to taxidi tou iroa

το ταξίδι του ήρωα — the hero’s journey.

Steven Berkoff.

Tonight, I went to see Steven Berkoff in his one-man show, Shakespeare’s Villains, at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation. (Michael Cacoyannis, I have learned, was the director of Zorba the Greek, Elektra, Iphigenia, and other classic films.) I was unaccountably nervous about getting there; the metro and buses are down today due to a massive strike, which meant I had to get a taxi, and the very idea made me want to hide under the bed for no reason I could fathom. I told myself firmly that I could handle it — I’ve lived in Athens for two months and it was high time I had an adventure, anyway — and went out to hail a cab on Imitou.

And then I did, in fact, have an έτσι κι έτσι (so-so) time in the cab. I asked for the Tavros metro stop; when we got to Tavros, the driver started asking where to drop me off. I clearly wasn’t understanding, and he was clearly getting frustrated. Finally he made a writing motion and I thought I caught the word γράψετε or something like it — something about writing, I think maybe he was saying I should write down the address of where I wanted to go next time — so I puleld ou the address I’d written down and gave it to him with a timid, “Θέλετε;” (Do you want?)

Titus Andronicus

So there are a couple of things I’ve been meaning to write about, but for today I’m going to focus on the most recent event (not to mention the one most relevant to my career): last night’s field trip to the National Theatre’s production of Titus Andronicus.