Vera Zavitsianou

Vera Zavitsianou (also spelled Zavitsanou) was born in 1927 in Palaio Faliro, a seaside district of Athens. Her artistic life began with song rather than theatre: as a young woman she sang together with her sister. She then studied at the drama school of Theatro Technis, the art theatre founded by Karolos Koun, and made her first stage appearance in 1954 in a play by Thornton Wilder.

In the following seasons she played a series of roles at Theatro Technis, in plays that were often being staged in Greece for the first time: Lorca’s Blood Wedding, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, works by Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and the first production of Iakovos Kambanellis’s Η αυλή των θαυμάτων (The Courtyard of Miracles) in 1957. She also acted for years with Manos Katrakis’s Greek Popular Theatre.

In 1963 she joined the National Theatre in Athens, which became the main stage of her career; its archive lists around thirty productions with her up to 2002, and in 1990 she also directed there. She also co-led theatre companies with the actors Alekos Alexandrakis and Angelos Antonopoulos. She appeared on television only once, in the title role of Κυρία Κούλα (Mrs Koula), based on a story by Menis Koumantareas. Her last stage role was Mary Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (2002–2003). She died in a clinic in Palaio Faliro on 11 September 2008, aged 81.

Zavitsianou’s work at the National Theatre crossed periods and styles with unusual range. In August 1963, directed by Alexis Minotis at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, she played the boy Isaac in Η θυσία του Αβραάμ (The Sacrifice of Abraham), a religious drama in rhyming Cretan Greek verse from around 1600–1635. On 6 July 1969 she played the title role of Sophocles’ Antigone at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, in the Modern Greek translation by the poet Ioannis Gryparis. In the same years she was Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Lady Windermere in Oscar Wilde’s comedy and Célimène in Molière’s The Misanthrope.

Her mature roles were often powerful mothers and women facing the past: Mrs Alving in Ibsen’s Ghosts (1988), Claire in Genet’s The Maids (1991), the ageing Sarah Bernhardt in John Murrell’s Memoir (1995) and María Josefa, the old mother, in Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba (1996). Most of these were foreign plays performed in Greek stage translations.

Greek drama was part of her repertoire too. In 1987, on the National Theatre’s New Stage, she played the role called simply Κυρία (the Lady) in Οι γάμοι (The Weddings), a surrealist play written in Greek by Vasilis Ziogas, directed by Nikos Armaos. In 1990 she directed a programme of three one-act plays by Eugène Ionesco at the theatre.

The National Theatre’s digital archive (nt-archive.gr) keeps a full list of her roles, with photographs, programmes, press clippings and even a costume designed for her in 1998. Many of these records are also searchable on SearchCulture.gr. Try a short task with the page for Οι γάμοι (1987). The photo captions are in Greek and put each role in brackets after the actor’s name, for example Βέρα Ζαβιτσιάνου (Κυρία) and Γιώργος Μοσχίδης (Γιατρός). Match three actors to their roles. Then compare the two uses of κυρία: as the name of a role, the Lady, and as a polite form of address before a surname, η κυρία Ζαβιτσιάνου, just as ο κύριος is used for a man. The same page also holds recorded excerpts of the first and second acts, in Greek.

• She was in her mid-thirties when she played the boy Isaac in The Sacrifice of Abraham at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 1963.
• Before acting, she performed as a singer together with her sister.
• In 1990 she directed Ionesco’s The Chairs, The Lesson and The Bald Soprano as one programme at the National Theatre.
• The National Theatre’s costume collection keeps a two-piece outfit, a blouse with a large collar and a skirt, designed for her in 1998 by Rena Georgiadou and Kenny MacLellan.