Interview with Konstantina Rodi for Greek News and Radio FL
I met Reno Charalambidis at the tribute he presented for Vassilis Diamantopoulos at the Art Theatre, on New Year's Eve. These days he is in the preparation stage of his new film, and the conversation took place on a Sunday morning, over coffee and with the birds of Athens chirping in the background.
I'm going to start our discussion backwards, since the new year has just arrived. A message for the Florida Commonwealth?
For 2025, I wish the Florida diaspora to remain as deeply Greek as it has remained all these years. Many times I have been impressed by how the core of Hellenism, what every Greek has deep in his heart, has managed to live and develop in places like Florida, which I must add is in my plans to visit. It is one of the places I have heard a lot about and want to visit as a traveler. Didn't the Greek spongers from Kalymnos go to Florida?
Yes, in the Tarpon Springs area, a city with a strong Greek presence and a Greek mayor!
That's why I want to go there, I want to see this. And the Greeks did not lose themselves in Florida. Let's note this down and celebrate it.
Entering your CV on the Internet, one writes the following amazing: "self-taught actor, with theater studies in free workshops in Athens". Can you explain this to me? Does the fact that the actor has graduated from a well-known School provide security for the viewer?
First of all, congratulations on the question. In the 35 years I've been an actor, this is the first time I've been asked this question. Clearly, in a resume the studies are something that gives a guarantee to the viewer about the artist speaking. I am one of those people who cannot fool the viewer. Of course, you will tell me that after all these years it doesn't make any sense. However, I want to have an honest relationship with the viewer. I could have written nothing, but it is my personal story and many times when we go to a cinema, the theater or on television and see an actor, we are also interested in his personal path in life. I started with failures, rejections from drama schools. In 1990, when I took the exams at the drama schools, I was rejected by almost all of them. So I started with a resounding 'no'. But come, my heart told me that this is the way. And then, in 1990, for the first time in Greece permission was given to open free study laboratories. And Vassilis Diamantopoulos opens his Free Workshop and I was the first to be written: 1η September 1990, at 09.00 in the morning the first registered. From then on, what I write in the CV means that a person can find his way, not only through the beaten path (without saying that the beaten path has not produced excellent artists)...
For big names of the Greek Stage and Cinema, we knew that they are self-taught or that they were rejected by schools, etc.
I believe that there is something (-…democratic? no, …fair? heavy word-) something balancing in the spectacle in Greece. Time decides who is the one who had something to say, or who was found like a meteorite.
And it justifies you in the end.
Time vindicates you. Only time, nothing else.
We were once told at the Film School, that young Greek film directors fall into the following trap: they find it difficult to raise the money to make a film, and because they don't know if they will have 2η film, they "tell all" in it, even avoiding the subject, or drowning it out.
Yes, they usually screw her up. I find this very cute. It's like a man in love who has a date with the object of his lust and tries to tell her everything in a coffee shop. This leads to certain disaster. It's the surefire recipe for a failed date: telling everything at the first dinner. Destructive. Because you're afraid there won't be a second one. But, when all is said and done, there certainly won't be a second one. And yet, this has remained. That is, it is a condition that is also an indication of youth. The young man is the one who, when he does something, wants to tell everything. I, too, as a young man, was inwardly untidy. This is what it means to be young: your luggage is not placed in your inner truck. This is my opinion and I'm absolving us a bit of this 'blame'.
Actor, Director and Musician. What do you express in each of them differently from yourself?
In everything I express exactly one thing: my short passage from this world. My core is music, acting, cinema, dance here and there, all of that. I feel like a renaissance artist. I mean, I belong to all the arts. It is my personal big bang, the birth of my personal universe, which contains all of this. With one and only ultimate goal: communication. I want to communicate.
Is there a theater role quietly waiting somewhere for you to perform?
I'm waiting until I'm old enough to play Lear. Let old age come and play big roles!
Here's another reason to wait for old age!
Yes, exactly, to play big roles like Lear.
Interpretively and based on the costume and make-up, this could be done even earlier.
It's experiential, I don't have the mental resources: I don't know what it's like to be old. I'll find out about that too. It is fateful to know.
It will sound strange but I hope so!
It doesn't sound strange at all. I want to live all ages. I want to live to a ripe old age. I'm very curious, I want to see what it's like to be very old.
The truth is that most of us are looking for a way to stay young.
Me too. This does not mean that the blaze of time will not fall upon me like a storm. But I accept it, I rank among the Stoic philosophers. I know it will come. And I expect it.
Let's go to the evening-tribute to Vassilis Diamantopoulos. What have you kept from this great teacher in relation to acting and theatre?
Something that he whistled in my ear at the time and that he told me to keep between us, but after 35 years I have already said it publicly. He told me “the secret is to drip a drop of madness into everything you do. But the difficult thing is to find the right dose of madness". Vassilis Diamantopoulos told me this personally and it was our shared secret. Me and him. In December 1990, 35 years ago.
However, it is not common lately for someone to remember their teachers, mainly by name, and even by creating a tribute to them.
I never thought of that! This I cannot explain how and why. I don't have an answer. Vassilis Diamantopoulos, the little time I was next to him, changed my life. Of course, he gave me a lot of courage, he believed in me a lot. Maybe that's why I'm giving it back to him. You know what it's like to be 20 years old and - every time I played he would turn around and say 'how did you do that? How did you do it'? That smile telling me this thing, even being 20 years old... the great teacher, the generous teacher... I remember it now after so many years.
It's beautiful that you remember. I think the biochemistry changes the moment you remember it.
Yes.
The Art Theater in which this tribute was presented is remembered as possibly the last hotbed of passion, hard work and collective vision created by one man. The stories about how Kuhn rehearsed are full of hard work and love for the Theatre. Are there such creations in Greece today?
They will always exist. I don't believe they don't exist, they just can't be seen now. The century changed, everything changed. Let's not compare ourselves to other eras, it's not fair. Because even in Koon's time, he played in an empty hall, they didn't admit him. In the Basement, Diamantopoulos played to empty chairs. Today you can't see such an effort because we have a lot of noise, and I don't mean that in a bad way. If we compare this today, we do both us and them an injustice.
Now, you are preparing your new film. Given that Greece is a limited art 'market', what about the review boards? How free is an artist to express themselves?
To give an example, now e.g. preparing my new film, as a director and screenwriter, I will again pass juries that will have to judge me having done 1/10 of what I have done. This is absurd, isn't it? It is a Soviet-style reality. We believe in the free market, as in Florida I imagine they believe in the free market. It shouldn't be like this. B.C. since I bring profit to the state through my film, I should not be judged by a committee. But this is a vast conversation. We are a small art market, but what does that matter? We are people who live for art. And Elytis, Seferis and Cavafy wrote in a language for a few people, without thinking about this thing. I am a person of the cinema and the theater out of necessity and a DNA requirement, not a professional requirement. My destiny calls me, not my professional orientation. Canaries also sing in cages.
When does an artist come of age creatively?
It is clear: when he first comes into contact with the public. When he finds his personal way. It can also become an adult in old age. It's a question I avoid because it's so relevant and in quotes. Maybe when he doesn't care anymore. When he stops looking outward, then he stops looking inward, and then he begins to create. To look within yourself is childish. And the child is introverted, inside is his universe. Not to notice. To act.
To follow his nature.
Yes. The river of his existence.
I want to refer to the Odyssey, which happened podcast with your voice. Today, what can a modern Greek learn from this work of Homer? Apart from boasting about its antiquity of course.
Absolutely nothing because the concept of adventure has left our thoughts. Once you don't accept the adventure, the Odyssey can't tell you anything. Except for the rhapsody 'l', which is Nekyia, the conversation with the dead that brings tears to my eyes every time I read it. But I find that if you don't accept the convention of the adventurous life, you can't learn anything. Of course, the Greeks who reached Florida, they can see something in the Odyssey. Even if they lived it.
In other words, the Odyssey can say more to Greeks outside of Greece.
Yes, exactly. Maybe some Florida town should be named Odyssey! A municipality or settlement.
So the adventure, right? We are not adventurous.
No. And the migration now is the migration of scientists, not of people going into the unknown.
In the Night Herald a clear reference is made to the passage in 5η decade of life as a pivotal point. Many have written about this point. What happens at 50?
Crucial and contradictory point. At the same time you are freed, and outside your prison there is a desert. Both at the same time. Which desert can of course be the Garden of Paradise. At 50 you officially stop being young. You are no longer classified as a youth. Nevertheless, it is also the moment when youthful fantasies, delusions, illusions cease, and if you have not made a mess of them in your life, some gifts are spread before you: awareness, self-awareness, confirmation and a kind of wisdom. But also a kind of pain and sadness that is hard to handle. But all this together.
Do you subscribe to Tarkovsky's view that "if we were happy we wouldn't need art"?
That's what Tarkovsky used to say and he ended up where he ended up: drunk, sad, trampled. I believe the opposite. Do you think that the entire ancient Greek culture, which was a hymn to joy, was created because the Athenians were upset? Are you doing well?!
We had never imagined the ancient Greeks as depressed!
Is Aristophanes depressed? These are Soviet-style views, let the former Soviets keep them and go to hell.
The fact that one can see whenever he wants a creation, theatrical or cinematic, on the screen of a computer or mobile anymore, since it exists in youtube – and you don't need to move to the area being shown – what does it feel like?
Very good. Because it's like getting a prospect. You know it's not what you see, it's a prologue. It's like a relative sending you a letter, telling you their news, and you're going on a trip to see them and tell them in person. And with this letter he has prepared your meeting. When the hard core of the artist isn't there, even through the internet a soft scent can waft through. Let's smile condescendingly at the antics of other eras that looked down on this.
photo https://mikropragmata.lifo.gr/zoi/renos-xaralampidis-orismos-andrismou/
