Long Live Socrates!

Nick Mancuso re-examines the death of the famous philosopher

One of the world's most important and influential pieces of political and philosophical rhetoric was delivered in 399 BC by a man who was facing death by execution at the age of 70. This final speech of Socrates, on the subject of intellectual freedom, was recorded and handed down through the generations in literary form by his follower Plato, who published it under the title Apologia.
Noted film and television actor Nick Mancuso has adapted the Apologia for the stage, and is performing it as a solo show entitled The Death of Socrates. Mancuso's 30-year career includes such films as Nightwing and the Canadian classic Ticket to Heaven. On television, he starred in the series Stingray and Matrix. Among other honours, he has won Italy's Polifemo D'argento at the Taormina Film Festival.
In fact, Mancuso spent the first six years of his life in southern Italy, a fact that he feels is directly related to his enthusiasm for the new project. "I was very influenced as a young man by the classics, and especially the Greeks," he says. He deplores that the U.S. and Canadian educational systems have generally dropped all classical studies out of the curriculum, since, as he believes, "This is one of the key ingredients of a civilized society."
Mancuso had been living and working in the U.S. for some time, but "I have an extended Italian family here and I wanted my son to be raised around them," he says. The move brought even more strongly to his attention the changes and deficiencies in Ontario's and California's educational systems. "That's probably what triggered my interest in this, that I wanted to turn the Apologia into a courtroom drama," he says.
Mancuso believes that the contemporary world has lost track of a signal concept of the Greek world, arete (which means, very roughly, "manhood"). "Socrates himself was really the final culmination of arete, to be free in one's mind," he says. "What we're really dealing with here is a free-thinking man and the inception of the democratic ideal."
On investigating various versions of the text, Mancuso found that "All the adaptations I looked at were arcane and undramatic. I set it in a fictional Athens, an Athens of the mind. I wanted to root the audience in current, modern times." He also played with the stereotype of Socrates as "a wizened old character, a Mr. Magoo. I picture him as a lot closer to Oliver North."
In short, Mancuso is taking every step to frame the words of Socrates in a context that will allow them to ring out clearly to contemporary Torontonians. "This is a very relevant issue in an age when we're being led by the nose by any current propaganda," he says. "It's a man who's really inquiring into the whole nature of what it is to be free and what it is to be a free-thinking individual."
Alianak Theatre Productions presents The Death of Socrates from November 15 to December 1. For tickets, call 416.504.PLAY (7529).

Publication Date: 2002-11-17
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