Lifestyle/Community
Plates permeate Renos Spanoudes’ latest play
Playwright Renos Spanoudes is a Greek-Cypriot with a Jewish heart. He is head of drama and arts and culture at King David Victory Park, where he has staged several big school productions, including a lauded recent version of Fiddler on the Roof in which he played Tevya “at the insistence of both colleagues and students alike”.
PETER FELDMAN
PHOTOGRAPH: PHILIP KUHN
The gregarious Spanoudes has other strings to his bow, too, which involve hosting a Saturday morning show on Hellenic Community Radio, being a judge on the Naledi Theatre Awards panel, directing plays, mentoring and lecturing on the arts.
Last year Spanoudes realised a dream when he took a group of Jewish day school children on a 12-day Israel Encounter Tour, which he found one of the “great experiences” of his life.
“My late mother always wanted to go to Israel. It was her dream, too, to ‘go to the place where Jesus walked’. I realised this in her honour and for my soul.”
Spanoudes’ greatest passions, however, are acting and writing. He has left his mark on the professional stage in roles such as Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd’s assassin in “’Living in Strange Lands: The Testimony of Tsafendas” and in the playwrighting arena with his “Soil” and “The Apple Tree”.
His latest play, “Broken Plates”, opened at the Auto & General Theatre on the Square for a three week run from Thursday, June 23.
He is extremely proud of bringing this slice of intimate theatre to the stage in which he also performs in the various roles.
“This is the first time I have written a play and performed my own work on the stage at Daphne Kuhn’s theatre. In the past it has either been me writing, directing or someone else playing my creations.”
“Broken Plates” is described as “a theatrical treat of comedic Greek delicacies” and the stories that unfold will relate to everyone in some way. The tales have been garnered from family, friends and the writer’s own experiences.
He says: “Plates are a fascinating, integral part of our lives. We eat off them, we use them when serving guests and sharing meals with loved ones; we give them as gifts, we display them in our homes, some even break them on a grave in bereavement and, at times, during a celebration. We even smash them as we dance.”
He compares this breaking of plates both in joy and sorrow to the breaking of the glass at Jewish weddings.
The play, he says, deals with life and living and is depicted in a selection of stories using the plate as a metaphor. Each reflective story provides the dramatic device that reveals in all its wonder and poignancy – a father making his speech at his daughter’s wedding; an old woman remembering her life; a young man reacting to his past.
“We all face universal truths such as belonging and identity, sadness and joy, especially the case with immigrants in their ‘adopted’ country; these aspects are reflected in the play.”
Spanoudes says the work is inspired by his own personal journey as a South African of Greek-Cypriot immigrant parentage, as well as by “Zorba the Greek” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”.