Two years. Two years with these remarkable people, now ending their third and final year at @sxoli_theatrou

We began our journey together through the imagination and artistry of Michael Chekhov, and later ventured into the beautiful universe of Demidov.

The characters I have seen them create. The transformations. The risks. The discoveries.

This is a class I will genuinely miss.

Their spirit. Their talent. Their generosity. Their courage.

And yes—their sense of fun.

There has been so much laughter over these two years. There have also been moments that moved me deeply. Together we explored artistry, freedom, failure, discovery, and all the glorious uncertainty that comes with being an actor.

I cannot wait to see where they go next—on stage, in front of a camera, and in places none of us can yet imagine.

And as if all that were not enough, they gave me this wonderful T-shirt, designed by the ridiculously talented @andreasvotikas : it’s the legendary Demidovian train, complete with all of them as a troop of mischievous monkeys 🐒, and of course, the ever-present green light.

The perfect gift.

Grateful beyond words. ❤️

Clowning day #🤡
SAM the Clown

Even Michael Chekhov, who encourages actors to imagine their characters in precise detail from the start, insists this be done under the gaze of an imaginary audience, because the imagination is never the same once it is being seen.

Actors don’t lack
communication,
Behavior,
Truth,
observation,
hearing,
seeing,
feeling,
concentration,
impulse.

They don’t need training to acquire these as external attributes. They need training to stop interfering with what already exists as their natural state.

Actors are born equipped.
Training is the art of not damaging the equipment

We closed the book on Shakespeare not with a period, but with a long exhale.

And now, almost painfully quietly,
we enter Beckett.

Different weather.
Different gravity.
Different ethics of being on stage.

With Beckett, the play is already the score.
Not a canvas for our ideas.
Not a field for psychology.
Not a playground for cleverness.

Here, only Demidov will help

No pushing for meaning.
No hunting for intention we obey Beckett’s wishes
No decorating the void with opinions.

The situation breathes.
The words fall.
The actor listens.

In Beckett, the danger is always the same:
to add.
To explain.
To comment.
To interpret.

And every time we do,
the play closes a little.

Lines arrive as events, not as choices.

Shakespeare asked for radiance.
Beckett asks for exposure.

And this shift is not stylistic.
It is ethical.

From expansion
to exposure.
From imagination
to bare presence.
From poetry that flies
to poetry that barely survives.

Shakespeare lifted us into form.
Beckett strips us down to function.

We did not finish Shakespeare.
We were prepared by him.

Now the danger is quieter.
And much more precise. 🎭

SAM ensemble Tuesday night…
🙏🏻❤️

Second week hybrid — inner gesture — repetition — activities.

Let’s clarify something because I can already hear the arguments. The word drama (δρᾶμα) in Greek comes from the verb δρᾶν (to act, to perform), which is connected to πράττω (to accomplish, to carry out an act). So yes, linguistically, drama is associated with “doing.”

But doing in the theatrical sense does not mean pushing action or forcing behavior.
It simply means that a life is unfolding. Something is happening.

And here’s the crucial distinction: responding to what happens does not automatically mean you are “doing” anything in the active sense. You don’t need to generate the event. You don’t need to manufacture experience. Life can move through you, not because of you.

This is where Demidov turns the traditional idea on its head. His work moves toward passivity—not in the sense of inertia, or apathy, but as a state of complete permeability. Passivity means I am open enough for life to act on me. I don’t interfere. I don’t control. I don’t impose my will on what wants to emerge.

To illustrate this, Demidov offers a striking image: a veil caught in a hurricane. From the outside, the veil appears wildly dynamic—twisting, folding, snapping, rising, spiraling. It looks like pure action.

Yet the veil itself does nothing.
It is acted upon.
Everything that happens to it is caused by the wind.

The veil is the most vivid, expressive presence in the landscape precisely because it does not interfere with the force that moves it.

That’s the paradox: the deepest dramatic life onstage doesn’t come from action you manufacture, but from allowing circumstances to move you.
The circumstances are the hurricane.
Your task is not to “do.”
Your task is to be the veil.

Adler came back declaring “we’re doing everything wrong.”
The problem wasn’t the outburst — it was the conclusion.
Her bias became a myth, her myth became history, and Stanislavski’s own account tells a very different story.
That’s how theatre lore gets built: repetition, not truth.

@melpomenilouisa @demidov_association @dimitriskouroubalis