Olia Lazaridou

Olia Lazaridou (also spelled Olia Lazaridu) was born in Athens. She studied acting at the drama school of the Theatro Technis, the Art Theatre founded by Karolos Koun, and later took classes in Paris with the French director Antoine Vitez. An early stage memory links her with a great name of Greek theatre: in 1978 she had a silent role in Elli Lambeti’s production of Έξι μονόπρακτα (Six One-Act Plays). More than forty years later, that experience inspired a new show.

Her film career began in the years of the New Greek Cinema. She played Vera in Nikos Nikolaidis’s Τα κουρέλια τραγουδάνε ακόμα (The Rags Still Sing, 1979) and starred in Το στίγμα (The Stigma, 1982). Her performances in To Stigma, Terirem and Archangel of Passion won acting awards. In 2012 she received the Hellenic Film Academy award for best supporting actress for Παράδεισος (Paradise, 2011).

On stage she has worked with directors such as Lefteris Vogiatzis, Theodoros Terzopoulos, Vasilis Papavasileiou and Angela Brouskou. In 2008 she coordinated the theatre group 18 Μποφώρ (18 Beaufort), formed by people who had completed the 18 Άνω therapy programme, for a Brecht production at the Athens Festival. She has also published a small book of short poems, Τα δύσκολα εύκολα (The Difficult, Easy), with Potamos.

Lazaridou’s work moves between cinema, theatre and directing. In film she belongs to the generation of actors who shaped the New Greek Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. Later films include Πριν το τέλος του κόσμου (Before the End of the World, 1996) and Paradise, the role that brought her the Academy award.

On stage she often chooses texts that rest on the voice. In December 2016 she played the buried woman of Samuel Beckett’s Ευτυχισμένες μέρες (Happy Days) at the Bios cultural space in Athens, directed by Sylvia Liouliou: a woman stuck in the earth who talks almost without stopping as she tries to get through another “happy day”. In 2017 she acted with Dimitris Katalifos in Φωνές (Voices), a mosaic of short one-act plays by Harold Pinter, directed by Manos Karatzogiannis. In 2020 Giorgos Nanouris directed her in Έξι φορές (Six Times) at the Athens Concert Hall, an evening of texts by Strindberg, Chekhov, Cocteau and Shakespeare inspired by Lambeti’s 1978 production.

As a director she staged Dostoevsky’s Έγκλημα και τιμωρία (Crime and Punishment) in 2021 at the Omega Stage of the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus, for the 200th anniversary of the writer’s birth. Her earlier productions include Papadiamantis’s Ο γάμος του Καραχμέτη (Karachmetis’s Wedding) and Άσμα ασμάτων (Song of Songs). She has described acting, directing and writing as different ways of reaching the same thing.

Lazaridou belongs to a generation that linked the New Greek Cinema with experimental theatre, and she continues to act, direct and write. For a Greek learner, one of her stage roles makes a good first exercise in description. Picture the woman of Happy Days: she is in the earth, she cannot walk, but she talks. Using the passage on this page, write three short sentences in the present tense: Η ηρωίδα είναι στο χώμα. Δεν περπατάει. Μιλάει πολύ. (The heroine is in the earth. She does not walk. She talks a lot.) Then ask a partner Ποιος μιλάει; (Who is speaking?) and answer with a name. These are our own practice sentences, not lines from the play.

• In 1978 she had a silent role in Elli Lambeti’s Six One-Act Plays.
• She took acting classes in Paris with Antoine Vitez.
• Her film roles have won acting awards, including one from the Hellenic Film Academy.
• She has written a book of short poems, Τα δύσκολα εύκολα (The Difficult, Easy).