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   The first directing experience was in 1968 when Thanos was about 8 years old. In the beginning, it was a shadow theatre, after that a puppet one, circus, and the very first real theatrical production in the backyard was a play “Ten Little Indians”, based on the novel of Agatha Christie, where Lucas was a director, producer, an actor and even a ticket seller, costume designer and make-up artist. The performance won the hearts of the entire neighbourhood, all the half-drachma tickets were sold out.

   From that moment the theatre became a dream to catch. Many years after Lucas Thanos works on quite different plays, becomes master of lights, making it another acting character on the stage, uses his composing skills for music to compliment voices of his actors in his mastered translations of ancient tragedies, tailored to sound clearer in the modern language for a modern audience. His real forte became staging Ancient Greek drama, in which he became a real expert, who devoted more than 20 years of his life to the research on Aeschylus. In 2006, in the Amore Theatre in Athens Thanos directed his first drama “The Persians” by Aeschylus, using his own translation of the play, applying his experience in choreography and his understanding of ancient chorus. This was a success, and next year he staged in the very same theatre another translation of his - “The Libation Bearers” of Aeschylus.

   In 2008 in Roes Theatre, Athens Thanos directed again “The Persians” with the participation of a famous Greek actor Giannis Voglis.

   In 2010 Thanos stages a big production of Oresteia of Aeschylus in a well-known Municipal theatre in Patras. Giannis Voglis, Maria Katsandri and Christos Thanos were protagonists of the play. This performance has shown his major achievement in his research on Aeschylus – the ancient chorus, which main feature is that it has to sound like one person, one character on the stage, voices of all participants turn into one, displaying incredible unity, with emphasis on the clarity of words. This chorus became Lucas Thanos’ trademark, a common stylistic signature of all his theatrical works on Ancient Greek drama.

   In the meanwhile, Thanos prepared English translations of “the Persians” and “the Oresteia” and soon left for Los Angeles to stage them in Backstage Theatre, Hollywood, Bristol Civic Auditorium and Paper and Plastic Theatre, Los Angeles with Danay Garcia as Electra. In America he researched the psychological interpretation of tragedy.

   After returning to Greece, Thanos continued his ancient drama praxis, perfecting and improving his methods while teaching ancient tragedy in Schools of Theatre in Athens and annually staging “the Persians” as signature performance of his system. For this reason he was invited to Zurich, Switzerland to give a masterclass and stage this performance with actors from Emeis Theatrical Group.

   A big honour was to stage “the Persians” in the city of Marathon, exactly where the battle between Persians and Greeks took place. It is from there we know the marathon distance, that grew from the legend of a warrior who ran 42 km to inform that Greeks won the battle and died after spreading the good news. Not many people know that Aeschylus himself was a soldier, and fought in this battle together with his brother, who died there. K. Georgousopoulos, known as K.H.Myris, famous Greek writer and translator from Ancient Greek language, attended the performance and marked it as one of the best performances of “the Persians” he’s seen in his life.

   In his life, full of experiments and new challenges, Thanos tried himself as a director in quite a different environment, when started making a film, based on his favourite and so well known for him topic of “the Oresteia”, applying his understanding of the psychology of a person, knowledge of drama and cinematographic skills he obtained during his researches. So far it is a work in progress, shot at various locations of America and Ukraine, using different techniques. In this work participated his sister Amalia Thanou as Clytemnestra and his wife Olga Thanou. In this film Thanos uses some of his best orchestral works. The story takes us to modern times, transferring ancient tragedy into our world, where Agamemnon is an abandoned war veteran, Orestes is his son, living through his personal drama in his own mind.

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