By Stamatina Notaras
As Melbourne’s newest recruit who’s still exploring life in the city of bites, booze, and the best barista-made coffees on pour, the sighting that elicited the most excitement was when I was wandering through Fitzroy with a friend (a fellow Greek) and she pointed out the shop front used in the filming of Acropolis Now.
I stood still and let the nostalgia take me back to when my cousins and I used to huddle on the couch together, binge watching episode after episode.
Mary Coustas, also known as Effie Stefanidis, was the shining star of the sitcom back then, and continues to shine bright decades later as she slings show-stopping performances across the nation. This year, Coustas’ alter ego Effie is taking to the stage with her new show (but the same hair) UpYourselfness!
Following her one woman show This Is Personal that hit the stage for its world premiere in Sydney two years ago, Coustas is trading her hairbrush for hairspray and lip balm for lip stick as she breathes life into Effie, once again.
In a world where one wrong word can get you blacklisted from society, UpYourselfness! is an audacious show that sees Effie dive head first into topics that are usually saved for intimate dinner conversations, safeguarded between four walls and close friends. You know, the friends where you can unmask after a long day at work avoiding HR.
It may seem like one big contradiction but the first word that pops into my head when I think of Effie is authenticity. That’s because Effie is really just Mary, in her most pure, raw, and uncensored form.
“Effie is my happy place, she’s not heavy… just happiness, truth, balls, heart, and hair, and all that fabulous stuff that allows me to just have fun and push it, particularly with this show,” Coustas tells The Greek Herald.
So, what can we expect from this new show? Strap in as Effie walks a dangerous line between political correctness and freedom of speech, which she currently straddles “with one cheek on each side” (her words, not mine!).
Doubling down on the essence of Acropolis Now, which was to “swing open the cultural closet door that had been locked and chained by ignorance and people choosing to tell their own story which were not ours… or even touch on the spirit of the Europeans,” Coustas is taking back the narrative.
For those well versed in the works of Effie since her rise to stardom on the hit series – where she scored herself a TV Week Logie – you might agree that if anyone was going to speak on topics of such delicate nature, it would have to be the loud-mouthed Greek girl with no filter and a way with words.
“She’s perfect to talk about it, because she’s always got words wrong and represents a beacon of truth… without the meanness,” Coustas says.
Although standing strong against the heavy hand that is so present in current society, Coustas isn’t ignorant to the importance of evolution and change.
“I can see the point of political correctness. We all do need to continue to evolve, I just don’t want to devalue freedom and I don’t want to make words literal. It’s the tone that we should be looking at because now everyone’s masking their intention in a condom of political correctness,” she says.
“To be a free true individual you’ve got to be able to say your truth and you’ve got to feel that what you have to say is based on who you are, where you grew up, the class, the culture, the place. We’re so influenced by so much. So I don’t know how we should be expected to produce on a factory assembly line.”
After all these years, I wondered if butterflies still found their way into the pit of her stomach or if an occasional drop of sweat would drip from her forehead just before it was lights, camera, action. But silly me, I should have known better. I had watched Effie take to the stage at the Paniyiri Festival in Brisbane throughout my entire childhood and work the crowd like it was child’s play. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when she said “I don’t get nervous.”
She logicises this by adding that “You’ve got to understand in life, why you do certain things… I have chosen this profession because it is an opportunity to express something that I needed to hear or that I needed to see.”
And it seems, she’s voicing what others need to hear, see, and say as well.
“I believe the audience and I are the same. I believe every time I do the show… I am the audience. I don’t talk down to my audience, I don’t talk them up. They are my equals… And I think I’m a surrogate for them,” she says.
The way Coustas sees it, she translates emotions into words for the ones who can’t.
“The audience who cannot articulate their own fury, confusion, and frustration with where things are at, Effie does that for them,” Coustas explains.
When asked if there were any hesitations during the creative process of this show, with a societal judge and jury on every corner, it became obvious that Coustas’ unwavering sense-of-self acts as her true north.
“I’ve got to trust that I know where my morality sits,” she says with confidence. “I’m not a hateful person and I would never incite it so I’ve got to trust that in myself.
“People just don’t know what to do. They do what others want them to do and I refuse to buy into that. I’m alive, I’m breathing, and I’ve gotta stay true to my character, and to my objective of why I went into this business. And I’m going to do what I do until I don’t. Hopefully I get to choose that.”
Well what are you waiting for? Wax your moustache, call up your cousins, and grab the hairspray; you’re in for a right treat.
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