Radio România Internațional

Category: World of Culture

  • 2018 – a new stage in the activity of the National Dance Center Bucharest

    2018 – a new stage in the activity of the National Dance Center Bucharest

    The National Dance Centre Bucharest, the only public institution of culture subordinated to the Culture Ministry, which supports, develops and promotes contemporary dance and performing arts in Romania is preparing this year to move to a new location in 2019, more appropriate for its activity. Preparations for this action are accompanied by important projects, which we are going to discuss next.



    The year 2017 ended for the National Dance Centre Bucharest with an Awards Gala, which has been held for the past 4 years and which celebrates excellence without making hierarchies. At the 4th edition of the Awards Gala, the Center’s team chose to pay homage to several personalities who, during the 20th century, set the foundation of the contemporary choreographic context in Romania. ‘The pioneers of Romanian dance proved a lot of courage, they broke dogmas and emancipated dance’ said Vava Stefanescu, the manager of the National Dance Center Bucharest. The winners of the 2017 Awards Gala of the National Dance Center Bucharest, designated following the research activity undertaken by the Centre’s specialist department, are choreographers and dancers Floria Capsali, Vera Proca-Ciortea, Iris Barbura, Lizica Codreanu, Paule Sybille, Stere Popescu, Gabriel Negri, Esther Maghiar and Trixy Checais.



    These proposals were actually a preview of what will be happening this year and in 2019, as well as in the activity of the Centre, said manager Vava Stefanescu: “It was kind of a radical option for the National Dance Centre Bucharest because now at the Centre a stage has come to an end and another one is beginning. In 2019 we will move to a building that is more appropriate for the activity of the Centre. So far we have had a certain type of activity, that of promotion, we have had a certain tendency of making contemporary dance visible. From now on, we need a different vision, a different way of looking at things. I think we need an institutional change for the better or a different institutional attitude, given that we are going to move to a new location, in Omnia Hall, on Popisteanu street, in Bucharest. Whenever a stage comes to an end, one feels the need to take a look back at the previous stage, for the sake of comparison. Thanks to these people contemporary dance has a future in Romania. We considered it a must to pay homage to these personalities, whom we should not forget. We should look at their achievements and, in a way, try to experience their successes, courage, speeches, and why not their courage to break with tradition and go beyond limits. Therefore, the spirit of these artists is to be revived at our Dance Centre. You take a look back but you are actually looking at the future.”



    The National Dance Center in Bucharest is at once producer, host, training and research entity, and also a mediator.



    Here is Vava Stefanescu once again, this time giving details on the strategy by means of which she intends to bring about change in all the aforementioned levels: ”The center will move to new premises in the city center, and I think that 2018 and partially 2019 will be years of preparation, to be able to open the gates for the public in 2019 in the broader sense of the word, with a clear-cut message, with a clear-cut attitude. And that is very important. That is why I believe the first axis of this strategy is intensifying ideas, dialogue and public presentations. There are many projects, to be further multiplied, and if they are not multiplied, they are sure to be longer-lasting, for their impact to be bigger, or they will need a visibility effort and an amount of involvement from the public that will be much more important than what we have managed to achieve so far. We try to multiply stage performances proper, with co-productions, productions or performances that have been invited over, not only in Bucharest, but also elsewhere across the country. We have not managed to open branches or ‘antennas’ of the Bucharest National Dance Center in the other cities because the Justice Ministry told us such a decision would have to be endorsed by Parliament, which is so very interesting. But we ARE going to set up the loose ends we need and which our public countrywide needs. We all know choreographic culture cannot be clustered only in Bucharest.”



    Part of the same strategy is the setting up of mini-seasons in a string of towns across the country. For starters, they will be staged in Craiova and Targu Mures. Then there will follow Iasi, Cluj, Timisoara, perhaps Constanta and Brasov.”



    We wrap up with a view on contemporary dance in Romania, provided ‘from the Center’. The Manager of the Bucharest National Dance Center, choreographer Vava Stefanescu believes contemporary dance looks really good: ”It looks much better than 10 years ago. It seems to me that it succeeded to align itself, yet it has not succeeded to have a voice of its own, a voice it could compose for itself. In other words, artistic thought is in short supply of such thinking, there is a shortage of really new and bold ideas. It’s a fine thing that contemporary dance receives invitations from everywhere, there are many productions…many more than even four years ago. Festivals have even emerged, as well as theatres with a stage production record…That is very good! Yet they are part of the same unassuming esthetics. Daring or more problematic themes begin to lose steam, they’re beginning to be deprived of the attention of the public. The Bucharest National Dance Centre has been striving and fighting to offer broader frameworks where the public and the artists alike can feel they are being represented. Also, it is the artists’ mission to be authentic, to fight in order to assert their individual voice, their personal voice. I would be happy if they opted for exposing themselves more to the risk of not being applauded that much, but instead, be willing to stir questions, to stir debates through what they do. The Centre will never be able to achieve that on its own, but artists are in greater numbers. As for the public, its numbers are even greater. The driving slogan for our activity and the wars we shall fight in 2018 is the one by means of which we tell everybody ‘You are the context.’ You are the context, you do, you construct the context. I think it is very important that the people, the public and artists alike, empower themselves and be aware that they have a place and a volume around them, and things happen according to them. And that is true not only for the Bucharest National Dance Center. It should also happen in politics, in the economy, it should happen in social life as well.”

  • Eminescu Today

    Eminescu Today

    Beyond the tribute-paying and celebratory events, we have tried to find out to what extent Romanians are still willing today to read his work and discover who Mihai Eminescu actually was, keeping in mind that school books still reduce his personality to a handful of stereotypes and that there has been hardly any notable progress in the critical approach to his works for half a century.



    The critic Luminita Corneanu, who has also been teaching Romanian literature in high-school and college, says that it is essential for readers to understand the context in which Mihai Eminescu lived, if they are to understand his work. “The biographical approach, introducing Eminescu as a passionate man, as an outstanding journalist, in spite of his fierceness and excesses, as a man involved in a great love story with a woman named Veronica Micle, is the most effective method of bringing the young generations close to a body of work written one and a half centuries ago,” says Luminita Corneanu:




    Luminita Corneanu: “Much as we admire Mihai Eminescu’s poetry, and I have great admiration for it, we must acknowledge that we are talking about poetry written with the poetic instruments of the 19th Century, which obviously reflect a type of worldview that was specific to that era. If we look, for instance, at the poem ‘The Lake’, which our kids study in the 8th grade, we have there a young man and a young woman trying to get together, in a forest, on the shores of a lake. So imagine the extent to which today’s young people, who meet over Facebook and get together in nightclubs, can actually relate to this poem. So Mihai Eminescu’s poetry is not easily accessible for kids, they often fail to understand what a particular poem is about.”



    Before and after Eminescu, is how we could summarise Eminescu’s impact on the Romanian literature.



    Luminita Corneanu: “Opening poetry up to ideas, to philosophy, integrating the Romanticism, bringing Romanian poetry in tune with Western poetry, with the European literary movements, we owe all of this to Mihai Eminescu. Moreover, Mihai Eminescu is the one who created the Romanian literary language, a truly poetic language. The Eminescu moment was decisive for the Romanian literature. As I have already said, if we study his life we will understand his works more easily, but I believe there are also poems that today’s young people, today’s public in general, can appreciate even without biographical data. And these are the poems that make up the ‘plutonic’ part of Eminescu’s work, as the critic Ion Negoitescu called it in a 1968 essay, talking about Eminescu’s posthumous poems, his dark poems, so to say.”



    Before being the Romanians’ national poet, Mihai Eminescu was first of all an outstanding poet, says Carmen Muşat, editor-in-chief of the Cultural Observer journal. She believes that people should read Mihai Eminescu’s poems once again before paying homage to his work.



    Carmen Musat: “I think that without Mihai Eminescu the Romanian literature would have looked different today, and the evolution, the transformation of the Romanian literature and language would have been delayed. Mihai Eminescu has the merit of having created a literary language and a work with very many nuances, open to interpretations. If we read his work attentively, we discover that Eminescu was not just a Romantic poet. Indeed, his prose is typically Romantic but his poetry goes beyond Romanticism, announcing many of the subsequent guidelines and developments in the Romanian literature. Eminescu’s poems include, besides melodiousness, rhythm, rhyme, and a typically Romantic imagination and rhetoric, the modernism of the late 19th Century and of the early 20th Century.”




    Because Mihai Eminescu’s work was excessively used to create ideologies and myths, writer Simona Popescu did not feel the need to pay more attention to Eminescu’s poetry during school. It was only later that she discovered, on her own, the true meaning of Eminescu’s work:



    Simona Popescu: “I re-discovered my own Eminescu, the humane Eminescu, the wonderful Eminescu in faculty, when I read and re-read his complete works. I even read all the versions of his poems included in the critical edition compiled by literary historian Dumitru Murăraşu. As a student I was able to come up with my personal approach of Eminescu’s poetry. I discovered a playful, ironical Eminescu, who also used parody and self-parody. At the time, I used to attend the Mihai Eminescu colloquiums in Iasi, in north-eastern Romania, and I remember having shocked the audience with my paper on a poem by Eminescu, which I had not heard of in school. Even today this poem is not paid the deserved attention, as it is considered a problematic poem. It’s called ‘Anthropomorphism’, it’s a kind of parody of ‘Luceafarul’ — The Evening Star which Eminescu wrote before ‘The Evening Star’. ‘Anthropomorphism’ also tells a love story, but between a cock and a hen, unlike ‘The Evening Star’ which tells the love story between a mortal woman and the Evening Star. It is a poem in which Eminescu makes a parody of his own themes and ideas that he used in his more serious, profound poems. This is an exercise that only a great poet can afford to make, given that we are speaking of a self-parody signed by Minunescu, a play upon words from Eminescu. I was very happy to discover that Minunescu, which made me love Eminescu even more.”


  • Preparation for the FITS Anniversary Edition

    Preparation for the FITS Anniversary Edition

    The best known performing arts festival in Romania, the Sibiu
    International Theater Festival (FITS), prepares for its 25th
    edition, taking place between June 8 and 17, and has the theme ‘Passion’. FITS,
    is an event that has gained in popularity with an amazing speed, and has become
    a veritable competitor for the Edinburgh and Avignon festivals.

    Constantin
    Chiriac, director of the Radu Stanca National Theater and president of the
    festival, spoke about this edition:


    We will be hosting Tokyo
    Metropolitan Theater artistic director Hideki Noda, with ‘One Green Bottle’, a
    joint production they stage with the London National Theater. It is an exceptional
    comedy, a play in English in which Mr. Hideki Noda plays a woman. Also
    performing are two great actors, one Noh actor and the other a Kabuki
    performer. We will also be hosting what is, from my point of view, one of the
    most important theater companies not only in Israel, but also the world. It is
    the Gesher Theater, with their play ‘Yakish and Poopche’, by Hanoch Levin, who
    may very well be the most important Israeli playwright. Wajdi Mouawad returns
    to Sibiu with one of his most thought- provoking shows, which he directs and
    acts in. It is ‘Inflammation Du Verbe Vivre’, a Theatre de la Colline
    production. Both Wajdi Mouawad and Hideki Noda will get a star on the Walk of
    Fame. We will also have in Sibiu Isabelle Hupert, in a show by Jan Fabre, ‘Je
    Suis Un Boeuf’. We will bring back Thomas Ostermeier, with ‘Returning to Reims’,
    a Schulbuhne Berlin production. Also, director Luk Perceval is back with us,
    with the entire trilogy based on Emile Zola, which we ventured to produce
    together with the Hamburg Thalia Theater. We will also have there Det Norske
    Teatret of Oslo, one of the two most important theater companies in Norway,
    with ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’. Also, after many years, we will have Les
    Ballets Jazz of Montreal, with two different shows. We are very proud of the
    fact that we can bring in one of the most important dance troupes in the world.
    As a first, we will have the Aleksandrinsky Theatre of Sankt Petersburg. It is
    a great victory to be able to bring here Valeryi Fokin, one of the best directors
    of all times in Russia, head of the Meyergold Center in Moscow. Aleksandrinsky
    Theatre will stage the play ‘Yours, Gogol’, winner of the Golden Mask Award.


    As usual, dance has a special place at FITS. One of the shows this
    year will be FLEXN, directed by Peter Sellars and choreographed by Reggie ‘Regg
    Roc’ Gray. Also there will be Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, with the show
    Mother’s Milk, choreographed by Marie Chouinard and Michele Noiret. The Radu
    Stanca National Theater will participate with one of this season’s premieres,
    and with an eagerly awaited project still in the works, a kabuki project. It is
    called ‘The Scarlet Princess of Edo’, for which composer Siviu Purcarete works
    with stage designer Dragos Buhagiar and composer Vasile Sirli. The show will be
    staged exclusively with actors from the Sibiu National Theater, as well as
    undergraduate and graduate students from the Sibiu Theater School.

    Here is
    Constantin Chiriac once again:


    This premiere will
    inaugurate the Kabuki Hall, built by the book by Dragos Buhagiar. It is the
    space parallel to Faust Hall, in the Culture Factory. We will even have small
    balconies, the way they have at the National Kabuki Theater in Japan. The
    second round of rehearsals will start on April 14. In December we had a general
    meeting, attended by Mr. Nobuaki Tomita, who took this trip especially for
    this, and created a miraculous moment for us: he showed us how an actor can
    change ten costumes in ten seconds. Also, he showed us a fabric that only he
    makes, which changes colors depending on the intensity of light. We are very
    proud that we have in this project the greatest kimono creators in Japan, Mr.
    Nobuaki Tomita, one of the greatest artists in Hollywood.


    According to director Constantin Chiriac, ‘The Scarlet Princess of
    Edo’ will be the first show to open the 2020 Cultural and Olympic Games in
    Tokyo.


    The Sibiu Show Auction Market, organized by the Radu Stanca National
    Theater, will be open for registration until March 23. Right from its first
    edition, in 1997, the Show Auction Market has developed as a major cultural
    network, acting as a go-between for festivals, artists, independent companies
    and state institutions in performing arts. Annually, over 300 participants from
    across the world meet in Sibiu to network in order to arrange future
    partnerships. This year’s edition takes place over June 11-16, 2018.




  • On lost manuscripts with writer Bogdan Suceava

    On lost manuscripts with writer Bogdan Suceava


    “From Aristotle to Hemingway, there is an entire history of manuscripts that are forever lost and which might have revolutionised literature, philosophy, mathematics and physics. How tragic is the definitive loss of a manuscript? But what if the author of the lost manuscript wrote other invaluable works?” These are some of the questions posed by the writer and mathematician Bogdan Suceava in his new book published at the end of 2017 by Polirom, called “The History of Lapses. On Lost Manuscripts”. On 22nd December 1989, when the Romanian Revolution broke out, Bogdan Suceava, who at the time was a student at the Faculty of Mathematics in Bucharest, saw the Central University Library on fire. “In the middle of Bucharest, and no one could do anything about it. Lots of rumours circulated. I don’t know the cause of the fire, but I remember thinking: so that’s how libraries burn. That’s how the Library of Alexandria must have burnt”, writes Bogdan Suceava. That incident appears to be one of the triggers for his new book. A professor at the Department of Mathematics at the California State University in Fullerton and the author of 13 books of prose and several books on the history of mathematics, Bogdan Suceava tells us he believes a review of the most important lost manuscripts is more necessary than ever:



    “I thought this book was necessary first of all in order to clarify my own image about literature and the role of the novel today. At the end of the day, we can ask ourselves why we still read and why we still write novels. What if the future holds a world in which we will no longer read novels? Is this the time certain literary genres are beginning to die out and interest in the traditional values of literature begins to dwindle? I believe the short answer is no, I think people will keep on reading. I believe we will always be able to find a type of story, a type of novel that will be necessary in the future, just they have always been necessary in the past. And I said to myself books that are absolutely necessary are the books that help us reconstruct scenes from the past, moments that seem relevant for the world we live in. Filling up such obscure moments-episodes of the past with a well-written story seems to me absolutely useful and it’s all about a special kind of usefulness as regards culture. And I don’t think something like that could be replaced by social network posts, messages or video-clips. There are certain things which are purely literary, while the reconstruction of several important pages of the past seems to guarantee the viability of the novel as a genre.”



    “Once the book is lost, maybe the happiest twist in the tale could be fate of the second part of Aristotle’s Poetics, which means that another author, such as Umberto Eco, should invent a story over the ruins of absence. And that is not necessarily the initial book, about which we all agree it has been lost forever, but speculation on the context of its disappearance. And that could turn into a novel”, Bogdan Suceava writes.



    “With ‘The Name of the Rose’ I was lucky, I read it when I was seventeen, and I realized rather early in my life that there was something very important there. Yet there was another important moment, the moment I prepared a course in the history of mathematics, trying to compile a list of the things I would teach for that course. And that’s how I found out that many books from the Classical Antiquity period were missing. For instance, I discovered that a volume written by Cicero, a book that Saint Augustine liked a lot and which meant a great deal for the progress of young Augustine, was actually missing, it had disappeared. And that may really hurt you, at a very personal level. And you actually want to find out what has happened with the memory of humankind. But that dawned upon me very late in my life. I think you need to be old enough to be able to appreciate the true value of such a loss. I realized that over the past two years.”



    Bogdan Suceava chose to leave for the United States, as he wanted to study mathematics under the supervision of a famous Chinese specialist, whom he also mentions in his recently launched volume “The History of Lapses. On lost manuscripts”. Bogdan Suceava earned his PhD in Mathematics from the Michigan State University, in 2002. He currently holds a teaching position with the California State University. Notwithstanding, he has returned to literature from time to time:



    “I believe literature makes us more wholesome. I for one do need literature and I think that were I only to stick to my technical endeavour, that would mean way too little. It may come as some sort of impoverishment, as some sort of dwindling of one’s own self. There were years when I didn’t write anything. Between 1996 and 1999 I had to prepare for some exams in mathematics, that were very tough. It was very hard, very tough, I didn’t write anything for three good years. One of the most difficult exams was in May 1999. I was 28 and I suspected myself of being unable to memorize anything. Three days before that exam I started writing again. It was like a moment of liberation, of necessary liberation. We need to be wholesome and in order to be wholesome, we need literature.”



    The CopyRo Prize that Bogdan Suceava received in 2002 for the volume “The Empire of Tardy Generals and Other Histories”, the Bucharest Writers’ Association’s Prize for Fiction, awarded for his novel “Miruna, a Tale” and the Literary Network’s 1st prize for “The Night When Someone Died for You” are some of the prizes which reward Bogan Suceava’s literary activity. (Translated by C. Mateescu & E. Nasta)

  • The Hungarian State Theatre in Cluj, western Romania, celebrated 225 years

    The Hungarian State Theatre in Cluj, western Romania, celebrated 225 years

    In early December this year, the Hungarian State Theatre based in Cluj, western Romania, staged its traditional mini-season, which takes place every other year. And because in 2017 the theatre celebrated 225 years since the foundation of the first theatre company performing in Hungarian, the mini-season also included some of the most important premieres of the previous seasons, signed by the directors who marked the artistic development of the theatre company and contributed to its consolidation. Since 1990 Director Gabor Tompa has been the manager of the Hungarian State Theatre in Cluj.



    The mini-season started with the famous Uncle Vanya, directed by Andrei Serban. Here is Gabor Tompa with details: “I believe we still had the chance of having a couple of masterpieces included in our repertoire and we focused on four major directors who staged exceptional shows including ‘Uncle Vanya;, directed by Andrei Serban. This show has been a constant sold-out in the past 11 years and we usually run out of tickets two months ahead of every performance. Then we also had ‘Victor or Power to the Children’, the year’s best show directed by Silviu Purcarete, a director who contributed a lot to the Hungarian Theatre. Then there was also ‘The Celebration’, under the guidance of Robert Woodruff. ‘Victor’ has been performed in three seasons, ‘the Celebration’ in five, but ‘Uncle Vanya’ in eleven seasons. I’d also mention Yuri Kordonsky’s ‘The Lower Depths’. I can safely say there are four different masterpieces. We have also chosen a show staged by Botond Nagy, a director belonging to the youngest generation, who has just got a master’s degree in Targu Mures. He directed a play by Maeterlinck called ‘The Blind’.”



    Chekhov’s ‘Uncle Vanya’ has so far won three UNITER awards: best show in 2007, best director (Andrei Serban) and best actor (Andras Hathazi). It also reaped the Hungarian Theatre Critics Award for best show in the 2007-2008 season. ‘Victor, or Power to the Children’ by Roger Vitrac, has also got the UNITER award for best show in 2013. Thomas Vinterber’s ‘Celebration’ had two UNITER nominations, while Yuri Kordonsky was a UNITER recipient for best director in 2016. But how do these masterpieces by these great directors fit into the two-century existence of the Cluj Hungarian Theater?



    Director Gabor Tompa believes that when it comes to theater it is very hard to defer to tradition, because nowadays theater is nothing like it was 10 years ago, let alone 225 years ago: “Theater is the art of the moment, of the present. But there’s something else… I thought if I could link the present moment, if I could possibly connect to this history, this tradition. And if we follow the entire history of this theater, we find out that the most important moments were those when a few directors, theater people, brought in something new. Be it a Shakespeare series in the 19th century, which was quite unusual then, or building a cinema studio, combining cinema with theater early on, in the 1910s and 1920s, or experimental attempts, which were characteristic of great director Gyorgy Harags work. So then I thought, if we had a tradition of our own, it would be the tradition of the permanent renewal of the means of expression, constantly taking risks, without which I believe theater would become canonized, rigid, even dead. I believe that we have always held onto the model of permanent renewal, which to us is a reference point, a tradition that we can carry on.”



    According to manager Gabor Tompa, over 40% of the audience of the Hungarian Theater at present is not ethnic Hungarian, and the message that it wants to convey is that this theater belongs to the people of Cluj, and not only.



    Theater critic Oana Cristea Grigorescu, a journalist at Radio Romania, has for many years followed the productions of the Hungarian State Theater in Cluj and the impact they had and still have in Romanian theater: “I believe the Hungarian State Theater is at the vanguard of a cultural revival in the city of Cluj, which later extended to other cities of Romania. And I am referring to the opening of the theaters in the Hungarian and German language towards the Romanian culture, in the sense that they provided Romanian subtitles for the plays they staged. The barriers, which we had considered natural up to that moment, were broken, but those barriers were not normal, actually. The city of Cluj had a lot to gain from this move. After a first stage, when the Hungarian community expressed discontent with the new repertory option and with the loss of the unique target of preserving the Hungarian identity, the major gain of this repertory policy was the fact that, in Cluj, theater audiences that went to see the shows of the Hungarian Theater, the National Theater or of the independent theaters broke free from ethnic barriers. And the audiences’ free movement and interest for theater gave rise to an effervescence that fueled all forms of theater made in Cluj. I believe this is a good example of how multiculturalism can enrich us, can help us break barriers, of how it can boost the consistency of a community focused on culture, theater or any other art.”



  • Matei Vişniec, the honorary president of the Gaudeamus International Book Fair

    Matei Vişniec, the honorary president of the Gaudeamus International Book Fair

    The honorary president of the 2017 Gaudeamus International Book Fair, playwright and journalist Matei Vişniec, said in the opening of the Fair that Romania is extremely competitive at cultural level and he praised the idea of choosing the European Union as guest of honor of the 2017 edition of the Gaudeamus Fair.



    “Romania has a chance and its chance is culture” said playwright Matei Vişniec at the debate entitled “The Europe of theater and writers — the circulation of artistic values as the foundation of Europe” held at the pavilion entitled “Home in Europe”.



    Matei Vişniec became known in the 1980s as a poet and later as a playwright. His plays, which were widely circulated in the literary environment, were forbidden on the Romanian stages. In 1987 he left Romania and settled in France where he worked for Radio France Internationale. His plays, in the French language, were issued by such publishing houses as Actes Sud-Papier, L’Harmattan, Lansman, Crater, L’Espace d’un instant, and his name featured on theatre posters in more than 30 countries.



    Over the past years Matei Vişniec has become known as a novelist. The Dustbin Man. The Woman as a Battlefield (2006), Panic Syndrome in the City of Lights (2009, a novel that won the prize of the Cultural Observer Journal), Mr. K Released, Word Cabaret (2012), The Dealer in Openings to Novels (2013, winner of the Augustin Fratila prize for best novel, of the National Prose Award of the Iasi Newspaper and of the High School Students’ prize for the most liked book in 2013, at the International Literature and Translation Festival in Iasi), Shoe type Loves. Umbrella type Loves (2016) are some of his novels. Critic Ion Bogdan Lefter talked about Matei Vişniec’s artistic complexity at the Gaudeamus Book Fair.



    Ion Bogdan Lefter: “Matei Vişniec is first of all a poet, with a very personal touch, which he also developed in his plays. He is also a very important prose writer. The profusion of new novels that he writes every 2 or 3 years, the most recent being published by Polirom, has brought him a new segment of readers. Theater lovers are generally more numerous than poetry lovers, and fiction readers represent the majority of readers, therefore all the prose books by Matei Vişniec were taken over and included in the Top10+ collection of the Polirom Publishers, a collection of wide circulation.”


    Next listen to Matei Vişniec advocating for novel writing at the Polirom Publishers pavilion at the Gaudeamus Fair:



    Matei Visniec: “One of the reasons why I am writing novels is that, for me, literary genres are like children, I love them all, be they poetry, essay, novel or drama. Poetry has helped me grow up, drama has formed me, and novel writing has opened my eyes to diversity. But, at a certain moment, I wrote a novel out of frustration, I felt frustrated that my plays needed intermediaries to reach the public. They needed a theater manager, a director, actors and stage designers. And all these intermediaries started to bother me at a certain point. I did not like the idea of depending on them. I preferred my writing to reach the public without intermediaries. So I have written novels out of the wish to create a direct link between readers and myself.”


    At the Gaudeamus Book Fair Matei Vişniec also spoke in favor of reading.



    Matei Visniec: “I would like to tell you that, if you read poetry, drama, novels or any good literature books, you will open in your hearts windows towards the others and you will become yourselves windows opened towards mankind, imagination and freedom. I believe that, in a country, freedom can be measured. Such a measuring instrument must exist. And I also believe that the degree of civilization in a country can be gauged through the people’s capacity to love literature, art and drama. Literature gives your freedom. If we don’t tell our children to read books and discover literature, to tell stories, we risk transforming them into mutants. At the Gaudeamus Fair I could see very many children accompanied by their teachers. It is a book fair, but also an education fair and a place where we can start a reflection process: how we educate our children to avoid turning them from thinking people into consumers. It is very important for us to remain citizens with a critical spirit and not consumers in a consumerist society.”



    Matei Vişniec’s writing activity in Romanian and French has brought him many awards. In Romania, he won the Prize of the Writers’ Union, the Prize of the Romanian Academy as well as the Prize of The Union of Theaters in Romania – UNITER for Romanian writer with the biggest number of plays staged. In France, he won, on several occasions, the Press Award at the International Theater Festival in Avignon, the European Award granted by the Society of Drama Authors and Composers (in 2009) as well as the Jean Monet European literature Award in 2016.


  • Green Hours’ LUNI Theater Celebrates 20 Years

    Green Hours’ LUNI Theater Celebrates 20 Years

    The 1st of December 1997 is the date of birth of the first post-1990 independent theater in Romania, set up in a basement on Victory Road, at nr. 120. Shortly after, it was called the Green Hours Luni Theater, because it was based in the Green Hours bar and club set up in 1994, a bar its founder, Voicu Radescu, wanted to make different from the others. Voicu was not a theater man, but his brother, Vlad Radescu, is an actor, famous abroad due to his leading role in the perennial film ‘Ciprian Porumbescu’, directed by Gheorghe Vitanidis. Vlad’s wife is Mihaela Radescu, working at the Small Theater, but having strong ties with the independent stage. This context, and the wish of young artists to express themselves more widely than they could in state theater, led to the creation of this independent theater at Green Hours.



    Voicu Radescu: “The Green Hours jazz club had been open for three years. My brother and sister-in-law were well-known theater people. Through them I met a few theater students. They started creating a number of theater skits, a few minutes long, during breaks at jazz concerts. That happened in 1995, in autumn and winter. The poster listed them as ‘acting performances’ with various actors, such as Mihaela Radescu, Dragos Bucur, Bogdan Dumitrache… At some point in 1997 I met Maia Morgernstern, and I asked her if she would like to stage 10 representations of a show in the Green Hours jazz club. Maia was with Dorina Crisan Rusu. They told me to go to the National Theater in two weeks time. There they played for me on the upright piano a part of what was to become ‘Chantan au Lai’, their show that started the permanent seasons at Luni Theater. It was not yet named Luni Theater.



    After Maia Morgernstern and Dorina Crisan Rusu broke the ice at Green Hours, more and more actors and show creators started stepping into the little club on Victory Square.



    Voicu Radescu: “There was a rush, I could say, but not right away. After Maia’s show, Mihaela Radescu came with a show, then Coca Bloos had a one woman show there, during the period when the National Theater was staging the Danaids, directed by Silviu Purcarete, and Coca was phenomenal in that show. It was a positive shock for us when she accepted acting on our stage. Then we had another show that was another stepping stone, with Coca Bloos and Mihaela Radescu, with Lucian Ban on the piano, called ‘Today I… Ubu’, based on texts by Alfred Jarry, a show that got first prize at the first edition of the Humorror Festival. For us it was an encouragement, because we saw that we do things appreciated not only by the audience, but by experts too.



    Then came the flood, with young directors like Theodora Herghelegiu, Gianina Carbunariu, Radu Afrim, Ana Margineanu, but also older directors like Alexandru Dabija and Alexandru Tocilescu. Alongside them came actors like Andreea Bibiri, Marius Stanescu, Daniel Popa, Dorina Chiriac, Lia Bugnar, Serban Pavlu, and many, many more. They are all an integral part of the two decade history of Luni Theater. One of the most important moments in this history is the arrival of Florin Piersic Jr., who staged here four shows in the early 2000s. The first was ‘Dice and Books’, by Sam Henry Kass, staged in 2001. In 2003, for his role in ‘Sex, Drugs, Rock&Roll’ by Eric Bogosian, Piersic Jr. got the UNITER prize for best leading actor.



    It was the first award granted by UNITER to an independent show. Florin Piersic Jr.’s first contact with Luni Theater was on December 31, as the actor recalls: “I was in Bucharest and didn’t have anything specific to do. I don’t know how I found out… I probably saw a flier for a show on New Year’s Even, around 8 or 9 PM. The place was totally different from what I had seen before. Then, being rather desperate from a professional point of view, I found a play, I spoke to Voicu, and he agreed, so everything went into motion. I said it then, and I will keep saying it, without Green Hours I wouldn’t exist. It was like a springboard. Many, many people came to see my shows there, and wanted to work with me.



    Luni Theater, with its maximum capacity of 100 seats, was for Florin Piersic Jr. his school, support, emotion, freedom of expression: “We were seen as some kind of enfants terribles, people with no direction in life. The preconception at the time was that you had to be employed by a theater, or you were not considered a good actor. But things were nothing like that. A lot of people came there who were upset with working in state theaters, and who could truly express themselves in independent theater. To have memorable parts, to get awards for acting on a two by three meters stage with a tiny audience, 50, 70, 100 at the most. For a lot of people it was strange that these actors got on stage and spent their energy for such a small audience, since if you act on television, you have an audience of millions. For me, things are completely different. Theater, that vibe it has, can never be replaced.



    After 20 years, when independent theater spaces have proliferated in Bucharest, Luni Theater continues to be the same special and generous host for young actors. It is the case for the Frilensar troupe, coming from Iasi, coordinated by Daniel Chirila, an actor, director and playwright: “Everything unfolded very quickly for us. I can’t believe we’re already at our fifth show. It is as if just yesterday we were in school and were thinking: ‘look, Lia Bugnar is on stage at Green Hours… and Marius Manole is there too… it must be really cool’. And all of a sudden, Voicu invites you to film an interview for the 20th year anniversary of Green Hours. It is a great atmosphere, and we feel this is our place. We feel free, which is very important for us. I continue to act here because I believe it is the engine of independent theater in our country.

  • The Gaudeamus International Book and Education Fair

    The Gaudeamus International Book and Education Fair

    For this edition, the Casa Radio Publishers has prepared a fresh series of titles that were brought out in its well-established collections. So listeners and readers are regaled with books published in collections such as the Golden Tape Library, The Show of Poetry, Reading in the Dark, the Romanian Poetry Library and the Radio Library. This years’ edition is focusing on the past five decades of Romanian poetry, featuring poems by Ana Blandiana, Nina Cassian, the unparalleled Serban Foarta, who versifies some of I. L. Caragiale’s writings. There are two “textbook” poets, George Cosbuc and G. Topirceanu, re-read by two major poets of present-day Romania, Ioana Nicolaie and Florin Iaru. 115 poems by Ana Blandiana have been brought together on a double CD album and a book and under a suggestive title “Is the flower free? Poems read on the radio”. There are recordings retrieved from Radio Romania’s Golden Tape Library, recorded in more than five decades, between 1965 and 2017. The most recent recording session was made on March 24th, 2017, a day before Ana Blandiana’s 75th birthday anniversary. Here is Ana Blandiana herself, speaking at the launch of the aforementioned audio book.



    “There is something I want to say, especially about the Golden Tape Library, about the place those poems come from, and about how they got there. Before dreaming to become part of the Golden Tape Library, a while back, when I was very young, living in Oradea and listening to the radio. I used to listen to the radio a lot more than I do now, and when I heard that recordings in the Golden Tape Library were broadcast it seemed to me they made the supreme value of everything the radio had to offer. Later, when Emil Buruiana of Radio Romania’s Culture Channel, invited me to make some recordings, I was very excited because I recalled the sensation I had while listening to those programmes. And, irrespective of the managers succeeding each other at the Radio Broadcasting Corporation, as some liked me and others didn’t, I was awfully glad for the privilege to make recordings for the Golden Tape Library. I would describe them as some sort of a history void. And that mainly applies to poems that I very much wanted to be saved in something like Noah’s Ark.”



    Playwright and journalist Matei Visniec was the honorary president of the 2017 edition of the Gaudeamus International Book Fair. In his opening address, Visniec said Romania was extremely competitive from a cultural point of view. Visniec has also hailed the selection of the European Union as the guest of honor for the Gaudeamus International Book Fair. “Romania has its chance, and that chance is culture” playwright Visniec said at a debate series entitled “The Europe of theater and writers — the circulation of artistic values as the backbone of Europe“. The debate was hosted by the “At home in Europe” stand. You’re now invited to listen to an excerpt from a recording that was made during the talks Matei Visniec had with his readers at the Polirom Publishers’ stand.



    “One of the reasons I write novels is that for me, literary genres are like some kind of children, I love them all, poetry, essay, novel, theater. Especially poetry, ‘cause it’s something I grew up in, theater forged me into what I am today whereas the novel diversified me. I decided to write novels also because I was frustrated with the fact that my plays, in order to make it to their audience, needed intermediaries. They needed a theater manager, stage director, actors, set designers. At a certain time, these intermediaries somehow got at me; I did not like the idea that I was supposed to depend on them all along. I liked the idea of writing, but without the need of intermediaries, so I wrote novels also out of an urge to create a direct bond between me and my readers.”



    One of the most recent series of volumes that have been brought out as part of the Humanitas Publishers’ Contemporary Romanian Writers is Augustin Cupsa’s novel ‘So the grass may grow on us’, launched at the Gaudeamus International Book and Education Fair. Characters in Augustin Cupsa’s novel, Edi, Pisică (Cat), Tobă, (Drum) Mânzu and Tomi brothers live on the outskirts of Craiova, and deal with the poaching of bird species they would later sell in Italy via an underhand connection. Re-told through Pisica’s voice, the most frail and sensitive of the children, the episodes do manage to get a dramatic dimension also revealing the book’s more profound themes, such as the feeling of guilt, doubled by the obsession of escaping to an idealized Italy, the land where dreams come true. Speaking now is essayist Doru Castaian, recommending the novel, ‘So the grass may grow on us’.



    “Augustin Cupsa is one of the best prose writers of today, at least considering those I have read. As far as I know, it took Augustin two years to do the research for his novel. In the book, there is frailty, there is warmth, but at the same time there is some sort of cruelty wrapping everything in some sort of atmosphere and smoke. I for one wouldn’t say that kind of violence is lurching somewhere behind the scenes, waiting to come out in the open. It is the violence of this world, experienced absolutely naturally, it is one of the main ingredients and spices of the world depicted by Augustin Cupsa. There are large categories of readers who will perfectly understand the world depicted in this book. In terms of age bracket, I am part of that category of readers. Furthermore, living in Galati, the life I had there was somewhat comparable to that of the characters depicted by Augustin Cupsa. Of course, people of our generation, living between blocks of flats, where we learned the important things in life in a different way as compared to the world of books, they are very familiar with the fictional world in the book. However, I am not so sure if that fictional world is equally accessible to the children of today, I realized that when I saw cherry plums rotting in the trees. Back in my day it was impossible for them to stay in the trees; I remember we actually had some real traffic of cherry plums, for a bunch of red cherry plums you used to get three sour cherry plums”. (Translated by E. Nasta)

  • The Gaudeamus International Book and Education Fair

    The Gaudeamus International Book and Education Fair

    For this edition, the Casa Radio Publishers has prepared a fresh series of titles that were brought out in its well-established collections. So listeners and readers are regaled with books published in collections such as the Golden Tape Library, The Show of Poetry, Reading in the Dark, the Romanian Poetry Library and the Radio Library. This years’ edition is focusing on the past five decades of Romanian poetry, featuring poems by Ana Blandiana, Nina Cassian, the unparalleled Serban Foarta, who versifies some of I. L. Caragiale’s writings. There are two “textbook” poets, George Cosbuc and G. Topirceanu, re-read by two major poets of present-day Romania, Ioana Nicolaie and Florin Iaru. 115 poems by Ana Blandiana have been brought together on a double CD album and a book and under a suggestive title “Is the flower free? Poems read on the radio”. There are recordings retrieved from Radio Romania’s Golden Tape Library, recorded in more than five decades, between 1965 and 2017. The most recent recording session was made on March 24th, 2017, a day before Ana Blandiana’s 75th birthday anniversary. Here is Ana Blandiana herself, speaking at the launch of the aforementioned audio book.



    “There is something I want to say, especially about the Golden Tape Library, about the place those poems come from, and about how they got there. Before dreaming to become part of the Golden Tape Library, a while back, when I was very young, living in Oradea and listening to the radio. I used to listen to the radio a lot more than I do now, and when I heard that recordings in the Golden Tape Library were broadcast it seemed to me they made the supreme value of everything the radio had to offer. Later, when Emil Buruiana of Radio Romania’s Culture Channel, invited me to make some recordings, I was very excited because I recalled the sensation I had while listening to those programmes. And, irrespective of the managers succeeding each other at the Radio Broadcasting Corporation, as some liked me and others didn’t, I was awfully glad for the privilege to make recordings for the Golden Tape Library. I would describe them as some sort of a history void. And that mainly applies to poems that I very much wanted to be saved in something like Noah’s Ark.”



    Playwright and journalist Matei Visniec was the honorary president of the 2017 edition of the Gaudeamus International Book Fair. In his opening address, Visniec said Romania was extremely competitive from a cultural point of view. Visniec has also hailed the selection of the European Union as the guest of honor for the Gaudeamus International Book Fair. “Romania has its chance, and that chance is culture” playwright Visniec said at a debate series entitled “The Europe of theater and writers — the circulation of artistic values as the backbone of Europe“. The debate was hosted by the “At home in Europe” stand. You’re now invited to listen to an excerpt from a recording that was made during the talks Matei Visniec had with his readers at the Polirom Publishers’ stand.



    “One of the reasons I write novels is that for me, literary genres are like some kind of children, I love them all, poetry, essay, novel, theater. Especially poetry, ‘cause it’s something I grew up in, theater forged me into what I am today whereas the novel diversified me. I decided to write novels also because I was frustrated with the fact that my plays, in order to make it to their audience, needed intermediaries. They needed a theater manager, stage director, actors, set designers. At a certain time, these intermediaries somehow got at me; I did not like the idea that I was supposed to depend on them all along. I liked the idea of writing, but without the need of intermediaries, so I wrote novels also out of an urge to create a direct bond between me and my readers.”



    One of the most recent series of volumes that have been brought out as part of the Humanitas Publishers’ Contemporary Romanian Writers is Augustin Cupsa’s novel ‘So the grass may grow on us’, launched at the Gaudeamus International Book and Education Fair. Characters in Augustin Cupsa’s novel, Edi, Pisică (Cat), Tobă, (Drum) Mânzu and Tomi brothers live on the outskirts of Craiova, and deal with the poaching of bird species they would later sell in Italy via an underhand connection. Re-told through Pisica’s voice, the most frail and sensitive of the children, the episodes do manage to get a dramatic dimension also revealing the book’s more profound themes, such as the feeling of guilt, doubled by the obsession of escaping to an idealized Italy, the land where dreams come true. Speaking now is essayist Doru Castaian, recommending the novel, ‘So the grass may grow on us’.



    “Augustin Cupsa is one of the best prose writers of today, at least considering those I have read. As far as I know, it took Augustin two years to do the research for his novel. In the book, there is frailty, there is warmth, but at the same time there is some sort of cruelty wrapping everything in some sort of atmosphere and smoke. I for one wouldn’t say that kind of violence is lurching somewhere behind the scenes, waiting to come out in the open. It is the violence of this world, experienced absolutely naturally, it is one of the main ingredients and spices of the world depicted by Augustin Cupsa. There are large categories of readers who will perfectly understand the world depicted in this book. In terms of age bracket, I am part of that category of readers. Furthermore, living in Galati, the life I had there was somewhat comparable to that of the characters depicted by Augustin Cupsa. Of course, people of our generation, living between blocks of flats, where we learned the important things in life in a different way as compared to the world of books, they are very familiar with the fictional world in the book. However, I am not so sure if that fictional world is equally accessible to the children of today, I realized that when I saw cherry plums rotting in the trees. Back in my day it was impossible for them to stay in the trees; I remember we actually had some real traffic of cherry plums, for a bunch of red cherry plums you used to get three sour cherry plums”. (Translated by E. Nasta)

  • Piatra Neamt Theater Festival

    Piatra Neamt Theater Festival

    The Piatra Neamt Youth Theater, the place where most great Romanian
    artists have learned their craft, celebrates this year 50 years of bearing this
    name. In all these years, it has supported and promoted young artists, this
    year with the Pleading for You(th) Theater Festival. The 29th
    edition of the festival, held under the leadership of the new director of the
    theater, Gianina Carbunariu, brought the theater even closer to young artists,
    as well as the community. The festival was preceded by an anniversary moment,
    which started with the inauguration of the photo exhibition called Youth
    Theater Actors and Spectators. It featured 46 photos taken during meetings
    between actors from the theater and city inhabitants, with a short caption with
    the background of the people featured.

    Here is Gianina Carbunariu:


    We had the project ‘Youth Theater Actors and Spectators’, as
    part of which we ran 46 interviews with spectators of all ages, with various
    backgrounds, from all walks of life. We didn’t have only spectators, but also
    potential spectators. We spoke to people who had never been to the theater. I
    think this is more interesting, and the most important thing, attracting an audience
    who has never been to the theater. Not because they are not interested, but
    also because of lack of time, or a lack of promotion. The interviews were a
    part of preparing the anniversary moment. We launched there the photo
    exhibition, and we tried to make the project visible beyond the theater foyer,
    with banners reading ‘Actors and Spectators’.


    The photos on the walls of the foyer were made by Mihaela Jipa,
    artistic secretary of the theater, who, together with actors, picked the brains
    of the city’s inhabitants in relation to the theater. Here is Mihaela Jipa:


    Someone said that theater has the role of educating, you find
    yourself in theater, in theater you can be yourself. Theater is like a church,
    when you go there you prepare, inwardly and outwardly. One lady told us that
    her favorite actor was Bogdan Talasman. He gave her an autograph, and wrote
    something on it, which became her motto in life. Everyone we interacted with
    told us something special. It was a lesson for all of us. This closeness, I
    think, was something that changed for both sides the perception on audience,
    art, actors, and the role of theater.


    The stories about the Youth Theater, told at the anniversary moment
    and in the book accompanying the event, were told by the artists who have acted
    here, as well as by the audience. Some members of the audience have been
    witness to the evolution of the theater, while some young people got to know
    it. Here is Gianina Carbunariu once again:


    In July we launched the project ‘Spectator Archive’, inviting
    spectators to send letters telling their stories about the Youth Theater. The
    letters were the basis of the anniversary event. The anniversary moment was the
    engine of this project, and in the future we will be thinking of how to further
    gather materials for the archive, how to motivate the spectators.


    This year’s edition of the Piatra Neamt Theater Festival included a
    section recommended to high school students, and a jury made up of seven high
    school students granted a Popularity Award for the best show in this section.
    Gianina Carbunariu said that the stake in this was not the award in itself, but
    the fact that young people would come to the show, would talk to their peers
    about the shows, would communicate, would learn how to watch a show, would take
    part in discussions with the audience.


    Among the seven young people selected through letters of motivation
    was Francisc Gabriel Lolea, a sophomore at the National College of Information
    Technology. He told us how he got to send the letter, and what his expectations
    were of theater:


    : I took part in the competition called ‘Tea, Poetry, Theater’,
    and I won a meeting with Victor Giurescu, actor with the Youth Theater, and we
    had a conversation. This meeting motivated me, and I told myself I should let
    loose my words and my love of theater. I sent a motivational letter and I was
    pleasantly surprised that I got picked out of 200 applicants. I am surprised by
    the shows that were presented, they have interesting topics, which should
    challenge us to reflection. We need shows to attract young people, since the
    name of the theater is the Youth Theater.


    Catalina Balalau is one of the young actresses with the theater who
    got involved in the projects meant to bring the theater closer to the community:


    We went to the fabric factory, we met there very convivial
    people, we made a tour of the factory, we talked to them. Some were people who
    go to the theater, others didn’t. We talked to them about the reasons why they
    didn’t. It was a wonderful morning both for them and for us. Then we saw them
    again at the inauguration of the ‘Youth Theater Actors and Spectators’
    exhibition, and it was very pleasant. It’s good to talk to each other. Of late,
    the climate has been very friendly here, and spectators are more familiar with
    us. We had a lot of full house shows this season, every weekend. This means we
    must be doing something right. There have been some great initiatives lately.


    Gianina Carbunariu is convinced that theater is not for the elites,
    theater is for everyone.


    I want the community of spectators in Piatra Neamt to come to
    the theater. I want theater to belong to the community in which it exists, and
    for the community to feel that, that the theater belongs to them. And I want
    them to be critical, I want them to have a dialogue with the artists. I want us
    to be together.

  • New launches by Casa Radio Publishers

    New launches by Casa Radio Publishers

    During the George Enescu International Festival, Casa Radio Publishers released new music CDs for music lovers, focusing on Romanian composers and performers, with recordings old and new taken from the Radio Romania tape library. One of them is “George Enescu. The Composer,” a double-CD that brings together 4 of Enescu’s works: Symphony no. 3, the poem “Isis” and Symphonies no. 4 and 5. The recordings on this album, made in 1994-1998, feature outstanding performances by conductors Horia Andreescu, Camil Marinescu and Corneliu Dumbraveanu, the tenor Florin Diaconescu, the Radio Romania National Orchestra and Radio Romania Academic Choir.



    Another exceptional launch by Casa Radio Publishers was Pascal Bentoiu’s “Enescu’s Work in Brief,” comprising a book and 4 CDs, and offering an overview of Enescu’s work, in an attractive manner, by the most prestigious commentator of George Enescu’s music. Composer and musicologist Pascal Bentoiu wrote these commentaries in 2005, on the commemoration of 50 years since Enescu had passed away.



    Music editor Tiberiu Comandasu, from the Casa Radio Publishers, gives us more details: “These are programs aired by Radio Romania Music Channel, providing a look at how Enescu grew as a composer. The commentaries are particularly interesting because, while they are extremely well articulated in terms of music theory, they are expressed in a very accessible manner, so that any music lover without special training in this field can understand them. Another strong point of this release is that it addresses not only the Romanian public, but English speaking readers and listeners as well, which makes it suitable for promotion in the most diverse and large-scale projects promoting the Romanian culture. Buyers will also appreciate not only the commentaries made by Pascal Bentoiu, but also his personal impressions, because Bentoiu attended some of the performances conducted by Enescu himself at the Romanian Athenaeum, and the volume includes these direct testimonials as well.”



    An analyst of Enescu’s works, Pascal Bentoiu is also the one who wrote the instrument sheet music for Enescu’s Symphonies 4 and 5, which the author died before finishing. They were presented during the 1998 George Enescu International Festival, performed by the same Radio Romania National Orchestra, conducted by Corneliu Dumbraveanu and Horia Andreescu respectively. That performance of Symphony no. 5, conducted by Horia Andreescu, also features the Radio Women’s Choir, conducted by Aurel Grigoras, with the tenor Florin Diaconescu as a soloist.



    Also, he reenacted, based on existing sketches, the vocal-symphonic poem “Isis” by George Enescu. Here is the Casa Radio musical editor Tiberiu Comandasu, speaking about this volume: “The introduction is friendly, made up of concise texts, which manage to highlight several fundamental musical principles, enabling those who love Enescu’s music access to its basic principles and theory. The volume also includes elements that render the specific context and atmosphere of Enescu’s creation. One example would be Oedipe at the 1958 George Enescu Festival. In early October 1958, after several glorious performances at the first edition of the Festival, the opera Oedipe had its official premiere, in the presence of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, headed by the sinister Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej. I remember, says Pascal Bentoiu, that we, the poor musicians, composers, critics and other strange beings like that, were exiled in the last gallery of the Opera, as all the other galleries and balconies had been taken by members of the communist party and of the political police, the Securitate. While with the previous editions, the atmosphere had been one of celebration, with prestigious guests attending such as Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrach, Nadia Boulanger, this time everything was ice cold. The comrades did not really understand what that was all about, and our applauses, from the second gallery, had no consistency. In brief, they did not like it, they were actually disturbed by it, in particular the reference to deities in the fourth act. But they really hated the final reconciliation, the idea of guilt being erased and forgiveness prevailing. And so, the performance was banned. A bunch of ruthless criminals banned a masterpiece. And it stayed banned for three years, until some changes were brought to the libretto, and so, also thanks to Brediceanu’s persistence, the performance was eventually resumed. This is just one example of the atmosphere at the first performances of Enescu’s Oedipe.”



    Another release by the Casa Radio publishing house focusing on Enescu’s creation is a CD titled “Marin Cazacu — Dvorak, Enescu”, which includes Symphonie concertante opus 8 for cello and orchestra, which highlights Enescu’s romantic side. Performing is the famous cellist Marin Cazacu, alongside the National Orchestra, under the baton of Horia Andreescu.

  • The International Literature Festival in Timisoara

    The International Literature Festival in Timisoara

    Some 20 writers from 10 countries attended
    the 6th International Literature Festival (FILTM) in the Western
    city of Timisoara over October 25th-28th. Public
    readings, debates and writers’ dialogues with readers took place. There were
    also two new sections added to the festival: a poetry marathon bringing
    together writers from Central and South-Eastern Europe and Literary Death Match
    featuring a number of authors reading from their own writings and then assessed
    by judges. History between memory and fiction was one of the themes proposed
    by the organisers at this year’s edition.

    Poet Robert Serban, the president of
    the festival, explains:


    I think that each of us, writers
    and readers, has a connection with history. This festival is entitled West of
    East/East of West. In Central and Eastern Europe there are stories we should
    know, our stories, the stories of our neighbours, stories we have interacted
    with, stories that have moulded us from a cultural and historical point of view
    and ultimately from a human viewpoint too. Romania has constantly interacted
    with and permanently carried on a dialogue with the neighbouring countries and
    it is very important that we know our partners of dialogue. It is also
    important that we know the people by our side; it is perhaps more important
    than to know people on other continents.


    On the first night of the festival,
    literature lovers in Timisoara had the chance to meet two of the foremost
    Romanian writers, prose writer Gabriela Adamesteanu, the most translated
    contemporary Romanian author, and Ion Vianu, who splits his time between
    Switzerland and Romania.

    Robert Serban tells us more:
    On the first night we brought together established writers. As you
    may know, Gabriela Adamesteanu is one of the most translated Romanian writers.
    She made her debut in the mid 1970s and was very active in the Romanian media
    in the 1990s, shortly after the revolution, as director of Revista 22, being
    also a member of the Group for Social Dialogue. Ion Vianu was one of the few
    courageous people during Ceausescu’s dictatorship in Romania, being among the
    few to show solidarity with the dissident writer Paul Goma. Then he went into
    exile to Switzerland because he risked being the target of retaliation. Writers
    spoke about history and their latest works, the discussion being moderated by
    writer Adriana Babeti, one of the intellectuals Timisoara takes pride in.


    On the second night of the festival, the
    well-known Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan, a veteran of the Euromaidan, and the
    German prose writer of Polish descent Matthias Nawrat talked face to face.
    Tatiana Tibuleac of the Republic of Moldova, the author of one of the best
    novels published in 2016, carried on a face-to-face dialogue with Dan Lungu,
    the most translated Romanian writer of the new generation.


    Before attending the Timisoara Festival,
    where she was presented as a revelation in the contemporary Romanian
    literature, Tatiana Tibuleac had also been invited to the International
    Festival of Literature and Translation in the North-Eastern city of Iasi.
    Tatiana Tibuleac:


    Both the Iasi Festival and the
    Timisoara Festival were like a holiday for me. Besides the unexpected surprise
    of being invited, it was also a great joy to meet so many people I had only
    known from their works and to attend the festivals for the first time as a
    writer because I had only been at such festivals as a journalist. I liked the
    Festival in Timisoara very much for the way it was organised, though there were
    less participants than in the Iasi Festival. The discussions I participated in
    were very important for me to know my position as a writer. The talks I had
    with Ion Vianu and Gabriela Adamesteanu after the festival were also very
    important. Those people wrote books that can be considered real lessons of
    literature. Reading some prose by Gabriela Adamesteanu recently, I noted that
    years ago, she had written stuff that seems new to us today. That is why, it is
    very important to be connected to literature and realise that themes are
    recurrent and we only deal with them in a different way.


    Short and intense, the splendid novel of
    Tatiana Tibuleac shoots to fame a prose writer from whom I have the greatest
    expectations, writes Radu Vancu about her novel The Summer when My Mother’s
    Eyes Were Green brought out by Cartier Publishers. Tatiana Tibuleac again:


    When I started to write, I didn’t
    think it would be a book. I started to write the story of a woman who impressed
    me last summer. But as I was writing, I realised I couldn’t stop and very many
    things on my mind that were somehow hidden, started coming out in that story.
    And then I thought I should carry on to see what would come of it. At a certain
    point, I realised that I had to go through with that book. There were a lot of
    things I had wanted to say but I hadn’t found the form, the opportunity or the
    moment to do it. And that book gave me all that. After I wrote it, I realised
    how much good it had done to me to say those things.


    Appreciated by readers and critics alike,
    Tatiana Tibuleac will see her novel published by the French publishing house
    Syrtes next year.

  • The 2017 National Theatre Festival

    The 2017 National Theatre Festival

    The festival’s theme this year sparked a lively debate between the participants in the festival. We talked about the festival’s programme and how theatre can change the world with Mihai Măniuţiu and Radu Afrim, two directors who had the largest number of performances in the festival. A theatre director, writer and director of the National Theatre in Cluj-Napoca, Mihai Măniuţiu took part in the National Theatre Festival in this triple capacity. He launched a collection of prose and a volume of poems, while the theatre he leads staged two productions by two young directors: The Trial after Franz Kafka, directed by Mihaela Panainte, and Playlist, staged by Tudor Lucanu, which follows a Romanian-Hungarian family between 1989 and 2008. Mihai Măniuţiu is the director with most shows selected for this year’s edition of the National Theatre Festival: two performances staged in Bucharest, The Diary of Robinson Crusoe, after Gellu Naum, at the Odeon Theatre, and Winter by Jon Fosse, at the Nottara Theatre, as well as The Pirandello Cafe staged by the Queen Marie Theatre in Oradea, and Rambuku, by Jon Fosse, staged by the National Theatre in Timisoara. All these performances betray the director’s interest in what lies beyond the perceivable reality.



    Mihai Măniuţiu: “I’m attracted to Jon Fosse because it allows me to enter a parallel universe and to look at the world through a mirror, which I can enter and come out on the other side. I don’t do realist theatre. I believe there’s no such thing as realism. I like to emphasise the unrealism of theatre. In my opinion, theatre is a meditation, a process of reflection, a way of entering parallel worlds, of going beyond the mirror and looking at reality from that perspective. This is, I think, what theatre does and this is what makes it important to people”.



    As for the message “theatre changes the world”, Mihai Maniutiu prefers to say that theatre infuses people with energy: “Theatre gives me energy, an appetite for life. So it can change me, in the sense that it can rid me of depression, it is an act of exorcism, of catharsis. If my shows have this effect on the audience, then I’m happy. I’ve always said that the best theatre play is that which makes you feel more energetic at the end of it. So if a show infuses you with energy, then it was a good show. If you’ve spent all your energy watching the show, then it was a bad one.”



    The selection made this year by the critic Marina Constantinescu also included three performances directed by Radu Afrim. Staged at the Targu Mures National Theatre by the Tompa Miklos Company, the performance The Retro Bird Hits the Building and Falls on the Hot Asphalt is a journey back into 1970s Romania written by Afrim himself, who was a child at the time. Another Afrim show in the festival, Job’s Butcher Shop by Fausto Paravidino, staged by the Vasile Alexandri Theatre in Iasi, speaks of love, religion and capitalism. His third performance, called If We Would Think out Loud, by Adnan Lugonic, staged by the Marin Sorescu Theatre in Craiova, speaks about the problems faced by people today.



    We asked Radu Afrim if he believes that such performances can change the world “The audience, perhaps, a little bit. The Retro Bird is not meant to change mankind. It’s a nostalgic recollection of our childhood. The performance staged in Craiova, yes, it could open some minds. If We Would Think out Loud is about issues facing minority groups from various social categories. I went back to the margins, to the old people, those whom society sometimes fails to accept. I hope the audience empathises with them. It’s one of my ambitions, that of staging plays that open people’s minds. I can at least try to do that. Job’s Butcher Shop centres on a single family and the main problem is the banks. But you never know, every performance may contain something that triggers something in the audience. All my three shows articulate various problems, change something in people. I do believe that theatre can change the world.”



    Radu Afrim came to the National Theatre Festival as a director, but also as a spectator. We asked him how he sees Romanian theatre today: “Half of it continues to be rooted in traditionalism. When it is properly done, it’s not bad. Though I don’t find it particularly challenging. There’s also a trend, coming more from independent theatre, to stage political and social plays. I’m happy they exist, but not all of them are to my taste. They are necessary, however. They are a welcome change. There’s also a new group of theatre makers emerging from Bucharest, but I don’t find their work too shocking and challenging. I only have to look at some photographs of these shows and I can immediately tell they won’t cause a revolution in theatre. I’ve never been interested in productions that cannot be described as an experiment or a revolution, or as taking theatre a few steps further.”

  • The Eurothalia 2017 European Theatre Festival

    The Eurothalia 2017 European Theatre Festival

    In mid October, Timisoara’s German State Theatre played host to the seventh edition of the Eurothalia Festival, an event considered to be one of the most daring and professional manifestations of its kind in Romania. Andreea Andrei is one of the people who selects works for the festival, and, under the theme “Limits”, she gathered together some of the most challenging shows, with major names in European theatre. She told us why she picked the theme Limits for this year’s edition:



    “The Eurothalia Festival has shows that are not necessarily theatre. There are shows with very different aesthetics, and I believe it is important for all of us to ask ourselves the same question — if, aesthetically speaking, there are limits within theatre, if we can overcome these limits, if we can conceive them, accept, or expand them. On the one hand, we live in a context in which around us more and more walls and barriers are being put up. We live in a rather conservative context, in which we refuse to accept differences. And I think it is very important to question these mental limits with our shows. I think that this theme can be found in the 2017 edition in several forms. Throughout this week we talked about physical limits, the limits of the body, about borders, about the limits of verbal communication, about the barrier between the audience and the actors, and about the limits of ethics and morality in theatre.”



    This year, the German State Theatre of Timisoara managed to make the Eurothalia festival a must see for any theatre lover. It is enough to mention that at the festivals closing, Belgian artist Wim Vandekeybus presented with his company, Ultima Vez, the performance “In Spite of Wishing and Wanting”. Created in 1999, this is a very important moment in his lifes work. In January 2016, he resumed staging the show with a completely new cast, men only. The show became an international hit. The well-known symbols of dreams and wishes are stripped of their psychoanalytical clichés, and turned into spectacular dance and poetic language by the Ultima Vez company. Limits are interesting, and can be seen in a negative or positive light, Vandekeybus believes. We asked him about the limits of his show in relation to the audience:



    “I think we tried to express that humans are animals who have a big desire and want to explain everything, and that’s why theatre exists and that’s why it steals, theatre steals from life, and here on the scene we steal from each other. There is one who says something, the other steals the same thing, and then it’s like yeah, but it’s my wish, it’s my desire, it’s my words, you know, who you stole from, nothing its original, that’s a bit of the show about it. It’s a bit of the story of Julio Cortazar, where there is a seller of last words, where normally before you die you speak your last words, your really authentic last words. He sells things that are normally very personal, and I think the time spirit is a bit like this: you need something, you buy it. Now, you can buy love, you can even buy life.”



    This years programme of the Eurothalia European Theatre Festival also included the event series called Eurothalia Xtension, organised with the Timisoara 2021 European Capital of Culture Association. Here is Chris Torch, artistic director of the association:



    “During the start-up phase in Timisoara 2021 we have identified part of our programme which we called X-tensions, X-large and then the word tension and we have turned to events and/or institutions, organizations in Timisoara and asked if we could attach ourselves to their program with something that we felt was important but which was missing in Timisoara, With Eurothalia it was very easy, it was a wonderful relationship, first of all it’s a wonderful festival, and what we could offer them was to bring the Odin Theatre which had not been in Timisoara – they’d been in Romania before. But the reason we brought them was just to show their work, we are not interested in whether we are the first to have shown the Odin Theatre, we are exclusive or something, we were interested in their experiences of learning and also in their experiences in working in Holstebro with the Holstebro Fest Week, which is something they have done 25 years now, but they engaged the entire community in a large-scale week of co-creation with police, with the military, with boy scouts, with all people, with immigrants, with each other. The Odin Theatre manages it and coordinates it artistically, very, very much as a kind of part of their community engagement”



    Odin Theatre, the company that changed the direction of theatre in the second half of the 20th century, and led by director Eugenio Barba, set up shop in the Danish province of Hostelbro, where they started the festival that became a model in terms of community involvement for artists. Andreea Andrei, who selected the works presented at the festival, told us that the Eurothalia Festival has a very open-minded audience, eager to see surprising and aesthetically challenging shows:



    “We had long applause at the end of most shows, the audience has the patience and the curiosity necessary to be open to current topics, social topics that touch all of us right now. I was pleasantly surprised to see that, even though the Eurothalia Festival is orientated towards very different theatre and performing arts genres, the audience was eager to see the shows. I believe this runs contrary to the opinion of many theatre directors and festival directors in Romania, who believe that our audience is very conservative.” (Translated by C. Cotoiu)

  • One Step Behind the Seraphims

    One Step Behind the Seraphims

    ‘One Step Behind the Seraphims,’ Daniel Sandu’s film debut as a feature length director, came to Romanian theaters in late September in 35 towns and cities. Upon popular request, additional screenings were organized. Writer and director Daniel Sandu says that the movie is 80% based on real events, based on his experience as a theology student in the 1990s. Gabriel, played by Stefan Iancu, is a teenager who wants to be a priest and goes to a Christian Orthodox seminary. He tries at first to adapt to that environment, but then realizes the system is totally corrupt and abusive. According to Daniel Sandu, he wanted to make a different kind of Romanian movie.



    Daniel Sandu: “The main condition was to make a Romanian film that the audience wants to see again and again. There are too many cases of Romanian movies, very much appreciated, winning many awards, which, if you have seen once, you don’t necessarily feel like seeing again. At the same time, the movies that inspire me, mainly American, are movies that I can see dozens of times without getting bored. It is a rare sensation, and I hoped this movie would be like that, one that the spectator wants to go back to. We should make a return as an alternative to the famous Romanian minimalist movies, as well as an alternative to American blockbusters, which we cannot match with the means in Romania.



    ‘One Step Behind the Seraphims’ stars Vlad Ivanov, playing the maleficent Father Ivan, and Stefan Iancu, in his first feature length role, playing Gabriel:



    Stefan Iancu: “When I saw that Daniel was interested in this type of American cinema, I was happy, and it made me even more interested in this film. I would like to specify that I don’t have a problem with minimalist film or European film, and he definitely doesn’t either. I like these films, but I feel like watching something different after so much minimalism. I was curious to see a film made on the classic American pattern, but in Romanian. The moment I saw where Daniel wanted to take the movie, I was fascinated. I was very curious how he would manage that. And when I saw the movie, I could not believe that it is so close to what I’d like to see in Romanian cinema. I am very fond of American movies, because I grew up with them.



    Even though the movie is based on the director’s experience as a theology student, Daniel Sandu specified from the start that his intention was not that of attacking the Orthodox Church. In spite of all this, there were priests who reacted on Facebook, warning Christians that ‘One Step Behind the Seraphims’ is slander against the Church. Daniel Sandu explains:



    Daniel Sandu: “We expected reactions like this, these were subjective reactions from some clerics. It is not an official point of view. What is curious is the fact that these reactions came out two weeks before the movie was out. Those people did not know what they were talking about, and yet they still expressed an opinion about the move, and criticize it in the most ‘Orthodox’ way possible. The strangest pieces of criticism were also the funniest, they referred to me and to the protagonist as Satan. When I decided to put this story into a movie, I did not intend it to be a story that would create a publicity circus. The scandal emerged around the story and due to ignorance of its details.



    Stefan Iancu told us about his experience as a feature length actor:



    Stefan Iancu: ‘Photography was done in three chunks, ten days a piece, so we can see the passage of time, from one season to the next. The most difficult part for me, was trying to build a history for Gabriel. Gabriel begins in a certain way, has certain ideas, then starts changing. And because we did not film in chronological order, I had to do takes for the end of the movie, when Gabriel had to be and look one way, and then I would do a take from the beginning of the movie, where I was supposed to wear glasses, with my hair done differently. And it was not always difficult going from one Gabriel to another.



    ‘One Step Behind the Seraphims’ also features Ali Amir, Alfred Wegeman, Stefan Mihai, Niko Becker, Ilie Dumitrescu Jr., Cristian Bota, Marian Popescu and Radu Botar.


    (translated by: Calin Cotoiu)