Antigoni Valakou

Antigoni Valakou was born in Kavala, in northern Greece, in 1930. Her family moved to Athens in 1946, when she was sixteen. During her last school years she also attended the drama studio of the director and translator Vasilis Rotas. In 1946 she made her stage debut with the company of the actor Aimilios Veakis, as Triantafyllia in Notis Pergialis’s play Νυφιάτικο τραγούδι (Wedding Song). By the early 1950s critics knew her for fresh, youthful parts. At the National Theatre she played Perdita in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale in 1952 and Ismene in Sophocles’ Antigone in 1956. In 1955 she was Ophelia in Hamlet at the Theatre of the National Garden in Athens.

From 1956 she played Anne Frank with the company of Kostas Mousouris, a role that brought her the Marika Kotopouli Prize, and in 1958 she formed her own company. Between 1953 and 1965 she made about a dozen films, including Γκόλφω (Golfo, 1955) by Orestis Laskos. She also worked for decades in radio and television, mostly in adaptations of plays, and taught at the National Theatre’s drama school for about twenty years. Her late stage work included Sarah in The Whales of August at the National Theatre in 2001 and Madame Flo in 2011. She died in Athens in November 2013, aged 83.

The National Theatre’s digital archive lists Valakou in roles from 1952 to 2007, and the list reads like a map of world drama. Her best-remembered production is Sophocles’ Ηλέκτρα (Electra), performed in the Modern Greek translation of K. Ch. Myris and directed by Spyros Evangelatos. It opened at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus on 9 July 1972 and returned to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens in 1972, 1973 and 1974. Dimitris Terzakis wrote the music and Giorgos Patsas designed sets and costumes. The archive’s cast list pairs every character with a performer: Valakou as Electra, Chloi Liaskou as Chrysothemis, Aleka Katseli as Clytemnestra, Petros Fyssoun as Orestes. She played Electra again for the National Theatre in 1981.

Ancient tragedy remained central. She was Agave in The Bacchae and Cassandra in The Trojan Women in 1975, Iphigenia in Iphigenia in Tauris in 1976, Jocasta in Oedipus Rex in 1987 and Medea in 1993. Alongside these came Juliet in 1961, the title role in Mary Stuart in 1986 and Brecht’s Mother Courage in 2007. In Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba she moved from Adela, the youngest daughter, in 1962 to the tyrannical mother Bernarda in 1996. In a 2001 newspaper interview she spoke about how her character Sarah faces old age without giving up.

In her birthplace a theatre bears her name: performances in Kavala are announced at the Θέατρο Αντιγόνη Βαλάκου (Antigoni Valakou Theatre). At her funeral the critic Kostas Georgousopoulos said she had covered the whole wide range of world theatre, and the National Theatre’s artistic director Sotiris Hatzakis called her a constant reference point for younger actors. For a learner, the most useful trace is the archive itself. Open the National Theatre archive page for Ηλέκτρα (1972) and find the section Διανομή (Cast): each character’s name stands beside an actor’s name, both in Greek. Ask and answer: Ποια παίζει τη Χρυσόθεμη; Τη Χρυσόθεμη την παίζει η Χλόη Λιάσκου (Who plays Chrysothemis? Chloi Liaskou plays Chrysothemis). Then turn the question around: Ποιον ρόλο υποδύεται η Αντιγόνη Βαλάκου; (Which role does Antigoni Valakou portray?)

• Her first name is a tragic heroine’s, yet in Sophocles’ Antigone in 1956 she played the sister, Ismene.
• In The House of Bernarda Alba she played the youngest daughter in 1962 and the mother 34 years later.
• Her 1972 Electra opened at Epidaurus and was revived in Athens in each of the next two summers.
• She taught at the National Theatre’s drama school for about twenty years.