Interview
Actor and musician Gary Salomon self-scandalizes and talks about all the things that bother him in his everyday life.
This conversation I knew would be different because it was the first time I would be talking to a "Dog". Yes, you heard me right. The only difference is that this one is a biped and not a quadruped as we are used to. His name is Gary Salomon and our conversation would be about Anestis Aza's "The Dogs" which after its successful run at last year's Athens Festival is being staged again at the Ark Theatre. We met at Exarchia and while drinking coffee we started the conversation.
But our conversation was going to start with the bad development of the arrest of his colleague and very good friend Cem by the Turkish authorities because of his comments and views which were contrary to those of President Erdogan and his ban from going outside Turkey and how much all this disrupted and shocked them as people. At the same time because the show was going up they had to find his replacement and fortunately Michael Pitidis who is one of the writers of the play was the right person. Also how they had to adapt to the various micro-changes in the text which existed.
Afterwards we couldn't help but talk about Gary's third collaboration with Anestis going back chronologically to "Erotic Postcards from Greece" where unfortunately due to quarantine not many people were able to see it but nevertheless remembered it with love and emotion. Somehow their collaboration continued in "Republic of Baklava" and his acquaintance with George Katsis, Cem, Katerina Mavrogeorgis and later Stella Vogiatzaki who replaced the latter and how they felt like a family from the beginning as he told me while the tours they did in different cities united them more and made them feel familiar and come closer. This is how they came to their current collaboration when the Festival suggested Anestis to write a new play and he wanted to be the same core of people. The occasion was the true story of the dog who was murdered in Arahova and the actors playing dogs themselves go to investigate the murder by putting on stage something tragic and allegorical at the same time. In the course of the discussion, the similarities that we find in the two plays, which despite the comic element they contain, we also find tragic points that we face in our everyday life with the lack of justice and the covering up of crimes.
During his talk Gary returned to the question I asked him about his collaborations with Anestis and he could not hide his joy and gratitude at the same time for them, but also with his colleagues where many moments in their performances were improvised.
Gary of course on stage besides being an actor is also a musician where this started from the first performance he took part in "Destiny is called Clotilde" where he collaborated with Amalia Kavali and Yannis Sofologis. Here he confides to me the absurd joke that was asked of him where he had to say difficult words in Greek even though he had been in the country for a few days and did not speak the dialect well enough. Of course he did not fail to mention how active the music should be in the performance and the help it gives to the dramaturgy of each play.
As in the last 2 performances he has been involved in, the issues of racism and xenophobia are also touched upon, Gary pointed out to me the role played in this whole capitalist system and the selective racism that we as humans often have as a sign of not knowing our history.
Our conversation was coming to an end and he told me about his favourite film about dogs "Plague dogs" which is about experiments that are done on dogs and touches sensitive chords.
With a pleasant mood and smiles I thank him for the conversation we had and we renew our appointment for future dog talks!
photo credit: Karol Jarek