Over May 5 and 13, the National Theatre in Timisoara played host to the 23rd edition of the European and Romanian Theatre, known as FEST-FDR.
This year's theme was Involution, Revolution, Evolution, three words that mark the way society and theatre help shape reality and build a future.
Theatre critic Oana Bors helped select the plays that were included in the festival. Drawing on her experience, she believes Romanian theatre is evolving:
Oana Bors: "Romanian theatre is moving forward, albeit taking small steps. First of all, we can notice a diversification of topics - we no longer have a social and documentary focus which dominated Romanian contemporary theatre at one point. Rather, Romanian plays now approach various topics leading to introspection, such as human relationships. There is also an evolution in terms of playwriting. We already have accomplished playwrights, such as Csaba Szekely, Mihaela Michailov and Radu Apostol, who have been working together for some time now... Also Alex Popa has been steadily making a name for himself".
Acknowledgement and prejudice, identity and cohabitation, and above all, love... These are the themes of George Stefan's "Story from Transylvania", stage-directed by Andi Gheorghe at the Studio Act Multimedia Centre in Oradea. The text tells the true story of a mixed Romanian-Hungarian family from Targu Mures, spanning several generations.
The play is about Romanians and Hungarians living together and the clashes of March 19-21, 1990 in Targu Mures. The play is bilingual and its cast features both Romanian and Hungarian actors. Richard Balint plays Securitate officer Stefan Remes, who investigates and eventually imprisons Szabados Istvan, played by Kocis Gyula. The interesting thing about the play is that it very much resembles the personal experience of the two actors. Richard Balint with the details:
Richard Balint: "At any rate, I'm both Romanian and Hungarian. My father was Hungarian, my mother was Romanian, and I myself have experienced the kind of situation where I got beat up for being Hungarian. It was just the state of things back then. In 1990, during the March events, I noticed a change in people's attitude towards us. People who were your friends, your neighbors, ended up fearing us. Tension was piling up in Cugir".
In his turn, Kocis Gyula says:
Kocis Gyula: "What personally affected me was that my father was imprisoned for 11 months in Oradea because he wanted to cross the border. The communists locked him up because he wanted to be free".
The program for this year's edition of the festival also included the production "Shakespeare for Ana", brought to Bucharest by the Coliseum Arts Centre in Chisinau. It is a documentary show, exploring truth and love, drawing on a series of interviews conducted in penitentiaries for juveniles, women and men in Goian, Rusca and Soroca villages.
The play was written and staged by Luminita Tacu, who is well known for her interest in documentary theatre. This was not the first show based on testimonials for actress and director Luminita Tacu.
Luminita Tacu: "In 2008 I directed the play 'The House of M', which included a monologue of a woman who had killed her husband. So years later I started wondering what the women I spoke to in Rusca prison were doing. We had worked together for 'The House of M', which deals with domestic violence, and I wondered what it's like to live without love. What is the life of these women in Rusca? I knew they have children waiting for them back home, some of them husbands, others looking for love. I also knew some of them were looking for love in prison. That's how I got the idea about making a show about love, a show about this kind of virtually impossible love. We decided to go to three vulnerable penitentiaries. We talked to the inmates, but also to the employees in the system. It's a bloodcurdling play, even for us, because every time we get transported back to that world, it reminds us of all those people. Every time it fills us with regret and remorse for living in freedom, forgetting that somewhere out there, in a world behind bars, there is someone you know, someone you talked to about love..."
The European Theatre section of the FEST-FDR Festival was represented by important theatre companies from Europe. Oana Bors with the details:
Oana Bors: "I am glad the festival has been gaining international recognition. There are big theatre companies coming to Timisoara. We were honored to have director Milo Rau as a guest, who staged a play jointly with the famous Schaubuhne Theatre in Berlin. In turn, Luk Perceval's 'The Grapes of Wrath' was staged as part of the festival in a modern reinterpretation produced by Thalia Theatre. Whereas Milo Rau's play is a docu-drama analysis on migration, Luk Perceval's'"Grapes of Wrath' picks up on Steinbeck's focus on economic hardship and examines the issues of exile and identity".
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