Searching for the Giant Olive...

"I can still vividly remember the chaotic Sunday lunches we used to have with my huge Greek family over thirty years ago. As my grandmother brought out plate after plate of wonderful food, I'd be waiting to pounce on the giant green olives - which I would then proceed to devour, hidden under the dinner table.

My uncle John, to whom I looked up with immense awe, would then pull me aside and announce (so all could hear): "Georgie, if you are a very good boy, next summer I will take you to our family home in Cyprus - and to a very special place, where the Giant Olive grows!" I remember being so excited I could barely contain myself. Every week I would wonder whether uncle John had decided if I had been a good boy, and if I could indeed get my very own giant olive.

Alas, every week it was the same story: “Sorry son; your mother tells me you have been a naughty boy - and naughty boys are not worthy to walk upon the sacred ground and see the Giant Olive.” I felt gutted, but kept asking, week after disappointing week. I am ashamed to admit that it was only many years later that I finally discovered he had been lying to me: there was no Giant Olive. Uncle John had lied to me. 

But I bear no ill-will to Uncle John, not really. For none of us should be denied to long for the impossible. So when I had to find a name for our fledgling theatre company, I named it Giant Olive - in honour of the little boy that I was and my Uncle John, who taught me the importance of myth, imagination and the capacity to keep dreams alive."

George Sallis