With dozens of theater plays under her belt both as a playwright and a stage director, Ioli Andreadi has come to develop her own stage world and her proper signature style. As her plays keep being staged in Europe and the US, and after having consolidated her enduring presence in the Greek theater scene, Andreadi’s latest play MANOLIS / a heart with four strings, co-written with Aris Asproulis, directed by her on behalf of the National Theater of Northern Greece, and presented at the Lazaristes Monastery – Sokratis Karantinos Stage, marked yet another success in her career.

The playwright duo has co-written 15 theater plays that came as artistic and scientific offsprings of a time-consuming and meticulous research. As they point out, this new theater play “digs deep into the soul of the ingenious and pioneering musician, composer and performer, making its way directly to the heart of any spectator feeling in love, betrayed, deserted or melancholic, healing it from the pain of human condition. The play unfolds the life of Manolis Chiots, ever since his birth and all the way up to his death, placing emphasis on key chapters and pivotal moments in his course as an artist, but also in his personal life: this hidden place away from plain view where every man’s contact with the divine is put under judgement, where all people are measured as to whether they received or offered the share of love they were destined for.”

This magic palco carried the audience away, added its name in NTNG’s rich history, and is bound to pave the way for what’s coming next. “After having created a dreamlike universe on stage that allowed for all this to happen, we drew the best out of our team of actors, who absorbed with devotion the instructions given, and integrated them with passion and love in their acting approach,” she says of her direction. It is also worth mentioning that both the research on Manolis Chiotis and the play’s writing along with Aris Asproulis took a lot of months to be completed, whereas the rehearsals lasted another couple of months. “All this was a journey of discovery of meaningful things around music, memory and emotion,” she concludes.