and they did too, that we had escaped.
We escaped in our minds and went to a faraway place,
to an incredible island.
I could talk for hours
about all the moments I shared with all these people.
By next June
when we perform inside the Korydallos prison,
I will have entered the prison more than 80 times,
and I will have worked with more than 50 participants.
I could tell you a lot of stories.
Many moving and human moments which happen even in there.
On this occasion
I will limit myself to one.
At the start of the play, when Prospero tells his daughter, for the first time,
“Now my child, I will tell you who your father really is,
he is not a king, but lives in a poor shack”.
One of the participants approached me at the end of the rehearsal
to tell me how these words had moved him.
They reminded him of when he was about to meet his child for the first time
at visiting time, in the prison, to say who he really was.
The rehearsal finished, the time is up, I need to leave.
I say goodbye to the participants, they say goodbye to me,
we made it, for a few hours we managed to escape our prison.
I go outside, I get my ID and mobile phone back,
and take a big step out of the prison.
No, I don’t turn on my mobile phone,
I don’t want to know who called, who messaged, or reply to emails.
No, I want to enjoy this moment, I am outside, I am outside once more.
I look up at the sky, I listen to the birds, the trees,
and a verse comes to mind by Giorgos Sarantaris:
“I need to take a walk, I need to walk with the trees
In a world full of water”.
I want to share this euphoria
with the passers-by around me.
I look around, I see them,
and I see distressed people, looking down, how can that be?
I have just been in a prison
and the ones I see, who think that they have no limits,
who think that they are free, do they have the right to be sad?
To be distressed, to be prisoners
inside their opinions, their outlook on life?
No!
I wonder whether freedom is ultimately an inward or outward matter.
If the ones in there,
can be locked up but truly free,
we on the outside need to wonder whether we really are free.
If freedom means overcoming limits,
then a free person is the one who has limits in the first place.
Who seeks limits.
Who sets new ones each time, so he can overcome them too.
I get into my car.
I take the book out of my pocket,
I open it, and I see a dedication:
Voice: “To our director, who helped us escape
through the art of theatre,
and who helped me, personally, to remember once again who I am.”
Thank you.
(Applause)
”
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