Mary Aroni

Mary Aroni was born Maria Arvanitaki. The National Theatre archive dates her birth to 1914, while other reference works give December 1916, so the exact year remains uncertain. She studied acting and began her professional career in the mid-1930s; some biographies date her debut to 1935, in the company of Marika Kotopouli, the leading Greek actress of the time. Throughout her career she moved between independent companies and the state stage.

In 1946 she joined the National Theatre in Athens. She returned to independent theatre for some periods, but the National Theatre remained the centre of her work. In the mid-1950s the director Alexis Solomos cast her in his first productions of Aristophanes: Praxagora in Αι Εκκλησιάζουσαι (Women at the Assembly) in 1956 and the title role of Λυσιστράτη (Lysistrata) in 1957. From the 1960s into the early 1980s she played leading roles from world drama on the National Theatre stage, from Shaw to Tennessee Williams and Chekhov.

Alongside performing she taught acting at the National Theatre’s Drama School for about twenty-five years. The ERT archive also records that the Academy of Athens honoured her contribution to theatre. She made only a handful of films, because the stage was the core of her career. She died on 16 July 1992.

Aroni’s best-known work brought ancient comedy to a modern Greek audience. Solomos’s Aristophanes productions at the National Theatre used a Modern Greek version rather than the ancient text, with music by Manos Hadjidakis and sets and costumes by Giorgos Vakalo. The choice of words mattered: in 1956 one newspaper asked why a translation of Women at the Assembly by Fotos Giofyllis had not been chosen. As Praxagora, Aroni led the women who take over the Athenian assembly; as Lysistrata, she led the women who refuse their husbands until the war ends. In summer 1957 Lysistrata was played at Epidaurus and at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, and it returned in later seasons. In 1975 she told the newspaper Ελεύθερος Κόσμος (Free World) that she would keep playing the role as long as she had the stamina.

Her other great roles came from foreign plays performed in Greek translation. In 1966 she played the title role in Shaw’s Το επάγγελμα της κυρίας Γουώρεν (Mrs Warren’s Profession) at the National Theatre, and in 1977 she repeated it for ERT television in a translation by Stathis Spiliotopoulos. She was Serafina delle Rose in Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo in 1971, Arkadina in Chekhov’s The Seagull in 1976 and Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending in 1981.

Aroni belongs to the generation that made Aristophanes popular again in Modern Greek and gave foreign classics a Greek stage voice. The National Theatre’s digital archive keeps photographs, programmes and press cuttings of her productions, and the ERT archive preserves her 1977 television performance of Mrs Warren’s Profession. Start there: watch a few minutes and remember that this is Shaw’s English play heard in Greek translation, not an original Greek text. Then practise reported speech with her own 1975 words. Change Όσο έχω αντοχή, θα υποδύομαι τη Λυσιστράτη into Δήλωσε ότι, όσο είχε αντοχή, θα υποδυόταν τη Λυσιστράτη (She declared that, as long as she had the stamina, she would play Lysistrata), and notice how έχω becomes είχε.

• The music for her 1957 Lysistrata was composed by Manos Hadjidakis.
• In 1956 the press debated which Modern Greek translation of Women at the Assembly should have been used.
• A 1981 magazine headline called her the “iron lady” of Greek theatre, while contrasting this with her great sensitivity.
• Sources disagree on her birth year: 1914 or 1916.