Romanian Romanian Performing Arts. Perspectives 1 Performing Arts. Perspectives EDITOR: Irina Ionescu TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH AND PROOFREADING: Samuel W.F. Onn GRAPHIC DESIGN: Radu Manelici 2016. All original articles were written between September and December 2015. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily the same as those of the Romanian Cultural Institute. © RCI [email protected] Contents Irina Ionescu Intro 6 Alice Georgescu An Alternative View of Alternative Theatre 8 Cristina Rusiecki The Independents 21 Iulia Popovici Stage Politics in Contemporary Romanian Theatre 39 Oana Stoica In Search of Identity Trends in Contemporary Theatre in Romania 56 Monica Andronescu Independent Theatre in Bucharest Entertainment beats Experiment 74 Cristina Modreanu The Theatre of the New Generations Cracks in the Pedestal of the Statue 86 Ludmila Patlanjoglu Silviu Purcărete and the Apocalypse of Us 104 Ludmila Patlanjoglu Andrei Șerban’s Triumph and the Power of the Performing Arts 113 Ludmila Patlanjoglu “The Crisis Syndrome” and Dr. Chekhov— A Triptych by Andrei Șerban 121 Octavian Saiu Towards a Rich Theatre: A Case Study in the Reception of Eugene Ionesco on the Romanian Stage 129 Gina Șerbănescu The History of Dance or the Dance of History? 146 The 2015 National Theatre Festival: Historical Perspectives and New Horizons 158 Sibiu International Theatre Festival 185 Romanian Performing Arts. Perspectives 6 Irina Ionescu Intro This publication brings together a range of different points of view which together paint a comprehensive—albeit not exhaustive— picture of the performing arts in Romania in recent years. Using both words and images, we cover the most important trends in terms of cultural policy and artistic themes, while also providing an account of the ideas that have circulated and continue to circulate in the field, of landmark performances and the venues where they were staged, as well as of the Romanian actors, directors and writers who enjoyed most success among the public and critics. We hope this publication will be useful to our readers and our international partners—theatre producers, selectors and curators of performing arts festivals, theatre critics and cultural journalists. In it we have sought to present a balanced view, one not weighed down by an excess of historical data or academic analysis, and with an emphasis placed on information and critical reviews drawn up in line with good journalistic practice. Our intention was therefore to create a tool for the sharing of cultural information and lay the foundations for future debate and individual research projects—all with the ulti‑ mate aim of forging a better link between the Romanian performing arts and international cultural markets. The selection of the content in these pages highlights a diversity of subject matter and organisational structures, as well as of the types of public at which the productions in Romanian Performing Arts. Perspectives 7 question were aimed. It features repertory theatre, independent pro‑ jects and artists, artistic experiments and commercial theatre. As a national cultural institute, our aim is to promote the Romanian performing arts beyond the country’s borders, thereby enhancing the presence of Romania’s leading productions and artists on foreign cultural markets (dedicated programmes, festivals, inter‑ national theatre fairs, etc.). We would like to thank all of our contributors for providing us with new material and allowing us to republish existing articles, as well as all of the theatres, artists, artistic consultants, literary secretar‑ ies and PR specialists for their generosity in providing us with access to images of the performances described in these pages—which we hope will act as an agreeable interface between the world of the Romanian performing arts and the international cultural scene. Irina Ionescu holds a BA, an MA and a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies and was trained in an IATC Young Critics’ Seminar. She is Director of Programmes (General Department for Romanian Cultural Institutes Abroad) at the Romanian Cultural Institute (RCI). Currently, she is a Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the Arts University in Târgu Mureș and Visiting Lecturer at the National University of Theatre and Film (NUTF). She contributes theatre articles to national publications. Romanian Performing Arts. Perspectives 8 Alice Georgescu An Alternative View of Alternative Theatre In Romania, alternative theatre appeared on the scene under this explicit name immediately after 1990. Not that those advocat‑ ing on its behalf had a clear idea of what it was all about. In fact, this combination of words was initially more a means to attract atten‑ tion, arouse curiosity, to shock, even to annoy. But who? Here things were even more unclear. After the immense wave of civil unrest of December 1989—a wave which also swept up theatres audiences, car‑ rying them out into the public squares, where it held them, on and off, for over three years—it was hard to believe that the “bourgeoi‑ sie” (?!), those inert/inept spectators, those sleepy minds could still be shaken out of their familiar comforts by a work of fiction, however daring. The time ofHernani , and the romantic uprisings launched on the grounds of theatrical aesthetics, had long since passed; revolutions Romanian Performing Arts. Perspectives 9 would no longer be triggered by an irreverent work (as is said to have been the case in Paris, in 1789, with Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro), but by a perfectly orchestrated mass media, even when “under occupation”. So then what? Interestingly, the indigenous uprising against mainstream thea‑ tre, against “traditional” theatre, against theatre “as we (used to) know it”, had from the outset (and this is sometimes still recognisable today) a very strong self‑referential component: above all, the leading lights of the “new theatre” wanted to shock or, in certain cases, impress the “established” theatre critics, their own, more conservative colleagues and representatives of the state cultural authorities (especially with a view to obtaining funding), and only then, if at all, the paying pub‑ lic. And it is for this reason that the shape of alternative theatre in Romania remained ambiguous for many years: “alternative” predom‑ inantly denoted the venue, while the ideas, subject‑matter, means of expressions and techniques essentially stayed the same. Consequently, the public would find itself in places that had never or only rarely been used for theatre before (restaurants, abandoned or unfinished build‑ ings, basements, attics, etc.); they were forced to squeeze into places where the chairs were uncomfortable and few and far between, or where they might even have to stand in suffocating—or, conversely, freezing—rooms in order to see, most often from the same frontal perspective found in traditional theatre, either rehashed classic works or (more) recent but often inconsequential plays in which the only innovations were the extremely crude language and skimpy costumes of the actors. Of equal note is the fact that for a long time the alternative to “official theatre” was provided by the very employees of the latter, who were unhappy with the roles they were being given in the state Romanian Performing Arts. Perspectives 10 In other words, people in this part of the world (including those working in theatre) wish—“like the impartial Romanian”—to be at one and the same time both in power and in opposition, inside and outside, for and against, conservative and innovative, alternative and established. Romanian Performing Arts. Perspectives 11 theatre (where, however, they remained… on the payroll) and who formed small companies of actors with exotic names, some of which disappeared very quickly and whose real contribution to theatrical life was, at best, short‑lived. Does anyone, for example, recall Teatrul Unu (not to be confused with Unteatru)? Or Teatrul Inexistent (albeit this company existed from the end of the 1990s until the beginning of the present decade, even producing a few plays)? So, naturally, this was not a normal state of affairs. But, that being said, the political state of affairs described by Caragiale inA Lost Letter—“On the one hand The Carpathian Roar, on the other padding your friends pockets”— will forever be valid in Romania, including in cultural affairs. In other words, people in this part of the world (including those working in theatre) wish—“like the impartial Romanian”—to be at one and the same time both in power and in opposition, inside and outside, for and against, conservative and innovative, alternative and established. One explanation might be that we suffer from a short memory (and not only when it comes to theatre). Still in the cultural sphere, a study ought to be carried out, even if only on a statistical level, of our ability to acknowledge our predecessors, to see ourselves as belonging (and not just paying lip service) to a tradition, a school of thought, an aesthetic movement, as following in the footsteps of a great master. Reading the interviews, the “declarations of faith”, the “testimonies” of young artists, you see that each appears to belong to a spontane‑ ous generation, each appears to have emerged, artistically speaking, from out of nowhere, each appears to believe that theatre began (and, naturally, ends) with him or her; the only affiliations permitted, in extremis, are those with people of their own generation. Not only do names such as that of the inimitable Ion Sava—who, in 1946, pro‑ duced the famous Macbeth with Masks, which, in more favourable Romanian Performing Arts. Perspectives 12 circumstances, might have revolutionised both Romanian theatre and Romanian theatre’s place within European theatre at the time— sound alien to the latest generation of “alternative artists”. The same can also be said of the work of far more recent directors—such as the likes of Aureliu Manea, Iulian Vișa and Alexandru Tocilescu, to name but a few of those who died only recently and who embraced a differ‑ ent kind of theatre in Romania—which represents a kind of vague, abstract and unmapped territory, where no root has taken hold and from which no offshoots have appeared.