GnosyArt Ltd

Who do you consider yourself to be professionally?

Can one be a professional dream weaver? My work involves taking ideas from everyone and everything around me, weaving them together and making an inspirational theatre tapestry if I can. My vocation in life is too wonderful and diverse to box up in terms such as actor, director, teacher although out of the three, teacher is probably what I aspire to as I am very much still a student myself, learning from those I work with, and always hope to continue to do so.

How old were you when you knew what you wanted to pursue as a career?

I was three when I started to read. This was motivated by an enormous love of literature bestowed on me from both of my eccentric parents. This motivation was fuelled by their ability to tell great stories but also to dramatize them in the telling. And in essence that is what theatre is: the bringing to life of a story. I never actively pursued my career, rather I have always done what I love and opportunities have fallen across my path.

What was your dream?

My dream was to bring together a passionate devoted group of artists who together would create a theatre centre of creativity for young people and to empower them through the telling of their stories. This would be done on 2 levels: by producing professional theatre to tour venues & schools across Cyprus and abroad. And by creating a drama school for young people to enable them to make theatre themselves and play their own experiences. And so Antidote Theatre was born.

How did you go about making your dream a reality?

Circumstances, call it fate or destiny, whatever you will, led me to Cyprus at a time in my life when I need a new direction. In Larnaca I was re-united with my present co-director, Xenakis Kyriakides, whom I had met at drama school in London. We met up and talked, and talked and talked, both having the dream of making a Theatre for young people and we fell in love with all the possibilities in front of us: the journey, the people we would meet, the multitude of creative choices, and each other. Antidote has for many years survived on a shoestring budget, and a lot of love. The reality of starting Theatre Antidote was having the right partner to share the struggle with, and Xenakis was that person. A colleague provided a crumbling old Cypriot house which became our first base, and Antidote Young People’s Theatre was established in 1999. From then on we started writing a lot of letters and making a lot of phone calls to get support for our mission, a mission we thought everyone would understand and want to support.

What rejections did you get along the way?

The list is endless! And a depressing obstacle course to all those dream weavers out there. However we never doubted the strength of our mission and when the doors kept closing we kept banging. We were told categorically by all cultural organizations relating to theatre that theatre for young people did not exist and therefore no funding was available to anybody who was determined to focus exclusively in that field. Local businesses were not interested in theatre for children as a means of promotion when sport offered a much wider audience. So for the first few years funding was impossible. We re-generated the income from the workshops to cover expenses and both of us kept our ‘day’ jobs as teacher & dentist. The hardest hitting rejections came with the biggest successes. In 2002 we won a Youth Theatre award and our company of 21 teenagers was invited to perform at the Royal National Theatre London. We needed funding desperately to get the kids there. We still have a file of over 50 rejection letters (souvenir). But under immense anxiety and stress and support from Leventis Foundation, British High Commission, Cyprus press, parent protest and finally the government we performed in London.

What problems did you encounter in your quest for success and how did they affect your career?

Ignorance and jealousy are two great walls that we met with in the beginning and it might sound neurotic but we often felt that society was standing back and waiting for us to fail. If we hadn’t had the will and absolute conviction in what we were doing, the lack of financial support would have destroyed the dream. In 2002, we bought a house for us to live in and turned the whole of the downstairs into a theatre workshop/rehearsal space, and sometimes studio theatre.

In 2004 we did the most financially insane thing possible. A chance arose to take a lease on a local cinema that had closed down. With the help of friends and relatives, and the necessity of re-mortgaging our house, we converted the old ‘Othellos’ cinema in Larnaca and re-opened as Antidote Young People’s Arts Centre, which was officially opened by the former minister Mr. Pefkios Georgiades. It was this rash step that got the attention of the government as now we had a clear base, now we had a venue that schools could bring bus loads of kids to, having a theatre meant that our applications for funding might be taken more seriously. This was the start of a slow but steady relationship with the Ministryof Education.

How did you overcome the problems?

We did what we could do….We worked hard. We still work hard.

How do you feel about rejection?

Rejection is never a pleasant thing. But it is very different to be rejected when one is already down or insecure and unsure. Although we have never been financially secure and are still working towards full annual subsidy, we never once lost our sense of direction or purpose and that was what kept us holding on to the dream.

What does rejection mean to you?

Blindness if there is no clear justification for it. After all these years it is easier to challenge. Now we have our own students returning to Cyprus as trained teachers, directors and actors as well as the many artists who return to Cyprus with the dream of creating their dreams here, and I would rather address the question to them. Why should young artists come back to Cyprus and face rejection? Why should they go abroad to study and widen their horizons only to have them marginalized in Cyprus by having to open yet another music school instead of being encouraged to compose music or play? Why should graduate directors and actors be forced to retrain because no theatre has a program to support and offer them the chance to apply their skills? If we want to nurture progressive cultural development in Cyprus, at the very least we must attempt to try and give opportunities to the next generation so they can prove themselves before we shut the door in their face. Otherwise they will stop coming back altogether.

How has rejection changed you as a person?

It’s made me more determined, more thick-skinned I suppose, and possibly more wrinkly, but these might be laughter lines as we have laughed more than we cried, even in the most difficult of times. But I have always been very focused on what I want in life and rejection has taught me to be patient and examine the many different ways to achieve the same goal. Rejection has made me more resourceful.