The play

Greta Garbo, at an advanced age, isolated from all people and all things, has only the company of her secretary, who comes every day to assist her. “My girl” as she insists on calling her, is now her only audience, reluctant to laugh, to talk, to live.

Greta, however, knows what loss and despair, loneliness and silence mean. And she learnt at an early age that you either fight them or choose them. And by the time she is through with her daily routine -her correspondence, food, medications, shopping- Greta will pop into and out of the life she has lived, not to explain her myth or to shed light on her mystery, but to share her reserves, with the generous self-sufficiency of a woman who has lived, as she wanted.

Greta received an Honourable Mention for a Play at the National Playwright Awards in 2018.

Excerpt from the play

You know, I often imagine a waiting room for roles. They come in, they leave, they wait, the other roles ask them: “How was it?”, and they respond “So, so”, or “I couldn’t make space” or “They didn’t get me” or “It went perfectly” and they sit back down in their seat and await the next time they will be called. And they discuss, give advice, admire… The roles are all huge, all of them, from the smallest to the biggest, they are huge, but actors have their boundaries, specific limitations. I always knew that I had them, I never believed that my talent was… as multifaceted as certain others thought.

Konstadina Yahali

Konstadina Yahali was born in Patras in 1972. She studied at the Drama School of the Athens Conservatory, the Department of Film of the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and at the School of Theology of the University of Athens. She writes scripts for television and films (And yet I am still here, Take your jacket, Children forever, Don’t start complaining, litsa.com, Seven deadly mothers-in-law, Looking for a thief and others).

Her theatrical play What are we going to do about Antonis? Received an award at the Theatrical Games for Young Creatives (2004).

She has collaborated for the performances: An ice cream in winter, Penelope Delta meets Mangas and Stelios Kazantzidis, My entire life.

Her monologue Greta received an Honourable Mention at the National Awards for Playwrights 2018.

Her novel You never know and Greta have been published by Armos Books.

Directorial note

Greta Garbo, is an actor who is was symbol. A woman who is a mystery. A creature of melancholy. An enigma.

When she managed to transition from the silent movies to the talkies she was one of the few to do so with success. Her voice was heard for the first time on the big screen in the film Anna Christie (1930), advertised with the slogan “Garbo Talks”.

My sense, when reading Konstadina Yahali’s play, was that if Greta had discussed Greta, this is exactly what she would have said. Because she doesn’t just tell the story of Greta Garbo, an international film symbol of Hollywood’s golden age, but does so as a starting point to follow a young girl from Sweden on the path to becoming the woman behind the flashing lights of the big screen, the shiny movie posters, the magazines, her black glasses, the autographs which she never signed and to investigate an introspective and solitary account of a life.

Yahali’s writing manages to zoom in and look at the cracks and to tunnel into the depths of Garbo’s existence and to grasp her true reflection. However, as Lacan would say, the reality is inapproachable, unsymbolizable, denied, traumatic, that which eludes conscious understanding and language, but which, nevertheless, constitutes a fundamental dimension of the human psyche and experience.

The play deals with the eternal themes of fame, loneliness and the acceptance of the “end”, which gain exceptional gravity through her narrative. The atmosphere transitions between public persona and personal truth, the familiar and the unfamiliar, is a secret look at the personal refuge of a former so-called goddess, a woman who lived intensely, was worshipped as a myth and shares without hesitation her personal meaning at the sunset of her life [Lina Zarkadoula]

Greta

Playwright: Konstadina Yahali

Director, Music coordinator: Lina Zarkadoula

Costumes: Eleni Kavvada

Lighting: Evita Skrimizea

ACTORS: Maro Papadopoulou (Greta), Angeliki Karystinou (Woman approximately forty years old)