AN AFTERWORD

By Lydia Koniordou

I first met Karen Malpede during an international forum on women in theater at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi. It was in the early 90s. 

Directly after my presentation, I saw a Mediterranean-looking woman with short dark hair and bright brown eyes approaching me. She introduced herself and surprised me with a proposal to direct Kassandra, a novella by Christa Wolf,  which she had adapted for her students at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. 

It felt utopian to me, but being in Delphi, where anything seemed possible, I answered without hesitation, “Why not?” 

Sure enough, a year later (it must have been 1993), I found myself at NYU in Washington Square Park, intensely rehearsing a play of great power with her students. The performance that developed was a daring, poetic, sensitive anti-war experience, as seen from the eyes of women. It seemed to deeply affect the students and audience. I know that it had a deep effect on me personally. 

Karen had dramatized the inner life of Kassandra, as Wolf records it in the unbroken monologue of her novella. The cast had three Kassandras: the doomed one in the chariot, the girl in defiance of her father, and the young woman, a vibrant anti-war activist. A chorus of more than twenty performers became the characters who had lived the events. 

Without betraying the spirit of Christa Wolf, often in a sharp and startling manner, Karen had laid bare inner truths in  the story. 

At night Karen and I continued our work with endless discussions that included her husband, George Bartenieff, an amazing actor and exceptional personality. These talks — which were profound and so revelatory for me of the  American artistic spirit that George and Karen knew so well, had experienced intimately — were the foundation of a lasting friendship. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, I had discovered a rare, human communication. 

During my stay in New York, at the Theatre for the New City, George and Karen introduced me to the recent work of two artists who had been for me, as well as for many Greek artists, a great source of inspiration, especially in the years  after the dictatorship when we all longed to make contact with movements of artistic freedom of expression. 

They were Peter Schuman of the Bread and Puppet Theater and Judith Malina of the Living Theatre. Their work had changed the way we approached theater, and it certainly affected my work, both as an actor and director. The two were direct and vital lines to the avant-garde movement of American theater in the 60s and its contribution to new horizons along with that of European masters such as Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, and later Eugenio Barba and  Arianne Mnoushkin. 

We are grateful to these artists because they have reminded us through their work, their lives, and the stand they took in society that art and theater are indispensable to conscious citizens of the world. In Athens, in the fifth century B.C., the cultivation of active consciousness in the audience was theater’s reason for being. It stood as a third pillar together  with democracy and freedom. 

As artists and citizens of the world, Karen and George (who died in 2022) have tended this flame of freedom in their  thought and work and shared it with grace and generosity in productions and performances, and with me whenever we  met. 

Quite recently, in 2023, we were united as artists again in Karen’s wonderful play, Troy Too, that included, in little more  than an hour — quite miraculously in my opinion — the recent experience of Black Lives Matter, Me Too, the pollution of the planet, and the pandemic. There was a very powerful free reference to the Trojan Women of Euripides as  background. I held the part of Hecuba — as a contemporary homeless woman. 

This turned out to be an amazing production, deeply moving to all, an exceptional experience. The audience connected at once with the core of the play and expressed a warm and grateful response in their applause. I really hope we can reprise it in the future. 

George Bartenieff was with us on tape, voicing his unique and last monologue as The Fish drowned by plastic. 

Dear Karen, I am glad to have the opportunity to thank you publicly for your exceptional contribution to theater, for your strong voice in the service of freedom, and for your friendship. 

I wish this book a “good sailing journey,” as we say in Greece!