Cockroach Waltz Kent

A playfilm about an extreme love affair, shown through the 'consciousness' of stage and the 'subconsciousness' of film. Presented at the Festival of New Works, University of Kent, 17th-19th September 2003. Aphra Theatre.

The background story

Katerina's play is based on a real story, taken from one of her childhood friends in Greece. What attracted her to it was the continuity and persistence of a love affair that was primarily damaging to both sides but neither of them had the courage to acknowledge it or disentangle from it.

Bella, (as the girl's character is known in the play and in reality) met and fell in love with her Professor at Cambridge, Charles Harwood( fictitious name), in the spring of 1985. During the next 20 years, Bella developed an obsession with him that was manifested through a series of personal sacrifices and personality transformations. When real life Bella approached Katerina and asked her to write her story, the writer agreed immediately. It was going to be staged at an Athens theatre the following year. Knowing her style and way of exploring and presenting an idea, Bella trusted Katerina would deliver her story with the fairness and excitement it deserved.

A first draft was finished within 3 months.

"I knew the story was engaging not only because of its subject matter, but because of the way the characters were; the way they were interacting with each other. The professor's pretentiousness and delusional grandiosity as opposed to Bella's humility and overwhelming need to copy him so to reach his supposed higher level. Halfway through the first draft I realised that this had to be more than what it just is. To justify the outrageous actions of both characters I had to dig deeper - into the areas that were hidden from reality and from the consciousness of the heroes' minds. "

To use a screen on stage was done before and was also studied before and in some respects dealt with as a concept in experimental theatre as early as the mid 60s. At the dawn of the 21st century, performing companies such as the Wooster Group, Chameleons, Forced Entertainment -to name a few prominent UK based ones, invariably explore the spoken and visual word and persona through the medium of the screen.

"Steve Dixon and the Chameleons Group use the screen extensively as a subconscious platform of analysing the psychological references of a scene and they do it in a raw, crafty, wonderfully provoking way. The funny thing was that while I was in Athens writing the scenes that would and could be played on screen, I had no idea who Steve Dixon was and what was he doing. When I met him in London a year after and gave him my play, I realised we were talking on the same wavelength about the role the screen can play on stage. It inspired me a lot; and challenged me to make the screen as diverse in its conception as it needed to be to make my play 'rounded' and 'totally exposed'.

The word The Playfilm was devised as a way of portraying the ambition of that first draft. Cockroach Waltz was going to show the conscious side of the love story on stage and the subconscious side, on screen. The two sides would interact and would compliment, contradict and defy each other. One would be the expected, the other the unexpected. The noise and the silence. The thoughts that are aware and the ones that aren't.

"In some respects doing Cockroach Waltz was like doing two productions at once. A film and a play. The angle the director approached each, was different from the other. In the film, my character , Bella's mother, is a woman who is scared of age and death; one who knows the core of her mistakes and is fighting herself. She is like a lion, caged in body that is no longer toned and that is her battle: time and sex appeal. In the play, Yolanda( the same woman) comes across as the most shallow, funny and self-absorbed bitch one could ever imagine. For the film it was a different psychology and preparation all together; for the stage there was more freedom, more improvisation and more room to stretch in the limited range of who Yolanda is. I've enjoyed doing both and discovering so many varieties of expression that we've explored with Kat."

Amy Godfree, Actress

Looking for the right team to be involved in the production paused a problem mainly because the draft was written in English, although Kat is Greek and was living in Greece at the time.. To have Cockroach Waltz translated into Greek would lose its original voice and the writer/director would have to approach it from a compromised angle that wasn't the intention at the time. What was left to do was to cut down the production in scale and money and use English-speaking actors living in Greece, but the venue would be almost impossible to guarantee. The answer came when Bella suggested an MA degree in Drama by Practice as Research in the University of Kent at Canterbury, the sort of place that gives you the freedom to do your 'research project' exactly as you please while providing you with the necessary technical facilities.

Katerina applied and sent a proposal to the Drama department. She stated her concept, methodology and purpose of making Cockroach Waltz and two weeks later she was delighted to be informed that not only she was accepted but was also awarded a bursary of 4,500, plus another 1000 in production money to complete her task and her degree.