The Romanian Theatre – from an American perspective

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The Romanian Theatre – from an American perspective

Claire Trevor, Professor of Drama, University of California, Irvine

Le 30 Nov 2010
Article publié pour le numéro
Couverture du numéro 106-107 - La scène roumaine. Les défis de la liberté
106 – 107

IN 2009, Randy Gen­er wrote, in a cov­er sto­ry for Amer­i­can The­atre, America’s major mag­a­zine on the country’s pro­fes­sion­al the­atre, “In the field­of direct­ing, it is not Roma­nia but Amer­i­ca that needs to catch up.” Mr. Gen­er knows what he is talk­ing about : he is the magazine’s senior edi­tor. And short­ly after this essay appeared, the equal­ly dis­tin­guished Amer­i­can the­atre jour­nal, The­atre, pub­lished by the Yale Dra­ma School, devot­ed an entire issue to Roman­ian the­atre.

This was famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry to me. I had become intrigued by East­ern Euro­pean the­atre back in the ear­ly 1960s when I saw Matthais Langhoff’s and Man­fred Karge’s Three­pen­ny Opera and Das Kleine Mahagonny at the Berlin­er Ensem­ble and a tour­ing Moscow The­atre of Satire pro­duc­tion of Mayakovsky’s Mys­tery Bouffe in Paris. My intrigue turned to amaze­ment when I was intro­duced to Roman­ian the­atre by Andrei Serban’s Frag­ments of a Tril­o­gy, which I saw in New York in 1975. Mel Gus­sow, then one of the New York Times’ prin­ci­pal crit­ics, called it “noth­ing less than a rein­ven­tion of the­atre” and a series of “exca­va­tions into the human heart,” and I had agreed com­plete­ly. Although I had already writ­ten sev­er­al books on the­atre by this time, Serban’s work opened com­plete­ly new ways for me to approach my direc­to­r­i­al work.

One needs to look back to see just how rev­o­lu­tion­ary this pro­duc­tion was. The Unit­ed States, being a very young coun­try, does not have a his­toric tra­di­tion of its own. The­atre came to Amer­i­ca from Eng­land in 1702, and for the fol­low­ing two hun­dred years Amer­i­can the­atre was dom­i­nat­ed by the clas­si­cal style of tour­ing British actors – Edmund Kean, Tyrone Pow­er, Charles Kean, Junius Bru­tus Booth, Lionel Bar­ry­more, and by their descen­dents – Edwin Booth, John Bar­ry­more and many oth­ers. The style they per­fect­ed was text-based and con­ven­tion­al, with actors play­ing their famous roles decade after decade, and hand­ing down their pre­cise­ly intoned line read­ings through suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions of prog­e­ny and pro­tégés. When a review­er in one of Edwin Booth’s 19th cen­tu­ry pro­duc­tions of Oth­el­lo described an actor’s per­for­mance in the role of Bra­ban­tio as “unex­cep­tion­al,” he was using this as a term of praise – indi­cat­ing that the actor had made no “excep­tions” to the way Bra­ban­tio had been played suc­cess­ful­ly in the past.

By that time the French were also mak­ing their con­tri­bu­tion to Amer­i­can act­ing tech­nique as well, with Sarah Bern­hardt tour­ing the coun­try nine times, and Charles Fechter and Jean Mounet-Sul­ly tak­ing New York by storm in the role of Ham­let. Faith­ful­ness to the play’s lan­guage and its seman­tic and rhyth­mic nuances was the norm for these French actors as well, and by the time Jacques Copeau brought his The­atre du Vieux-Colom­bier to New York in 1913, the Amer­i­can notion of act­ing and direct­ing was almost entire­ly bound by the stric­tures of “fideli­ty to the text,” as Copeau had made explic­it : « tous les mou­ve­ments du corps, tous les rythmes de la marche et du geste, tous les tons enreg­istrés, toutes les into­na­tions et nuances du dis­cours y sont inscrits. Il n’y a pas de tra­di­tion plus sûre que celle-là : le texte et l’intelligence du texte.» 1 My own train­ing, along with my col­leagues, had been ground­ed in this “first prin­ci­ple” of Amer­i­can act­ing.

But there was a sec­ond prin­ci­ple, also brought to the Unit­ed States from abroad – name­ly, Stanislavsky’s act­ing sys­tem. This sys­tem, based on an actor tru­ly “expe­ri­enc­ing” his or her role, daz­zled Amer­i­can actors and direc­tors when Stanislavsky and his Moscow Art The­atre demon­strat­ed it in New York in 1923, and brought to ten oth­er Amer­i­can cities, play­ing 380 per­for­mances in the Unit­ed States over the next two years. The Russ­ian sys­tem, mod­i­fied by Amer­i­can cit­i­zen (and Ukrain­ian immi­grant) Lee Stras­berg and his col­leagues at the Group The­atre and the Actors Stu­dio over the years, became what is still known in Amer­i­ca as “Method act­ing” – which became the “sec­ond prin­ci­ple” of the nation­al act­ing style, made inter­na­tion­al­ly famous by film direc­tor Elia Kazan and film stars Elia Kazan, Mar­lon Bran­do, Paul New­man, James Dean and many oth­ers. Strasberg’s notions includ­ed the actor’s con­scious and delib­er­ate inser­tion of his own life-expe­ri­ences into the roles he or she was play­ing, giv­ing the pro­duc­tions of America’s mid­cen­tu­ry some­what of an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal slant, and lead­ing the major play­wrights of that era – the era of my own train­ing – to write auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal plays,such as Clif­ford Odets’ Awake and Sing !, Arthur Miller’s A Mem­o­ry of Two Mon­days, Ten­nessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, William Inge’s Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Frank Gilroy’s The Sub­ject Was Ros­es, and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Jour­ney Into Night. Even today, many if not most Amer­i­can dra­mas cen­ter on prob­lems grown chil­dren remem­ber hav­ing with their own par­ents and/or sib­lings. (The trend con­tin­ues with, for exam­ple, Tony Kushner’s Caro­line, or Change.)

So real­ly noth­ing in my coun­try had pre­pared me for the way that Ser­ban threw Euripi­des and Sopho­cles up in the air and let his “frag­ments” of Medea, Tro­jan Women and Elec­tra fall back to the floor – in Greek, Latin and a vari­ety of unrec­og­niz­able tongues – form­ing a vir­tu­al bliz­zard of shouts, screams, wails, chants and mes­mer­iz­ing rup­tures of the stage space : half-naked, caged actors rolling wild­ly through the audi­ence on carts, live ani­mals slith­er­ing on the floor and hov­er­ing over our heads ; throb­bing music and act­ing that was, as Gus­sow wrote, “almost unbear­ably intense.”

We had of course seen many avant-garde plays and Brecht­ian / Mey­er­holdian stag­ing tech­niques on our stages by that time. There was an incip­i­ent Amer­i­can avant-garde in New York, with Richard Schechner’s Diony­sus in 69, and the Antigone and Par­adise Now Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Liv­ing The­atre earn­ing recog­ni­tion, and oth­er the­atres (the Com­pa­ny The­atre in Los Ange­les was one) cre­at­ing inno­va­tions else­where in the coun­try, but these pro­duc­tions, even when derived from the clas­sics (Diony­sus and Antigone) were odd­ly actor-cen­tered and self-reflec­tive – Beck and Moli­na act­ed in their pro­duc­tions and often addressed the audi­ence with their con­cerns (“I’m not allowed to take my clothes off,” Beck and oth­ers screamed in Par­adise), and Schechner’s actors dropped their Greek roles to talk about their own act­ing prob­lems dur­ing the per­for­mance (at least the one I attend­ed – the work was in part impro­vised night­ly). All in all, these pro­duc­tions were impres­sive curiosi­ties, attract­ing a fol­low­ing among aca­d­e­mics and the­atre spe­cial­ists such as myself, bold auguries of change more than ful­filled achieve­ments. What they lacked was the qual­i­ties that radi­at­ed above all else from Serban’s pro­duc­tion : awe, amaze­ment, and a link with the eter­nals of the human con­di­tion. For all their brava­do (nudi­ty, ver­bal assault, social chal­lenge), the Amer­i­can inno­va­tions were basi­cal­ly tem­po­ral, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal and domes­tic : express­ing their troupes’ rebel­lions against their own repres­sions rather than visions of the broad course of mankind. What Ser­ban was giv­ing us was the not the vague dis­com­forts of mod­ern-day stu­dents and teach­ers, but the Elu­sian Mys­ter­ies.

Since see­ing Serban’s Frag­ments, there­fore, I have avid­ly sought out East­ern Euro­pean pro­duc­tions. At the 1981 Berlin The­atertr­e­f­fen, I was thrilled to see Peter Stein’s Ores­tia, Langhoff’s and Karge’s Woyzeck, and Peter Zadek’s Jeder stirbt für sich allein. In the fol­low­ing year, I began teach­ing work­shops in Fin­land, Hun­gary and Esto­nia (because my books had been pub­lished there in trans­la­tion), and saw many pro­duc­tions there in the cap­i­tal cities of each and at the­atre fes­ti­vals in Tam­pere, Fin­land and Pécs, Hun­gary. In the mid-80s, I brought Jerzy Gro­tows­ki to my Cal­i­for­nia cam­pus and for the next three years served as his Asso­ciate Direc­tor for an « Objec­tive Dra­ma Project » that he ran for our depart­ment and at the end of that peri­od I co-taught, along with Russ­ian direc­tors Oleg Efre­mov and Ana­toly Efros, a week-long inten­sive act­ing work­shop for the Swedish The­atre Coun­cil. I real­ized that what I had seen of Serban’s work was part of a larg­er pic­ture : a post­war erup­tion of the­atri­cal imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty that pri­or­i­tized glob­al issues and the human con­di­tion over auto­bi­og­ra­phy and grow­ing-up pains, and explo­sive stag­ing and dra­matur­gy over “fideli­ty to the text.”

It was also a vast pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of the direc­tor over the actor. It is some­what strange for me to say this, because I have only recent­ly become aware of it, but despite the fact that I have been a pro­fes­sor and play review­er for 45 years, and a direc­tor (by train­ing and by craft) for 50 years, when I go to a Broad­way or region­al the­atre pro­duc­tion in Amer­i­ca, more times than not I have no idea, walk­ing into the the­atre, who direct­ed it. I will know who the play­wright is, even if he or she is a com­plete new­com­er, and the iden­ti­ty of one or two of the actors, but unless the direc­tor is a friend of mine, or one the few Amer­i­can direc­tors I track (Daniel Sul­li­van, Mike Nichols) 2, I won’t know who direct­ed the show until I’m sit­ting in my seat, read­ing the pro­gram. And even then, I may not know his or her name. Euro­pean the­atre, how­ev­er, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the East­ern Euro­pean the­atre that I am speak­ing of, is obvi­ous­ly what the Ger­mans call a Regi­ethe­ater– a the­atre of the direc­tor. And that is cer­tain­ly the key dif­fer­ence between the the­atre of Roma­nia and Amer­i­ca today.

It wasn’t until 1996 that I saw my first Roman­ian pro­duc­tions : a dou­ble bill of Sla­womir Mrozek’s On Foot and The Turkey, direct­ed by George Ivas­cu with his fourth-year act­ing stu­dents from the Roman­ian The­atre and Film Acad­e­my, per­formed at a nine-coun­try fes­ti­val of the­atre schools in Budapest where I was a guest instruc­tor. I found the work absolute­ly extra­or­di­nary, and it received a pro­longed stand­ing ova­tion from the audi­ence of stu­dents from ten coun­tries – and was the only pro­duc­tion at the fes­ti­val that did so. The fol­low­ing year I saw Sil­viu Purcarete’s breath­tak­ing Les Danaides in New York, and decid­ed at that moment I must become bet­ter acquaint­ed with the cur­rent Roman­ian the­atre, and so I did.

I have, by this time, seen over a dozen Roman­ian pro­duc­tions, in Bucharest, Cluj, Sibiu and one in New York. These include sin­gle pro­duc­tions by Laz­lo Boc­sar­di and Ser­ban, two by Pur­carete, and sev­er­al each by Mihai Maniu­tiu and Gabor Tom­pa. All have been, in my view, extra­or­di­nary, and in the rest of this essay I will try to describe what I thought par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial about them. I will begin with Las­z­lo Bocsardi’s Hun­gar­i­an-lan­guage King Lear which the Tamasi Aron The­atre in Sf. Ghe­o­rghe had brought to the Nation­al The­atre Fes­ti­val in Bucharest in 2008, main­ly because of an exchange I had with a lead­ing Roman­ian dra­maturg in the lob­by after the per­for­mance. When I asked her what she thought of the pro­duc­tion, she replied, “Pret­ty con­ven­tion­al,” but then see­ing me gap­ing in utter aston­ish­ment she quick­ly clar­i­fied her word­ing : “What I mean, of course, is con­ven­tion­al­ly avant-garde.” Yes, the text seemed to fol­low Shakespeare’s play quite close­ly (though I knowon­ly a few words of Hun­gar­i­an, or Roman­ian for that mat­ter, I know King Lear by heart, hav­ing staged it three times), and the stag­ing of the open­ing scenes were not sur­pris­ing in com­par­i­son of the dozen Eng­lish­language pro­duc­tions I’ve seen in the Unit­ed States, includ­ing Peter Brook’s with Paul Scofield, Allen Fletcher’s with Mor­ris Carnovsky, and sev­er­al oth­ers (includ­ing two of my own stag­ings) at var­i­ous Shake­speare Fes­ti­vals. But when Bocsardi’s Lear goes into the storm, and encoun­ters the heath’s “poor naked wretch­es” with their “looped and win­dowed ragged­ness” rep­re­sent­ed by eight near-naked young men crouch­ing in indi­vid­ual glass cages perched stand­ing on waist-high stilts and framed in black brass struts in front of a stage-wide, black-and-white checker­board back­drop, all I could say to myself was “Win­dowed indeed!” What amazed me about this set (designed by Bartha Jósef) was not only its astound­ing orig­i­nal­i­ty but its appar­ent cost : such tex­tu­al­ly gra­tu­itous scenery (scenery not specif­i­cal­ly called-for in the script or dra­mat­ic sit­u­a­tion), when it appears at all in Amer­i­ca, is usu­al­ly cre­at­ed on the cheap ; few direc­tors or design­ers have the temer­i­ty to com­mit the mon­ey nor the con­struc­tion work hours to cre­ate a set­ting – par­tic­u­lar­ly for just a por­tion of the play– of such scale, com­plex­i­ty and aes­thet­ic finesse that was so unre­lat­ed to the actions of the play as they might be imag­ined in a real envi­ron­ment.

Apart from the cages, Bocsardi’s inno­va­tions were more inter­pre­tive tropes than per­for­ma­tive ren­o­va­tions, but they were cer­tain­ly strik­ing to an Amer­i­can view­er. His King (a tall and gen­er­ous­ly-pro­por­tioned Nemes Lev­ente) was far more fero­cious than any I’ve ever seen or even imag­ined. Ter­ror­iz­ing his daugh­ters from the play’s begin­ning (even Regan and Goner­il are trem­bling when he march­es through the audi­ence and climbs up to the stage), Levente’s face flush­es crim­son as he roars at the stub­born Kent, then sav­age­ly hurls his lov­ing but uncom­pro­mis­ing daugh­ter Cordelia to the floor. Even at play’s end, Lev­ente is every inch the king, bold­ly hoist­ing Cordelia’s dead body up against a tree, sul­len­ly watch­ing it crum­ple spas­mod­i­cal­ly to the ground, then heav­ing open his own grave (an immense trap door) and, leap­ing shoul­der-deep into it, drag­ging his dead daugh­ter in on top of him and slam­ming the grave door shut atop them both. Oth­er unfor­get­table images includ­ed Cordelia’s des­per­ate, full-body lunge at the hand­some but faith­less Duke of Bur­gundy, mad­ly kiss­ing him on the lips before the Duke dumps her into the kind but senile hands of a white-head­ed King of France, and Lear’s return from the hunt with four bloody boar heads (real ones, I’m sure), which remained cen­ter stage for the next five scenes, their dead eyes star­ing defi­ant­ly at the audi­ence. Bocsardi’s images were strik­ing through­out, and yet the play of Shakespeare’s was mar­velous­ly intact. Even, in some ways “unex­cep­tion­al,” as with our 19th cen­tu­ry Bra­ban­tio. In ret­ro­spect, and con­sid­ered among most ofthe pro­duc­tions dis­cussed below, my Roman­ian dra­maturg friend was cor­rect : the Boc­sar­di Lear was “con­ven­tion­al­ly avant-garde.”

Anoth­er play I saw at the 2008 Nation­al Fes­ti­val was Andre Serban’s live­ly and some­times far­ci­cal Seag­ull, which had ini­tial­ly been staged at the Radu Stan­ca Nation­al The­atre in Sibiu. Although I have pub­lished sev­er­al pho­tos of Ser­ban productions(from the Amer­i­can Reper­to­ry The­atre in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, in my books), this was the first Ser­ban pro­duc­tion I had actu­al­ly seen since his 1975 Frag­ments in New York. He cer­tain­ly need­ed no intro­duc­tion to the local audi­ence ; half the pop­u­la­tion of Bucharest, it seemed, had strug­gled to get their hands on one of the 120 seats the the­atre had made avail­able for thisone-night per­for­mance, and to reach the the­atre door I had to fight my way through at least a hun­dred hope­fuls seek­ing last-minute tick­et returns.

The production’s nov­el­ty was in its intra-famil­ial cast­ing : Madame Arkad­i­na was played by Maia Mor­gen­stern, inter­na­tion­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed at the moment for her Mary in Mel Gibson’s film, The Pas­sion of the Christ, while Arkadina’s son, Kostya, was played by Morgenstern’s son, Tudor Istodor. So when Kostya tells Arkad­i­na how impos­si­ble it is to live in the shad­ow of a famous actress-moth­er, the audi­ence could well believe that real life was not imi­tat­ing but inhab­it­ing art. “Liv­ing the role” did not need Stanislavsky or Stras­berg to serve as a cat­a­lyst.

Despite this splash of real­ism, or even super-real­ismwith regard to the play’s defin­ing moth­er-son rela­tion­ship, and what I accept­ed as the basic faith­ful­ness of the trans­lat­ed Russ­ian text, Serban’s pro­duc­tion was filled with infi­nite and del­i­cate sur­pris­es. Most of the audi­ence sits on three sides of the stage, with the main action occur­ring in a long rec­tan­gle with­in their midst (the entire the­atre– audi­ence and stage – hav­ing been total­ly recon­fig­ured after the pre­vi­ous evening’s per­for­mance). Translu­cent fab­ric walls enclose the two long sides of the audi­ence, pro­vid­ing sil­hou­ette ren­di­tions of char­ac­ters as they­walk, run, and cavort to and from Sorin’s estate. A min­i­mal­ist schema of ordi­nary (but non-peri­od) fur­ni­ture – large table, small writ­ing / typ­ing desk, arm­chair and some sloped-back beach chairs – pro­vides most of the hard scenery of the chang­ing locales, and the more ram­bunc­tious phys­i­cal action cen­ters main­ly on the din­ing table, where Arkad­i­na leaps, in what I’d describe as a full-frontal swan dive, atop the recum­bent Trig­orin (the very hand­some Adri­an Mati­oc) with full Dionysian brava­do. While Ser­ban clear­ly approach­es Seag­ull as a com­e­dy – notably break­ing with Roman­ian tra­di­tion, I was told (and Amer­i­can tra­di­tionas well) – the play’s under­ly­ing sad­ness still per­me­ates. The great third act, with Arkadina’s con­flict­ed rela­tion­ships with both son and lover reach­ing their famous explod­ing points one after the oth­er, was breath­tak­ing­ly per­formed, as was the heartrend­ing fourth act when the no-longer-love­ly Nina (Christi­na Flu­tur) climbs through a minia­ture win­dow and flops direct­ly into Kostya’s lap as he types, only to clam­ber away and dis­miss him all over again. Com­pared to Frag­ments, this was “Ser­ban lite,” but of course Chekho­vis not Euripi­des and the mys­ter­ies of the heart are not­the orgies of Diony­sus. The semi-trans­par­ent sceneryand trag­i­cal­ly-com­i­cal stag­ing tropes – the swan dive, the lap flop – are cir­cus moves in what in less­er hands can be a soporif­ic soap opera, and made the pro­duc­tion con­tin­u­al­ly engag­ing and, in a few “Method” moments (Ser­ban has, after all, been liv­ing in the Unit­ed States for more than thir­ty years), heart-break­ing.

Purcarete’s 1997 Les Danaides, per­formed in New York’s Dam­rosch Park, had arrived com­plete with his 100 mem­ber cho­rus ; I doubt that any­one has ever seen a cast this large in an Amer­i­can the­atre – even in an opera house. The sheer cost fac­tor of this enter­prise – par­tic­u­lar­ly as an avant-garde ren­di­tion of a large­ly unknown 2400 year-old play – is sim­ply unheard of here, where every­thing thought of as “exper­i­men­tal” is expect­ed to con­form to the Gro­towskian “poor the­atre” in terms of its bud­get. The pro­duc­tion, though cer­tain­ly grandiose and at times high­ly provoca­tive, was not a great suc­cess : relent­less­ly grim, per­formed in French and out­doors, it did not real­ly suit the mood of the sum­mer-in-the-park envi­ron­ment. I, how­ev­er, was enor­mous­ly tak­en by the bold­ness and brav­ery of its con­cep­tion and the con­fi­dence with which Purcarete’s actors seized the stage. The play, pieced togeth­er from frag­ments of Aeschylus’s Sup­pli­ants, became the director’s cat­a­lyst for por­tray­ing class con­flict and sex­u­al war­fare at the same time, and the bru­tal­iza­tion of human life through rapa­cious striv­ings for pow­er and dom­i­nance. The one thing this work made clear to me was that the Roman­ian peo­ple, hav­ing sur­vived suc­ces­sive reigns of Hitler, Stal­in and Ceaus­es­cu over the pre­ced­ing fifty-odd years, are only too famil­iar (as are few Amer­i­cans) with the impend­ing cat­a­stro­phe that looms per­sis­tent­ly on the periph­ery of what we like to call civ­i­liza­tion.

Purc rete’s Wait­ing for Godot which I saw at the Sibiu Fes­ti­val ten years lat­er, was a true gem of inven­tion – and a mov­ing expe­ri­ence as well. The set design (by the direc­tor and Alin Gavril ) is asym­met­ri­cal­ly absurd, and would prob­a­bly have closed down the pro­duc­tion in Amer­i­ca, where the Beck­ett estate refus­es to allow direc­to­r­i­al lib­er­ties not only with Beckett’s texts but with his stage direc­tions. Purcarete’s stag­ing took lib­er­ty to its extreme. On the audience’s left was a jun­gle-gym of steel pipes, with the icon­ic Beck­ett tree sus­pend­ed far above the actors’ heads (they look up into its spread­ing roots), and a cel­lo­phane-like wall, pierced by a sol­id wood door­frame and door, is the entry­way of the famous passers­by, Poz­zo and Lucky. And on our right : a table and two white-wrapped chairs, on one of which sits a “prompter” who fol­lows the script and, strik­ing a gong from time to time, marks the play’s tran­si­tions. When Lucky stands on the prompter’s table to give his speech, clouds of white smoke bil­low from his febrile brain ; when Beckett’s “Boy” appears, in for­mal diplo­mat­ic dress, car­ry­ing sleek attaché case, his mechan­i­cal and ampli­fied rep­e­ti­tion of Godot’s (or his own) lies prove a metronome of the “hope deferred” that “maketh the some­thing [i.e. heart] sick.” A three­piece com­bo – vio­lin, cel­lo and piano – con­cludes each act, the musi­cians first appear­ing in full-body rab­bit cos­tumes, play­ing sen­su­al­ly ; then reap­pear­ing in Act Two bare­head­ed and furi­ous­ly hack­ing at theirin­stru­ments. Piles of stones are scat­tered every­where ; hor­i­zon­tal pip­ing serves as bench­es for the famous tramps, a glob­u­lar light bulb cre­ates the “pale for weari­ness” moon, and a mis­cel­lany of fix­tures show var­i­ous states of unfin­ished or aban­doned con­struc­tion projects. “Infi­nite adapt­abil­i­ty” is Purc rete’s oper­a­tive con­cept, as he says in his pro­gram note, and for once the absence of direc­tion is the per­fect direc­tion itself. Vir­gil Flon­da was the most soul­ful Vladimir I have ever seen or even imag­ined (very sad­ly, he died sud­den­ly a few weeks fol­low­ing this per­for­mance), and the padded rotun­di­ty of Con­stan­tine Chiriac’s Gogo was hilar­i­ous and affect­ing – nev­er so much as when he tried to take off his shoes. “Noth­ing to be done,” indeed.

The two direc­tors with whose work I am most famil­iar, how­ev­er, are Gabor Tom­pa and Mihai Maniu­tiu. Both are based in the city of Cluj ; Tom­pa as the Gen­er­al Direc­tor of the city’s Hun­gar­i­an The­atre and Maniu­tiu as the Artis­tic Direc­tor of its Nation­al The­atre. Both also direct wide­ly abroad, and both have direct­ed Eng­lish-lan­guage pro­duc­tions for Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties : Tom­pa at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia in San Diego, where he is cur­rent­ly the Head of Direct­ing, and Maniu­tiu at my own cam­pus, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Irvine, where he was a guest pro­fes­sor in 2009.

The first Tom­pa pro­duc­tion I saw, at the 2008 Nation­al The­atre Fes­ti­val in Bucharest, was Long Fri­day, an adap­ta­tion by Tom­pa and dra­maturg Visky András of Nobel Prize-win­ner Imre Kertész’s Kad­dish For An Unborn Child. Kertész’s Hun­gar­i­an nov­el is neo-Beck­et­t­ian in style ; a solo mono­logue, it includes at least one para­graph that runs fifty-sev­en pages. Both nov­el and adap­ta­tion treat Kertész’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal hero – named sim­ply “B” and self-described as a “Budapest (i.e. citi­fied, non-prac­tic­ing) Jew” – as he relives his bro­ken mar­riage, dis­ap­point­ing career as a writer / trans­la­tor, and fail­ure to father a child in the after­math of the Nazi Holo­caust, dur­ing which he (as with Kertész him­self) had been sent to con­cen­tra­tion camps.

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Écrit par Robert Cohen
Pro­fesseur et doyen du Départe­ment de Théâtre à l’Université d’Irvine, Cal­i­fornie, Robert Cohen est réputé pour ses études...Plus d'info
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Couverture du numéro 106-107 - La scène roumaine. Les défis de la liberté
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