As Brexit continues morphing out over the coming months, I think we should begin sharing experiences of what it has been like to live in and freely travel around Europe before our rights disappear. That ‘good’ the young of Britain in particular are about to lose. An automatic right to be in and travel inside Europe without a visa, attend universities, work without foreigner status conditions, to learn languages, share in the life as citizens of Europe with equal rights.

What the Europe Union does well is not to look towards obvious economic stimulants as bridges to future social, cultural and economic activity, but looks at the social and cultural stimulants, which when aggregated from individual life-changing experiences multiply in exponential societal ways, not only in and across Europe but across the world. Europe is a civil and cultural force unlike any other.

Here is an early pre-Freedom-of-Movement personal European experience, before freedom of movement was even instituted, giving reason, to my way of thinking, why Europe is so good for societies and individuals worldwide. Does that make me a Europhile? Well, yes, perhaps it does. I don’t see that as bad, quite the opposite and I will explain why.

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus. The ancient Odeon was built by Herod Atticus 161 AD, and is situated at the foot of the rock of the Acropolis with the Parthenon as a backdrop.

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus is an ancient open theatre, one I discovered in 1981 on my first trip to Greece. Vernon Kidd in the New York Times, described a 1981 Athenian summer component in a plethora of Europe-wide festivals, The Athens Festival awaiting travellers… “plays of Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes … presented by the National Theater of Greece, the Amphi-Theater, the Art Theater and Northern Greece State Theater. Tickets: from $1.20 to $6. July 5 to Sept. 25.” As Kidd’s NY times article detailed, Ancient Greek theatre in the ancient Odeon space was only a small part of a Europe-wide extravaganza of arts festivals in the summer of 1981.

So, unaware of any of the above, one late July ’81 evening, I wandered up the road from my Plaka hotel to the Acropolis, this young filmmaker, then a resident of Hong Kong. As darkness gathered, I sat myself on a perimeter wall to take in the dusk scene, facing south I believe, staring down from my spot at the well lit Odeon of Herodes Atticus theatre way down below me. What looked like a rehearsal was going on. Intrigued very quickly by what I was seeing, I returned to the entrance road to the ancient site, that I had initially walked up to on one side, and took another path another way, hiking down the hill to find out what it was I was been watching going on. A poster outside the Odeon announced that the Athens Summer Festival’s was showing The Acharnians by Aristophanes. Had I see a play by Aristophanes before? No.

I returned to my hotel and the next day found a ticket seller in Athens and bought a ticket for the play – prices of the day ranged from $1.20 to $6. I also found a Penguin translation of the play in a bookshop, read it, and no wiser I have to say, set off the following night to see the performance.

The Acharnians was first performed in 426 BC. A strident anti-war play it is credited with being the oldest staged Greek comedy. I didn’t know what to expect because the Penguin translation in English did not make anything very clear. Still, I had seen the rehearsal. That was enough. The play itself would do the rest.

The Odeon theatre is an extraordinary space, but on a hot July summer’s night it is other-worldly, the night air made translucent by light was alive with what looked like tiny floating tips of flowers, rising in the warm air all throughout the amphitheatre. In jeans, t-shirt, sandals surrounded by Greeks many in evening dress I felt a rank outsider. Yet nobody cared about me for good reason. They were there to see a play, a very important play in the ancient Greek canon, as I soon learned.

What truly resonates with me most, forty years later, is how an ancient play, interpreted, performed and directed as it was, was made so relevant to and for a 1981 audience. Filled with dance, mime, mask, and music, George Kounis’ (or is it Kouns?) production literally lifted me off my seat. This was not a stilted play from Ancient Greece, the sort of production I remembered too well from university productions staged in a garden back then. The Penguin translation was swept from my mind.

Dicæopolis, a native of Acharnæ and an ex-soldier, returns disillusioned from the Persian wars, heartsick at the miseries and stupidities of the conflict. Not shy in making his views known, with earthy gestures he rails against his fellow citizens, while a chorus of startled, indignant citizens in white masks, odd hats and fantastic bed square sewn quilt costumes, rush in dance formation from one side of the stage to the other, all this happening in a cacophony of startling music and sound effects, as the chorus remonstrated and argued with him and each other. The audience was in stitches inside minutes. I didn’t understand a word, yet understood everything.

As a writer it is hard to communicate the effect this experience has had on me on that hot 1981 July night. As I later discovered, this was the western world’s most ancient comedy, and the mime, dance, costume, design and performances, had Greeks all around me almost ‘rolling in aisles’. When the played ended and the old director was helped on stage after the performance to a rousing reception – I felt as if theatre itself, not only the ancient Greek concept of  ‘spectacle,’ had finally been made clear to me.

photograph by and courtesy of Berthold Werner 2017