He’s colossal when you see him on stage, among the children, he’s the Magician who charms the whole universe with only a word. He’s delicate and frail when he portrays Lear’s sad court jester… and then King Lear himself. He’s powerful and seductive in Petruchio, he’s Rica Venturiano and nothing more, he’s tormented by Raskolnikov, he’s the Man in Jov’s Experiment. A story with and about Marian Ralea.

How did your journey start, both in life and in theatre? I think it isn’t any different than wss for other actors.

I think it’s nothing any different from other actors. Maybe in our childhood,we’ve all pretended we were actors, we all liked the illusion of the curtain. I’ve always liked to act. And to imagine all the stories I knew or heard. That’s how it all started. It certainly was in the family, my older brother is a also and actor and he’s three years older than me. Maybe it’s a gift we’ve inherited from my mother… The rest is only about having faith in yourself, it implies a lot of hard work and that hunger to act, which I have tried to keep during the years.

What’s the first childhood memory in connection to the theatre?

I remember a play in kindergarten…Back then, all the scooters were made out of wood. I was riding it and I kept falling. I was the naughty child, I hurt my knees and conclusion were being drawn…The strange thing was that all through my childhood I had all kinds of accidents, either by scooter, by bike, skiing or skating accidents. It seems that the little talent I had on stage translated a bit in life, in accidents..Then, in tenth grade I was already performing at the Theatre in Brasov, I was a real phenomenon…

At one point you chose to do children’s theatre. You were dubbed the Magician. Is theatre magic? Is the actor a magician?

Yes, an actor can be a magician. The Magician is a whole other story. A happy-ending story. I remember I was at the National Television and I was doing The Liar, by Goldoni. I had some very good friend who were working at the children’s department, they had just moved there, just after the events that have marked and that are still marking our lives. The asked me to do this character, the magician, with this magic presentation. In those times children didn’t know stories. Or they only knew stories or poems about the politics of that age. With the help of the magic word, Abracadabra, we tried to “play stories” and to tell children as much as we could about the dreams and the word that makes it all possible. Of course it is magic. The actor is a magician in the sense that it discovers life’s magic and it portrays it on stage..

As for the children’s Magician… it’s not my fault that the little ones accepted me. I was adopted by them and I came at a time when they really needed this kind of stories’ magic. The magic of the stories they knew, half listened to, half understood. I believe it was an accident. A fortunate one, but an accident. And the fact that there is still an attraction towards the Magician, after all these years, had to do with the idea I had in my mind, a belief I had about children’s theatre, that the little one had to be in the center, that now they don’t have time to assist, but they want to participate. You can’t make a child sit on a little chair and listen to a story, you have to make him participate and initiate a role play with him, then the child would be captivated and he would easier understand the story and, maybe later, he would understand life…

How long is the road from the Magician to King Lear?

When I started Abracadabra in 1990, I had already performed in important plays by Caragiale, Moliere, Shakesperare. The children’s theatre was a continuation of my acting on stage. The audience is divided in different categories and even if, on the street I was seen as the Magician, people still came to the theatre to see a play with Marian Râlea. The distance between Abracadabra and King Lear is a distance – if actually there is one – which has to do with the faith of the people who have given me a role or another. But I don’t consider it a distance, only a stage and an accumulation between those two periods. A time in which all I have gained from working with children, their honesty, I tried to bring that on stage. The second part of King Lear has the innocence and the simplicity of working with children. I have never distanced myself from theatre, I couldn’t live without theatre. There is not a big difference between the Magician and King Lear, as there is no difference between acting with children or grown-ups. It’s a big game, which you take on and can’t do without.

You’re an acting professor…What do you tell the students about the theatre?

This is what I tell them… Theatre is so hard that it can become simple. The key is finding that simplicity, that gesture and that life expression, not theatrical, that gives you the confidence and with which you can act. And I also tell them an important thing. That I have understood in time. It’s not about the form as it is about the essence of theatre. If we accept that the essence of theatre is the word, then the word that we, actors, carry on stage, becomes very important and also very simple. And if we think that the most powerful example is “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was God”… than theatre is very well understood and perceived by those who are also beginning to go on stage. That’s what I tell them. Not the essential. Even I don’t know the essential or the important things. I don’t even know if I can teach them drama. I can reveal some techniques that they will later use on stage – rhythm, understanding, expression – but I cannot give them talent. And I tell them to play more…

Mihai Măniuţiu says about you that you are his charm actor…. I won’t ask you how much you see yourself in that position, but more, who you are for yourself.

I don’t know who I am for myself, but I know who I am for those around me. I had a great opportunity – because I am a fortunate actor – I don’t think I am more talented than other actors, but I have had the great chance to work with great actors and directors and in absolutely monumental projects. The directors had a lot of faith in me and there seems to be a much bigger connection between the director and the actor than we can express, an understanding of thought. Being an intuitive actor, I fell very well what the director wants, I am easy-going actor from this point of view. There were times in my life, stages when I have worked with Dragoş Galgoţiu, cu Alexandru Darie, Mihai Măniuţiu, Tompa Gabor, Andrei Şerban, with Silviu Purcărete I’ve worked since the university, with Cătălina Buzoianu, Ion Cojar…Stages which have left their mark on me. Each of the directors I have mention are great people from which you can only learn or give up. When you don’t participate in their great game, you don’t understand it, it’s easier to give up because you will self-destruct. But learning from each of them, learning together, growing together, I am not surprised now when I am being told about the roles on the phone, then we get together an we immediately start working and everything is done with a great joy. I’m not surprised that between Mihai Măniuţiu and I there are stories without words, we understand each other through just by looking at one another and it’s a wonderful thing, I’m not surprised that when Tompa Gabor called me to play Lear, I said “I’m too young and I don’t think I have the talent…” and he said “Yes, that’s true, we can talk about the talent – joking – but the age is just right…”. I’m not surprised that Silviu had confidence in me to play in Waiting for Godot replacing Virgil Fonda, God rest his soul!, I’m not surprised that Andrei Şerban says “You can play anyone in The Dove, but I really want you to play Sorin because I think that would be great.” I ask the director questions in my mind and he answers them in my mind…

Was there a role, more than others, that has been a discovery or an experience?

I have never asked for a role, and I never knew how to say No. I played everything I was offered. But a special experience was the biblical text. It’s not an usual one, it’s seeing a verse that contains all the Shakespeare in the world. It was a cornerstone. Both in Jove’s Experiment and in the The Ecclesiast, but also in The Gospel of John, which I have played in two different countries, in two different languages, French and Spanish, when I went on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella. The biblical text is the perfection an actor can deliver on stage and after you express these texts you discover that all the drama and the poetry ever written was based on that. For actors it’s a big cornerstone, not just because here the word has a different significance, but because we were taught to learn the lines very fast, to understand them fast, to tell them fast. A biblical text is very hard to learn, because each syllable has a significance that has to be expressed. Apparently you understand it, but you never understand its depth. I think that was the biggest challenge. We performed The Gospel of John and Acts of the Apostles in cathedrals and in spaces of heritage in France and Spain.

Have you ever felt it like something forbidden, “performing” the Gospel’s words on stage?

Theatre has been lost in the same way in which it had left the church. On the contrary, we performed in sacred places, we belonged to the space and it was a biblical text that we were experiencing as modern actors. All we did and all we tried to communicate had to do with the sacredness of the space and the theatre became sacred. When you act on stage, the idea in the biblical text has to be passed on and this idea helps you transform the stage is a sacred space, as it actually is, if we think about the clear symbolic reference of the signs in the black box. The cross, the circle, the central point, the spiral… That’s the stage. And the actor is a mortal that tries to carry the words. And if he goes far away if he is taken by the spiral, if not, he remains in the center of his own circle.

Is there something that bothers you about the Romanian contemporary theatre?

No. There have been different attempts we’ve also made, I remember performing in all kinds of spaces. But if I really have to perform in an unconventional environment, a bar, a cafe…it has to offer me the opportunity to create a cultural area. Or, if the space is not equipped to be a cultural world, than I have to go there with a very theatrical thing. It’s not enough performing a contemporary text at the level of life. I don’t believe in this theatrical form. This can be done and it becomes important when you take, let’s say, a Shakespeare monologue and you perform it in a simple and natural way. If I’m actually going in a place that is not meant for culture, where people sit at tables, consume something completely different than a cultural story, then I will have to go and tell them Dostoievski…And then it will become important. I believe, otherwise, in forms like Nichita Stănescu’s poetry in a bookstore, I believe in reciting poetry on a stall in the market, I believe… we can sell poetry. And then I’ll rent a stall, I climb on it an sell poetry. How many poetries? Five poetries, five lei…you give the receipt. But what I know well and what I’ve been learnt is that theatre is a performance. Any resemblance to reality is purely random in theatre. The actor, the director only stage life, they don’t perform it.

Do you have something you wish you had done?

No, I don’t. I have never fought for a moment to exist on stage more than I have, I have never wanted to play Hamlet, I have never wanted a part. All I regret and feel sorry about is that I haven’t thanked God for everything he has given me. I love the audience, I love the world….I think I have done what I was meant to do.

Translated by Andreea Velicu, MTTLC, 1^st year

“This time is out of joint: O cursed spite, hat ever I was born to set it right”_. These are the words Hamlet uses to open the first path to the heart of the story and in the depths of which he will be thrown. They are the signs of the first awakening.Act I. Scene 5. The seventh edition of the Shakespeare International Theatre Festival, which takes place in Craiova between April 23rd and May 3rd and in Bucharest, and between April 24th and May 9th, holds Hamlet’s words as a motto.

Nonetheless it is an edition dedicated to the Danish prince and it is called „The Hamlet Constellation”.

Organized every two years by the Marin Sorescu National Theatre in Craiova, in collaboration with the Bucharest Cultural Projects Center, ArCuB and the William Shakespeare Foundation, the Festival brings you this year Hamlet montages from all over the world.

The 2010 edition has been reflected upon more than ten years ago and it is a singular project in the international theatrical landscape. On the evening of April 23^rd – as usual, the festival opens on Shakespeare’s birthday – Oskaras Korsunovas’ montage, from the Municipal Theatre in Vilnius (Lithuania), will be presented in Craiova. “We have to shatter the calm that’s surrounding us, we have to understand and then learn again that it is only an illusion. That is why Hamlet is one of the plays which match our world the best. Hamlet’s questions seem absurd in the beginning. Our existence is so quiet, so comfortable, and our future almost looks pink. But the future has to be discovered in ourselves, and not in the political slogans and advertisements. We have to rip the veil which separates us from life, to make the wound of our so-called quiet existence bleed. Our safety can be terribly dangerous.” It’s Korsunovas’ testimony about the show set up in Vilnius.

Montages with the world’s most loved play will follow up to the last day of the festival. There is the Polski Theatre in Wroclaw (Poland), Hamlet under the direction of Monika Pecikiewici and Compania „Cia des Atores” from Rio de Janeiro, under Enrique Diaz’ direction.

The Japanese montage to the famous Shakespearean play signed Yoshihiro Kurita is added and the Wooster Group (from New York) on the same text, then the Rideau’s theatre from Bruxelles Hamlet under the direction of Frederica Dussenne.

Yoshihiro Kurita proposes the scene as a meeting place between Shakespeare and No Theatre. He declared in an interview: “The No Theatre doesn’t allow decors on stage. It is what could be called „nude theatre”, where you only have words, they are the only instruments allowed when you try to create a world of images. In other words, the No theatre is a space of visuals and I think that is perfect for Shakespeare. My desire was that this marriage between Shakespeare’s plays and the world of No theatre create a new „being”, which cannot live outside our stage. What I wanted to do was pour some sort of western „consomme” in a Japanese bowl, but, by using the same ingredients, to create a new type which will be neither traditionally Japanese nor „a western consomme”. We are waiting for his Hamlet!

Street Theatre Group from Seoul, The „A.P. Cekhov” Art Theatre in Moscow (under Iuri Butusov’s direction) and the Factory Theatre from London are also companies who will come in April to Bucharest and Craiova.

The „Hamlet – A monologue” event-presentation will also be in Craiova, where the director Robert Wilson will be present. He should have done a montage of Hamlet in Romania, but the project has been postponed due to the economic crisis…

Three productions from Romania are invited to the Shakespeare Festival: Laszlo Bocsardy’s Hamlet from Metropolis Theatre, Alexandru Dabija’s Pyramus & Thisbe 4 You from Odeon Theatre and Alexandru Nica’s Hamlet from the Radu Stanca National Theatre in Sibiu.

Translated by Iulia Vieru, MTTLC, 2^nd year

]]> http://yorick.ro/this-time-is-out-of-joint/feed/ 0 http://yorick.ro/abracadabra-erase-and-rewind/ http://yorick.ro/abracadabra-erase-and-rewind/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:14:44 +0000 Monica Andronescu http://yorick.ro/?p=1151

At the beginning of January, theaters don’t usually have new performances. So, what I would like to talk to you about is not a new performance but a story that is as hot as a freshly baked loaf and which started twenty years ago.

I would like to start by asking you when was the last time you, spontaneously decided to go to The Children’s Theater…Or, when was the last time you read a story, a fairytale. The story of The Oldman’s Daughter, with imaginary lands and kittens…This is not a plead for The Children’s Theater- Unfortunately, here in Bucharest, Ion Creanga Theater is still banished at Cinema Gloria. But, there is a trend in the Romanian contemporary theater. The more complicated and hard to grasp the show is, the bigger does the director’s and audience’s self-esteem grows…So, the choice to focus more on children’s plays is entirely reasonable….Erase and rewind.

But let’s go back to the story which started twenty years ago. It’s neither complicated nor hard to grasp. It’s been happening for some time now, every Sunday morning in the 99 Hall of the National Theater in Bucharest. And it starts with Abracadabra. I arrived late to the theater and I found myself surrounded by a group of children who were carrying a strip of long and green canvas through the foyer of the amphitheater and then they were returning to the 99 Hall through a different door. They were flicking the pear tree …The magician had helped one of them to disguise into a pear tree and had asked the others to get rid of the caterpillars that had invaded it. On stage, there was a little girl disguised as Holy Sunday. There was another strip of canvas and a bright wand twisted and turned into a wreath. The lights went down, the little girl was “glowing” and I was sure nobody doubted for a second that she was in fact Holy Sunday. The head of a donkey was thrown in a corner of the floor. A little boy approached the donkey and the magician told him to leave”the dog” alone or else it will bite him. Everybody believed it and the head of the donkey turned into a furious dog…and I am not ashamed to admit it …I believed it myself.

Why did I chose to tell you about The Magician Marian Ralea and his work?

Because, some while ago, I saw a wonderful play, it was not a children’s play. The details are irrelevant. And throughout the entire play, I noticed a gentleman-just like Caragiale used to say “I won’t say who, but he is a remarkable man”-a great critic, as I was saying, a serious and donnish gentleman who was constantly taking notes. He didn’t laugh (when it was funny), he didn’t cry (when it was sad). For a moment, I detected the look on the actress’ face and I could feel her grief. I would suggest him and other people like him to spend a Sunday morning at the Children’s National Theater.

Translated by Andreea Vasile, MTTLC, 2^nd year

]]> http://yorick.ro/abracadabra-erase-and-rewind/feed/ 0 http://yorick.ro/i-would-bring-to-light-bad-theatre-from-under-the-snow/ http://yorick.ro/i-would-bring-to-light-bad-theatre-from-under-the-snow/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:13:31 +0000 Eugen Pasareanu http://yorick.ro/?p=1149

Another ordinary day in a snow covered Moravian town. Carrying a bag in his  hand he crosses the street, avoiding the cars not equipped with proper winter tires. I offer my hand to one of the few persons able to talk about the scruff of the pig and about Dostoievski with the same pleasure and correctness: the actor and playwright Ion Sapdaru.

His accent doesn’t say much, perhaps just a little eastern bonhomie.  

You were born in Transnistria. How do you see yourself, as a Romanian, Russian or Bassarabian? Or, just like Ivan Turbincă, a mix?

My grandaddy had a saying. Each time I asked under what rule was life better, Romanian or Russian, he would say that the best of times was when the Romanians had left and the Russians still did not come. My village is the last Romanian village, the Empire of Evil spread from across the street. We lived in an extremely beautiful but cursed area, at the empire’s outer border.

What can you say about childhood at the outskirts of the empire?

I envied my mother each time she read us stories. We could not realize how she manages to put dreams with dragons in our minds just by looking into those sheets of paper. I envied her till I started to read. Once I was finished with my ABCs, I went to the library and she gave me a timeless story book that brings me to tears to this day. Once I started to read from that book to my younger brothers I felt as if I took on some of my mother’s role in raising them.
From then on, I quickly changed from class clown to leader of the drama department. In ninth grade, my Russian English teacher gave to read The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov. I did not like it. I disliked the squires who were always trying too much, I only liked the character of Lopahim, the one that cut down the orchard.

We also have an orchard in our village just by the Nistru bank, with curious apple-trees and fountains where each time the Nistru overflowed it left fish in them. This was my first representation of Heaven. The teaches asked me what would happen if the orchard in our village would be cut down by somebody, just as Lopahin. The question shocked me and then I realized that not the apple-trees or the cherry trees were the vital piece in our orchard. Later on, Petrica ( I gave the same name to my son), who will later become head of the C.A.P. cut down the orchard and planted tobacco and egg-plants. He used to tell me, Boy, tobacco and egg-plants are in great demand around here. About this strong was Lophahim’s spirit in those places.
I learned in this environment, with meetings that made me think. Cehov said that the task of each man was to work his inner slave hard on a daily basis until he transpires at least a drop. They are many that remain passive, they do not eviscerate the slave from within, but try to develop him.

Do you  believe you have worked to death the slave within yourself?

It is a constant activity.

Do you consider that being from Basarabia helped you or on the contrary? Do you place something of your binary identity in your work?

Yes and nay. While in Romania, out of the bleu I was reminded that I was Bessarabian. I had a talk with Magdalena Boiangiu ( May God rest her soul, because she was quite a woman) who wrote in chronicle to The layer from Goldeni, between brackets, after my name, that I was from Basarabia. Why did she do that? For example, next to my chronicle she wrote something about Dabija, without specifying that he was originally from Bicaz.
But, on the other hand, it also helped me. A man from Basarabia is similar to a calf which had two cows to suck at their udders. On one hand he has  the Russian, dostoievskian, upbringing with the plunged into pitch darkness and affray and on the other hand the Romanian bucolic landscape, with the acceptance of fate ( which totally disagrees with me). We are talking about a binary identity.

And, having this binary identity, helped you to arrive in the capital of the Empire, a sort of Mecca for theatre?

Yes, I believed that I was the best. After highschool I attended The Drama Faculty in Chisinau and after I completed my mandatory service in the army I followed the courses of the VGIK Institute. I was admitted In Moscow in 1985, when there were already signs of the collapse of the great Russian Titan. I found myself smack in the middle of that turmoil. The Russians from Moscow are obviously different with those that live at the borders of the Empire. At the border all things are a little unstable. I was there during the famous Russian plays and great invitation only shows. In that period the Russian culture was moving foreword with all its might. I was just a kid, who although knew what was happening there, I was shocked. During that period of complete madness, I was not able to sleep more than five hours straight. The Russian Ministry for Culture was heavily financing culture, thus I was able to take part in meetings where people such as Kieslowski, Milos Forman or Abuladze attended. Only when everything was over did we realize that we actually had to do something.

Why this passion for Ion Creangă?

Just take a look, three young women grab an old woman, bang her head against the walls and on top of that stick a needle in her tongue. The mother-in-law’s three daughter-in-law. You can see something of King Lear in it. Another example, Harap Alb’s initiation, nothing else than the Romanian version of Hamlet. In the Story of all stories God, passing by, blesses the field. Creanga’s cruelty reminds me of what Antonin Artaud wanted for himself.

You returned to tradition. How much tradition is worth in our contemporary society?

Traditions are worthless. We live surrounded by unionization and simplification. From Beijing to Paris all bars are the same, you push the same buttons, you smock the same Pall Mall and you drink the coffee that the universal apparatus prepares for you. It is the American dream, to interact with only what is familiar and known.

You are against globalization and unification. Do you embed something of that in your shows?

Unification drives me crazy. All shows, together with Ivan Turbinca are specially prepared. I remind everyone that can still remember that we have a people and extremely interesting traditions. Ivan is not even of Russian origin, although there are some that see Putin in his image and Barrack Obama in the image of Death. Its just a stupid reinterpretation. I do not want to name names, but I get upset by some people from Bucharest that displays a devilish sadness. If you stumble on them in the bus and then apologies, they continue to give you a thunder-and-lightning look. It’s hard to make them appreciate good sound  humor. Perhaps there is a lot of corporate people with a taste for the gay problems that are successfully put on scene by other playwrights.

Are you uncomfortable with this way of seeing theatre? It is said that paper can bare a lot. What should not a sheet a paper bare or even the theatre scene for that matter?

There are playwrights who are just marketing products. There are others who put on stage there own problems, another thing with which I completely disagree. Although Ceaikovski was gay, we do not remember him for that. The suppress and the self-censorship can make you discover something more than just recurrent sexuality, of which I grow tired. I believe that the moment you start to be a militant, trying to put foreword something that is closer to the heart of each of us you have a problem. I believe it’s a mix between exhibition and marketing, but I guess everybody is free to see theatre as he wants. I do not want to renounce Aristotel’s principals or good taste in what I do.

There are some that consider that savoir vivre and Aristotel are only limits.

The theatre is not the church. The church has the duty to stop and sanction the moral decay. Theatre is a job, it’s not either perfect or absolute. I believed in the absolute of the theatre when I was a young man, but with time you forget it. The hardest thing was to admit to myself that I was not a genius. After that, all fell into place. Each artist has to start off like this. I met a kid, a sculptor, while drunk, that Brancusi was unimportant. Then and there I felt the urge to scream from my entire being, but suddenly I realized. But, what if Brancusi started out by saying that Michelangelo was unimportant? Each artist has to survive from the impression of being a genius. Eugen Ionescu is a great playwright also because he answered the question what is happening to them, in The rhinoceros, that they started to take themselves seriously. One of my purpose in life is not to take myself serious. Its the best solution, because no matter how much honey you eat, it will not get any sweeter.

The genius avoid using the perfect formula or does it uses the perfect formula?

I am not against a formula. Theatre is like football. We know the teams, we know the goalpost, we know that the teams have to score. We look at the match to see who and how. The same applies to theatre. The theatre has been stole by the lights, the glamour, the gilt and the spectacular. Here can exist the absolute saturation of creating theatre. People come and pay for an emotion that burns in front of them. In addition theatre should also educate. Not in a theoretical way, but rather under the form of a cultural gathering.

If we see theatre as a form of education, and considering that education is free to a certain level, should we make the theatre free too?

Definitely. At least to a certain age. It would not cost too much, considering that the price of a theatre ticket is the same with a pack of cigarettes. For example, in Botosani, or it is something usually for theatre to be taught to young students, it can be noticed that the young audience not only socialize but also has expectations and is wise. I have seen marvelous shows put on stage by highschool students that put to shame actors. And they really did a good job by comparison.

Do you enjoy working with young actors or with less famous actors…

Yes, because I got tired of always pleasing the great actors. I always have to sing praises to them, to tell them how accomplished they are in order to make them perform simple things. Young actors are more passionate about theatre, and it is only natural, because they are less time worn.

Because we just past through a yellow alert regarding heavy snow, who or rather what would you let be frozen over by heavy snow  in the world of theatre?

I would berry under a truck load of snow all the pretentious reviewers who asked questions regarding Ivan’s polka, as if the songs and dances have their origin checked, as wine or as if Luluta and Gulita from Alecsandri’s Chirita did not perform the same polka dance. I would also like for the bad theatre to be covered in heavy snow.

What kind of theatre are you talking about?

The theatre in which I cannot decode the black cat in the black room, which doesn’t even exist, but which the producer tries to persuade me that it is real by bombarding me with tens of symbols within a minute. Theatre can take place anywhere and no place particular, and it is the role of the metaphor to stand out by  itself in a play. Any meddling between the story and the audience do nothing else than to disturb this process. I would bring to the light bad theatre from under the snow.

Translated by Dragos Lucian, MTTLC, 1st year

“The artist in me doesn’t need the mirror, but the woman, does”, confesses Leny Caler in her autobiographic work “The Artist and the Mirror” (Universal Dali Publishing House, 2002). Just like a dedicated collector, she exhibits with infinite care her professional and sentimental memories, shedding light over the uncovered treasures, without leaving aside, however, the glass bell that hides them. Everything seems very clear, but at the same time untouchable, because Leny Caler doesn’t open a door to her world, she only narrates about what we could see, if that door would be open. And we must take her word for it.

Nothing exists per se, no event, no emotion, no human relation – everything is a reflection of her, of her thoughts, of her feelings and charms on a sometimes opaque, but so graceful a surface of memory. From the lessons of “mechanic” interpretation which Lucia Sturdza Bulandra used to give her: “You say the line and take two steps to the left, say the line and take two steps to the back of the stage.”, to the real life lessons received from Victor Ion Popa and G. Timică or the unrequited love, about which she talks with coquette decency, everything in this book is a sparkling mirroring of the actress who conveyed the norm of beauty during the inter-war period.

Camil Petrescu, Mihail Sebastian, Tudor Mușatescu and George Varca are but a few of “the close friends” she talks about in “The Artist and the Mirror” and we don’t find it hard to recognize the actress who became a character in “Patul lui Procust” (“The Bed of Procustes”) like an intertwining between Emilia and Mrs. T or in Corina from “Jocul de-a vacanța” (“The Holiday Game”) – a play is said to have been written by Mihail Sebastian in his attempt to demonstrate her he could write theatre as well. Leny Caler herself is proud of her “successes”, which however she dresses in the modern and often hypocrite clothes of the discourse about personal development. Nevertheless, the pages about Ripensia, Camil Petrescu‘s favourite football team, the ones about the days in which he would read long passages from his novels, from the war poems, which Leny would listen to eagerly, charmed by “his behaviour, so personal, so alive”, are full of colour and poetry. “After a while, Camil realized my lack of knowledge in almost every domain and started getting preoccupied with my culture. He would always come with a new book and asked me to explain what I had understood from the last one.” Enthusiastic over chiromancy and graphology, he was the one who intuited or saw the feature of character that was to determine Leny’s life – the sentimentalism. Camil Petrescu would also bring his plays, showing her ways of interpretation, very modern, in relation to “a deep interiorization and focus, a game of the hands meant to suggest a certain feeling and, most of all, not to highlight lines by raising my voice in a strange manner, very different as to what was being taught at the Conservatory.” However, he was not the most flattering mirror: “He was often satisfied which my achievements in theatre. Unfortunately, it was not me, but other actresses who played parts in his plays.”

Her “kind friendship” with Mihail Sebastian is also presented through the perspective of her evolution alongside her timid friend. “Mihail Sebastian was not only a gifted playwright, but also an excellent narrator and lecturer”, with a passion for Shakespeare’s work, which he knew and analyzed in depth and whose sonnets had “admirably” translated. “He was a great connoisseur and very keen on classical music. Thanks to him I started to learn and get accustomed to the great composers of the world and to love Mozart’s divine music, his favourite composer, who became my favourite as well, forever.”

Geroge Varca was, according to Timică, Leny Carver’s second great partner, comrade as well as “friend”, the two met during Varca’s maturity period, when he was considered “the public’s idol”. They became close friends when they were both performing at Ventura Theatre, in one of Shakespeare’s play, As You Like It, when Varca’s almost magnetic personality fascinated Leny from their first encounter. “Gifted with remarkable features for the stage – physique of great beauty, perfectly proportioned, with temperament, a voice with mild timbre, a captivating charm, he had an innate elegance which could be seen in all his gestures and movements. His great soul was at the level of his great talent”, many times he being the one to go to the authorities to ask for support or scholarships for his younger colleagues; he even intervened once to stop the expulsion of his fellow Jews, during a period of repressive regime. They even were co-associates, founding together the Victoria Theatre, at the Military Circle centre. However, what was bothering Caler about him was his lack of “artistic responsibility”, the superficiality with which he studied his parts in which he didn’t believe with all his heart, always relying on the prompter’s intervention at the show and maybe most of all, the fact that it happened many times to forget his part, preoccupied to look in the first row for some new admirer.” Nevertheless, she envied his determination, his talent, his artistic force, understanding the impact his glowing and captivating personality had on the Romanian theatre, where he imposingly remained for eternity.

Scarlat Froda, columnist at ”Rampa”, talks about Varca’s “swan song”, about the testament he left for posterity, namely the terrible interpretation of his last part, the one he had hoped all his life to achieve, “his artistic dream” – Richard III. “The public had come to see their hero again; he was meant to fulfill his dream. In this general enthusiasm, a lightning suddenly striked the sky, came down on earth and transformed into a thunder, put an end to the one who had dared face the gods through an eternal creation. Varca had something else to say and could not enter immortality until he freed his soul of whatever was bad in it”. Froda is a more than discrete presence in Leny Caler’s memoir volume, although he was her husband and, at the same time, the only love officially acknowledged in her work. Despite this, she doesn’t dedicate a special chapter to him, but she includes him among other adolescent loves… Even the description of their relationship is dryer and lacking in “sentimentalism” and warmth than the references to her close “friends”. “During the 40 years of life I shared with Scarlat Fronda, I experienced the most varied and contradictory feelings. We loved each other and we cheated, we fought and reconciled, we adored and hated each other, admired and loathed each other, but… we never separated.”

This autobiography recognized as being subjective, presents us Leny Caler’s true portrait in the mirror of the past, which she chooses to invoke, but her soul doesn’t reveal his depths, but leaves behind an unsolved mystery, shadowed by a last regret: “I would have wanted to give more to my public, to my art.”

“You are a jewel, blue in the light of the eyes, with mosaics, metals and impossible paints in your blood, if you have such a thing. You must be made of glass and asbestos. You must have come from among minerals and we will ask whether you smell of platinum or amber. You are a material out of the series of brilliants, darkened by a reflex of serenity and your being is made of fiery clay.” (Inscription dedicated by Tudor Arghezi to Leny Caler, in a number of Bilete de papagal).

Translated by Alexandra Sarbu, MTTLC, 2^nd year

From Freudian perspective, Chaplin digs the source of his plots, as well as future political convictions in childhood. His parents were entertainers, Charlie comes into contact with the rigors of the entertainment world, and when he was 5 year old he got to replace his mother, who had been hooted off the stage following a larynx problem.

Growing up in an extremely poor environment, Charlie will make his debut at Keystone Studios, respecting Mack Sennett’s recipe: exaggerated gestures and extreme physical gags, inspired by Commedia dell’arte in the European area. In the first films Chaplin uses this recipe, but develops a subtler pantomime in time, at the same time as the creation of the character The Tramp (or Charlot).

At the beginning the Tramp is a hybrid between the recipe of the burlesque comic, naivity and sensibility. The childhood angles will irrupt in his left sympathies and the reccurence of some images. The Tramp is nothing else but the teenager Charlie, wandering about the London at the beginning of 20th century, living in dilapidated rooms or at the Central District School for paupers.

This time, Chaplin can relive his past, but a reconstructed past, applied on the Tramp. If the young Charlie was in fight for survival, the Tramp immediately finds solutions, many of them became famous gags.

Like the theatre, the art cinema needs essence, thus within the film the abundence of the situations fills the character with ingeniousness in taking the imminent decisions. The tramp is unselfish, he solves more problems for the others than for himself, and many times he seems dropped into the middle of a situation out of the blue. The character wants to be a representative of the ordinary man, of the poor who is twisting in a world which does not belong to him. Unlike the less favoured social strata on which the decisions of those who run reflect, the Tramp is firm. Having no one but himself, surviving by ingeniousness, he becomes intangible in fact.

But heros generally are hyperbolized, constructed as an amount of qualities extracted out of human aspirations on mythological channel or from a fairy tale, Charlot becomes intangible by lack of a hyperbola. Having nothing to lose, in a perpetual carpe diem, he becomes the symbol of many emigrants from America of that period. The character answers Chaplin’s need to reevaluate with candour the childhood and the adolescence in the context of poverty, and the emigrants answer the need to laugh publicly of those they were afraid.

The repression of Chaplin’s wishes by Charlot is made dreaming (not necessarily while sleeping) money and the post-enrichment period. The pressing need of financial ressources becomes the central axis for those who lived in a small way because lacking these resources the wheels of their life were blocked, from food to rent.

Freud’s conception on sexuality appears at Chaplin under a double form: his first love and his mother. During his many love relationships, Charles Spencer Chaplin searched for an ideal woman. The need of worship was combined with the image of his first love, Hetty Kelly, a 15 year old dancer he fell in love with and died later of Spanish flu. Mixing the plans of the film with his personal life, Chaplin was searching for Hetty Kelly’s adolescence in each woman. This is why, many of the female characters in his films seem to be younger then they really are, and have a juvenile flavour of candour. This image will prevail in the women standard Charlot falls in love, as well as the man Chaplin.

With the exception of irony against some women in Monsieur Verdoux (a film which is itself an irony addressed to the capitalist society) or addressed to some snob and rich women, the women in his productions are of two types: the candid young woman and the mature woman who works hardly. Both types are shown in City lights, where the young blind woman who sells flowers lives with her mother. The image of the working mature woman, living under precarious conditions is the projection of his mother’s image in her efforts to raise him and his brother, Sydney.

Instinctually, in his films, Chaplin has women who usually have a great psychological impact: his first love and his mother. During his entire career, as well as his personal life, these two images will dominate him.

Thus, the need to reunite a tormenting picture is recurrent in Chaplin’s films, where he can do justice through a happy-end. The tramp was falling in love or was supporting the poor or sick people, to whom Chaplin granted an incipient purity, as if polished by pain. Coming from a marginalized world Chaplin tends to identify some values in this world, unperverted by wealth and grants at least some superiority from the moral point of view. This justified his left political vision, especially the social equity side.

He himself was an emigrant in America and he was later chased by authorities for communist propaganda, descending from a Romani branch on mathernal side he was very proud of, he could only appear in a double hypostasis in The Great Dictator. Chaplin interprets the dictator Adenoid Hynkel, a burlesque Hitler, but also the persecuted Jew, the character similar to the Tramp.

On one side, Chaplin expresses his antifascist adherence which comes coherently with the left he joined, on the other side there is the idea of pertaining to a minority, under any form it was expressed: the Jew, the Gypsy, the emigrant or the poor in a world of rich people.

The need identified up to a point to the want or the poverty shows as an active psychical component in Chaplin’s films which dominates and subordinates the characters, transforming the want or the wants (even the lack of the sound up to his last productions) into a tragi-comical sensitivity.

Translated by Zenovia Popa, MTTLC, 2nd year

At the Studio Hall of the Comedy Theatre, in Strindberg’s Fröken Julie (Miss Julie), directed by Liviu Lucaci, come together three energies successfully creating a universe and getting the message across. Strindberg’s world, risen from the darkened lands of humankind, as fits modern drama, comes to life in a set pertaining to Flemish painting. This is the frame in which the characters’ unfold their story, which the play rather veils in mystery than unveils aided by the performance the director requested. It is a show the late critic Dumitru Solomon longed for in the 1990s: a show with human destinies.

Strindberg’s interest for alchemy and the occult is bespoken in a text which reveals the implacable force of the irrational. That is the main hero in Miss Julie. The count’s daughter, the footman names Jean and Kristin the cook are the toys of the absurd on Midsummer night in the kitchen of the palace. The noblewoman yields to lust, young Jean joins her, and Kristin is the one who embodies a rigid morale which cannot live up to the moment. Therefore, nothing new or spectacular for that matter. A Madame Bovary, a sort of Julien Sorel and a Jane Doe become in Strindberg’s play the passive forces of a manipulative agency.

The director respects a certain ambiguity and the irrefutable bizarreness which represent e genuine challenge for actors in the universe imagined by the playwright. Neither does he offer clarification, nor does he tell us what we are meant to believe by this staging. He does not limit the characters themselves or the various perspectives on them which is essential in the world of theatre. The Freudian eyeglass through which the playwright looks at his characters, making them confront desires forbidden by social, religious mores or otherwise, is present in fine shades as the director’s view is by no means superficial, and the actors keep the pace, without turning to artifices, successfully interpreting some of the most difficult scripts.

Liviu Lucaci gambled on the actors. He took a risk and he won. He cast an experienced actress, Delia Nartea, alongside young gradutes, Şerban Gomoi and Andreea Bârsan. As part of the audience, one cannot operate with limited categories, saying that one actor is lucid and the other one imaginative. Their play is intense and displays a lot of panache. It fills up a space, creates content and gives it a form. Delia Nartea plays an adamant and passionate miss Iulia on the one hand, and a vulnerable, weak and helpless creature on the other. Andreea Bârsan’s portrayal of Kristin is very humorous and builds up a delicate character, a plausible and rich presence. Şerban Gomoi easily imposes himself, with the self-assurance of an inexperienced actor, without faking it in any register he undertakes. He is a footman with the potential of a parvenu lady killer, a hot-blooded man in love, the embodiment of disdainful masculinity, a passionate moralist and so on and so forth…

The noblewoman, the cook and the footman I saw on the stage of the Comedy Theatre join together every poetical and dramatic nuance of darkness which haunt Strindberg’s writings. However, their acting isn’t egregious, but natural and indulgent, discreetly mastering the emotion one can’t do without.

Translated by: Alina-Olimpia Miron, MTTLC, 2nd year

The passengers who were passing through the subway station Piaţa Unirii 2 on Saturday, 16th January, and did not choose one of the two directions of the Track 2 or did not leave the station, had the chance to watch the most recent performance of Masca Theatre, namely “Pierrot le fou”. Some people stopped on the stairs, other sneaked for a better place near the stage as close as possible to Pierrot. White pantomime was to show different situations from character’s life. It was performed by the actors from Militari district theatre guided by Mihai Mălaimare.

At half past twelve everything was ready. Few spectators were already waiting quietly; the actors encouraged one each other and gathered their energies in a sort of a backstage, the sound technician was ready to synchronize the audio mixer and the lights in order to begin the performance. The actors started to perform on the improvised stage from the subway station, while Mădălin, one of the ten machinists present at the event, was watching it hidden from the marble columns covered with ads.

The passengers-spectators

Meanwhile, more and more people reject the crunching offer of the moving stairway to stay a little longer accompanied by the performance. The character Pierrot interacts with the public and the eyes of the passengers transformed in spectators observe the pantomime. The interpretative is interrupted by the spreading of flyers and balloons that ostentatiously remind us who are we dealing with and what is happening there. Ana Maria Ioniţă, PR at “Masca” Theatre tells us that people are used to witness a show like this: „In November 2009 we have celebrated six years since this kind of show first took place at the subway. Now it is much more elaborated and we try to perform weekly. It is a very good place to promote culture. “Masca” Theatre is the only theatre whose performance can be seen in the park or at the subway. There are people who call us asking when we perform again”

The luxury of a little show

There is a curly girl behind me who is talking to the phone: ‘I’m watching a little show at the Unirii subway station’. She is also watching the crazy Pierrot who is one at a time a photographer, fisher or in love. There comes an old man wearing a beret who takes a balloon from his grandchild’s hand. He says to me: ‘It’s extraordinary. Too bad for us, retires, that we cannot afford to go to the theatre, to the philharmonic’. But the grandchild interrupts grandfather’s confession dragging him closer to the stage. He is fascinated by actors make up. He would like to stay more, but he only could see the end of a forty minutes show.

The actors follow the applause leaving the ten machinists to take the leading roles in their place as it has been between 9 and 12.30. The subway tries to put its “Masc” every week, but for this face-lift you must say ‘no’ for few minutes to Berceni, Pipera or other underground routes.

Translated by Ramona Grama, 2^nd year

]]> http://yorick.ro/the-subway-puts-back-its-masc/feed/ 0 http://yorick.ro/an-interview-about-nothing/ http://yorick.ro/an-interview-about-nothing/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:02:19 +0000 Yorick http://yorick.ro/?p=1137

Yorick, as you well know, is not a journalist. God forbid, this job didn’t even exist when he was born, but it was invented in the meantime, so, compared to me, it is a young lass that he is looking at with a little bit of admiration, and some humour…

Yorick kind of likes the smell of printing ink from the printed newspapers, which will probably become museum items, although the conservatives inveterately deny such a possibility. Enfin, we shall see. The old fool reads interviews. He likes them. He thinks that a more offering form of journalism, however it may be, doesn’t exist. And the interviews with people from the theatre world are a staggeringly rich subject.

It’s as if you had in front of you an empty body which a. either is detached and has the sense of humour, which saves him; b. or he is intimidated and hides; c. or is embarrassed, but gathers himself and the possibilities may go on. All right. There’s nothing new under the sun.

The fool riffles through the newspapers, as many as there are left on these Romanian lands, and looks for what interests him. Like an interview with Vlad Zamfirescu, a very interesting actor he has known for several years, ever since he was acting in plays by Pirandello at Bulandra, for example. A wise actor with personality and sensibility. That is, a delicacy. A man of ideas, who administers a cultural association. You could talk with him about whatever crosses your mind.

Now, please take care of your health and don’t grow stiff as you read the questions that poor artist has to answer to: “The play <Second Day God> is built on two different perspectives of the same story. Do you think that in a relationship, the different perception of love comes from the different sex of the partners?”

Don’t think that’s all, even though it says it all! The idea itself, the hollow preciosity built on a precarious and grammatically incoherent expression and most of all the lack of a guiding idea? What does the reporter ask the interviewee? If love is the same for both men and women! What an insulting question for any mind, no matter how lazy it may be!

How could anyone start an interview with something like that? What do you actually want to ask? Yorick thinks you want to ask something else, but you don’t succeed. Hence, a postmodern theeing and thouing which is supposed to simulate – I don’t understand why – intimacy, incoherence, just to express myself in a euphemistic manner. The interview is already dated, and the interviewee is an innocent victim.

“One of the central themes of the play lies in the dysfunctional relationship between parents and children. You are a father as well. How would you like to be perceived by your son Matei, when he grows up?”

The question develops logically from the beginning, right? What, does it matter what the man answered? It fits like a glove, doesn’t it? Pure logic, crystal clear! From the same category as “Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.” Alrighty. And I’m not going to say one word about “grammaticality”. So far, I’ve seen a lot of people trying to speak and also to express something when they do that! But still, I ask, catching up the idea: Where does another central theme lie? Does it sound okay?

“Does the auditorium affect in any way your performance? What’s it like on a big stage, like that of the National Theatre, compared to that of the Act Theatre?”

Well, what can we say?! So far, it has been good, but now it’s getting worse! How could it be on a big stage? Not like on a small one, of course. Did you understand? The connection with what’s been said before is crystal clear, just like the theme of the interview… And what do you think pops out next? Actually, taking into account what’s been said so far, anything is possible: What is your favourite food? What are your plans for the future? What role would you like to play? or anything else. But it goes on…

“What is your opinion on the improvisation from the theatre?”

Not “improvisation in theatre”, God forbid! What opinion could the poor man have, when he’s talking to the walls. How could anyone ask an actor with experience something like that? It’s the same as asking a writer his opinion on writing. Upon my word! Who knows what she wanted to ask, but couldn’t, not even this time?

And, although we’ve all formed an opinion, I’m going to quote yet another two questions, without commenting them:

“How do you react when something unexpected happens on stage?” and “Could you give me a few examples of such accidents?

This is an interview from “Romania libera”. If you don’t believe me, go to http://www.romanialibera.ro/timpul-liber/a174430-vlad-zamfirescu-o-sala-mare-te-impinge-cumva-la-un-teatru-mai-conventional.html.

Do some people really have nothing better to do?

Translated by Raluca Motoc, MTTLC, 2nd year

In one of the past issues of the magazine, I was talking about the first of the bilingual albums – English and Romanian – published at the end of 2008 by the Romanian Cultural Institute, which follows, through photos, the steps Andrei Serban has taken in theatre and in opera.

My Journeys. The Opera recreates, from images, the path followed by one of the most famous and most controversial Romanian theatre directors, with a career just as impressive as in the opera world. He has set up plays on the most important stages in the world, he has created storms and he has induced both shock and delight. When I was called to put on my first opera, I thought it was like theatre, but instead of talking the characters sing their text. In time I realized it’s not quite the only difference. Andrei Serban opens his second photo album with this confession: I like to quote Kierkegaard who said that <through music one communicates with God, directly, no intermediaries>. Sometimes, when all elements are combined harmoniously, between the music from the orchestra pit and the theatre on the stage, I sense something is being communicated; I watch the viewers and I wonder <what do they receive?> If they have come to the opera after a day of hard work and they want to forget about everything, to run away from their problems, then music is the perfect escape. You relax, you dream of other worlds, you leave humming. But for those in search of something else, the story told through the voices can be one of the most direct ways to learn about human nature, to rediscover life.

Between the first image, from Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”, set up on National Opera’s stage in Cardiff, and the last ones, from Massenet’s “Manon” at Wiener Straatsoper, lies a disconcerted love story, as few directors have had the strength to live. A story of many worlds and of many characters, with ups and downs, with regrets and failures… Serban has challenged the fossilized environment of the opera by proposing unexpected scenic versions, in disagreement with an absurd imposed tradition, and he has often stirred up Homeric scandals; real vitamins for the theatre director who refuses to subject himself to the codes which limit his intervention and censor his creativity. From Traviata to Fidelio or Lucia di Lammermoor, Serban has confronted the hostility of a revolted audience who has changed in time, and its opinions too, thus, Lucia’s scandal ended by becoming its triumph. Between these two extremes, I’ve often heard the “one second” of silence, which an astonished public respects before manifesting its allegiance. The suspended silence at the end of Medea, on a night in Paris, or The Magic Flute in Nancy. With his public, Serban has learned all the sensations, each being quite necessary. What kills, though, is indifference, but it had never threatened his shows, writes in the preface of his first album George Banu, his former classmate at the Film and Theatre Institute in Bucharest.

The photographs – some in color, some in black and white – are more than testimonies about settings which today only exist in memories; they are, as I said, fragments of existence and confessions upon essential meetings. These fragments are accompanied by short comments of the author, who stops time once again, for himself, but also for the person leafing through the album. The word and the image together form the history of searches. While in a socialist Romania theatre was fighting the party’s ideology and all kinds of failures, sometimes Andrei Serban explored the impossible on the great stages of the world.

It’s the case of The Magic Flute in Paris, 1983. A decor inspired from old Persian miniatures combined ingeniously with authentic popular costumes from Oaş. The idea of the show: to be able to find the light you must acquaint yourself with darkness first, only then will you be ready for challenges.

Or the case of Fidelio which was set up at the Royal Opera House in London. The decor: a white box containing other black metal boxes, hanging in the air, representing the jail where the chorister prisoners lied. The gates opened in the last scene and the social comment became a religious mystery. When Blake’s angels descended through the bars, the metaphor became a cosmic one. (…) During the last minutes of the opera I was leaving a reality and entering another. Fidelio has been a great failure of which I am still proud.

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