Romanian Theatre Research Articles

Feminism and Antifeminism in Romanian Theatre Criticism in Interwar Years

In Romania, during the interwar years, it seems that theatre reviews – much like theatre criticism in general, narrowly as it was and sometimes continues to be defined in Romania – was only considered legitimate if signed by men. There were but two timid exceptions, two female voices whose writings were partially recovered as late as 1978-1983 and have been insufficiently explored since: the poet and memoirist Otilia Cazimir, who worked as an inspector for the Ministry of Arts’ Theatre Directorate for a decade, and the aesthetics professor Alice Voinescu. This paper is an attempt to turn the spotlight not onto the two writers’ theatre-related activity, but rather to the way they engaged, in writing or in action, with the thorny issues of feminism. Their opposing standpoints – a feminism of emancipation vs. an anti-feminist type of feminism – still proves emblematic to our day for the specific way in which socio-cultural mentalities and perceptions on women’s condition in 20th-century Romania were preserved; it appears that post-socialist theatre criticism, especially from the decade 2000-2010, coalesced around the same positions.

The Beginnings of Stage Directing in the Romanian Theatre. A Historical View

Lacking a consolidated tradition in the art of stage acting and directing, the Romanian national theatres, which had only existed for a few decades, faced a series of legislative, administrative and aesthetic reforms at the beginning of the 20th century. These reforms aimed to acclimatize the most important novelties of modern performance, just emerging on Western stages. Such changes strongly impacted the conservative world of declamation and rhetoric, still indebted to the Romanticist school of theatrical interpretation. This paper aims to provide a cultural-historical perspective on the generational and artistic conflict that led to the modernization of the Romanian mise-en-scène and to the consolidation of the director’s status, in the “century of directing”, focusing on Alexandru Davila’s contribution to the process. Keywords: Romanian theatre, directing, scenography, performing, realism, modernism.

Perioada nord-americană

The purpose of this article is to bring to the forefront the theatrical activity carried out for eight years by Theodor-Cristian Popescu in the North American cultural landscape. Following the path of the Romanian theatre director, the article presents the performances he directed during his master’s degree at the University of Montana and also the theatrical events he staged in Montréal and Toronto, once he moved to Canada. Drawing on a variety of sources (press articles – reviews, interviews, press releases –, as well as program booklets, grant applications or evaluations of his teaching activity), the article aims to provide the Romanian public with a detailed presentation of Theodor-Cristian Popescu’s theatrical activity abroad (theatrical animator, director, teacher).

Театральна діяльність на Буковині в умовах Другої світової війни (1941-1944 рр.)

The purpose of the study is to analyze the conditions of theater activities in Bukovyna during the German-Soviet war, based on the available sources and existing developments of theater history researchers. The methodology of the study is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, system and the use of methods of analysis and synthesis, problem-chronological, biographical, historical-genetic ones. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time in Ukrainian historiography, the state of theatre activities during World War II, specifically the period of the German-Soviet campaign in 1941-1944, of the Romanian theater in Bukovyna was comprehensively analyzed. Conclusions. Thus, during the German-Soviet war, the theatrical activities remained an important component of the cultural space of Chernivtsi, a means of citizens' education. Despite the restoration of the National Theater, theater troupes from various cities in Romania, mainly Bucharest and Iași, presented their activities in the city and the region. The repertoire of the theaters included both world classics and Romanian drama, as well as plays on historical and patriotic topics. The theater faced the task of eliminating the 1940-1941 gap in cultural ties. Sometimes theatrical events carried some propaganda that was considered acceptable in wartime conditions. There was a practice of theatre tours in the cities of Bukovyna and Northern Bessarabia, which took place in 1942-1943. During the war, the fates of Romanian actors and actors of the Chernivtsi Ukrainian Regional Theater were different. Some actors were arrested by the Soviet authorities at the beginning of the German-Soviet war and in its final period.

Verbatim Theatre: Anguish and Theatrical Truths

In recent years, in the Romanian theater space, more and more productions have appeared that are based on verbatim plays and that successfully fit into this category. The verbatim technique works directly with the stories of ordinary people, people who are given a voice through art. More often than not, these voices tell haunting and unusual stories – stories full of anguish, social or political injustices, or painful and unknown truths. The responsibility of the verbatim creator is immense, in addition to presenting the story of his subject word for word, he must be careful not to alter the truths and authentic elements that underlie it. This theatrical technique assumes a huge responsibility on the part of the theater artist, and more than that, it has a specific and extremely rigorous methodology. For this reason, it is important to understand how this technique works, and especially, how a theater artist should relate to it.

Staging Molière in Communist Romania. A Quantitative Diorama

"This paper accompanies a dataset containing information regarding the stagings of Molière’s plays during the 42 years of the communist regime in Romania, from 1948 to 1989. It offers a quantitative overlook of 120 productions, through statistics and visualizations, in an attempt to make sense of the data and find trends and directions otherwise difficult to detect. The data was collected from a public repertory database, supplemented by information from the theaters’ archives and reviews from period magazines and newspapers. We have strived to let the data ‘speak,’ minimizing speculative commentary to where we felt it was needed to add colour or emphasize certain possible patterns. For network graphing and analysis, we used Gephi 0.9 software, and for the analysis and visualization of geospatial data, QGIS 3. Data processing and graph generation were carried out using Microsoft Excel. Keywords: Molière, communist Romania, data, quantitative survey, Romanian theatre system. "

Theatre of the Nation

This study investigates the way in which Romanian theatre before World War I contributed to the formation of Romanian national consciousness and to the articulation of the ideal of a unitary national state. My analysis addresses the historical drama and dramatic allegories of the nation, with special focus on the drama of the early 20th century (and on the works of playwrights such as Alexandru Davila, Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, Nicolae Iorga, Zaharia Bârsan, Ștefan Octavian Iosif and Victor Eftimiu). As a related topic, I address the rise of extremist nationalism in pre-war Romanian society. Mainly resorting to discourse analysis and close reading, I demonstrate the importance of theatre in the crystallisation of the Romanians’ national-identity assertiveness, which culminated, politically speaking, in the achievement of the Great Union of 1918.

"On Theatre-Mirror, Theatre-Hammer, Theatre-Veil in the Romanian Theatre"

"Starting from the Shakespearian observation that the theatre seems to be a mirroring of its age, we notice how in the The Theatre magazine – published from 1956 to 1989 – this allegory is treated. At the same time, we turn our attention to the way in which this allegory is appreciated by the Romanian theatre people nowadays. At the same time, we investigate the way in which the socialist-realism was aesthetically and ideologically evaluated in the current Romanian theatre and in the second half of the twentieth century. Analyzing the moments when the social reality of the present is the source of inspiration for the theatrical performance, we notice that not the reality of the present is reflected scenically, but a reality projected into an immediate future. In a first stage, we conclude that what leads to this perspective is how reality is understood. In the next stage, we identify a few points of view that challenge the allegory of the theatre as a mirror that tries to replace the mirror with hammer, veil, and we thus notice that the most important perspective from which theatre must be approached as a reflection of a reality of the present time is that of identifying and recognizing the characteristics of this present."

Multiplied illusions

"Drug use – a personal and social challenge; a form of manifestation of the level of awareness. Often described – in the media, specialist works or in popular culture – as a special, exotic experience, that can tempt, through its illusory effects, becoming a dangerous and destructive way through which people try to escape stress, anxiety or other emotional problems. These roots, however, also allow the use of art in preventing the consumption of narcotics and psychotropic substances (through awareness of the risks), but also in therapy. Theater can be (and is) used as a method to raise public awareness of drug use issues and educate/warn them in a variety of ways – presenting performances (centred on this topic), organizing debates, and after performances, workshops. Even if we have the impression that everything started now, in reality, even in Romanian society, this theme has been present for more than a century. Sorana Țopa has been sending such signals since 1928, in a subtle way, by means of a little-known dramatic text, Merchants of Illusions, which invites reflection on what (in a standard formula) we call today the risk of drug consumption. The history of Romanian theater still has many lessons to offer."

"Fear and pity: about the tragedy’s resurrection in the post-pandemic era"

"The present article aims to discuss two theatre adaptations of the ancient tragedy as they were interpreted by the British director and playwright Robert Icke: Oresteia and Oedipus. Introduced in the Romanian theatre landscape by Andrei Șerban, who staged Oedipus at the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj, Icke proves to be one of the most interesting recent dramaturgical discoveries. I have chosen to discuss the two plays in relation with the practitioners’ option to rethink the tragedy for nowadays audiences. In the context of pandemic and of the war so close to the Romanian borders, the tragedy finds inevitable connections with the contemporary spectators. It ends up being perceived on a deeper emotional level, rather than an intellectual one. This leads us to conclude that we are witnessing a new stage of the rebirth of the tragedy as a genre, from an aesthetic and cultural point of view."

Major Tamás: Téli rege, 1969 – Philther-előadáselemzés

The analysis of W. Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale", directed by Tamás Major in 1969, uses the Philther methodology. The paper has six chapters, each of which examines the play from a different point of view. Major’s The Winter’s Tale is particularly interesting because, apart from this performance, there was no other example of a Hungarian guest director directing at a Romanian theatre until the 1989 regime change. Another important fact about this show: it is one of the first moves made by Mária Bisztrai as a director, who happens to be the first and only female director at the Cluj-Napoca Hungarian theatre. The setting can be seen as the canvas for the Budapest performance similarly directed by Major.

Felix Alexa – un „clasic” de la debut

Felix Alexa, theatre director and professor at “I. L. Caragiale” University of Theatre and Film, made his directorial debut in the early 1990s, during a time when the convulsive realities and energies of post-decembrist Romanian society were also producing radical changes in the artistic field. Theatre, for instance, was marked by the ascendance of a climate of effervescence, of quests, and of symptoms of hope indissociable from the sense of freedom and the disappearance of censorship. It is in this context that Felix Alexa has the opportunity to work in Paris as assistant director for Peter Brook, a moment with important consequences in his formative process. Alexa’s aesthetic discourse is characterized by his deciphering of a play’s content from the standpoint of certain personal themes and their present adherences, as well as by the equilibrium and formal rigour of stage composition. It probes the structure of the situations and of the characters’ psychologies. It does not experiment outside of the texts engaged, but within them, modifying their semiotics based on what it wants to convey and not on how it is conveyed. Its modernity arises from the substance of the dramaturgical work, whether classic or contemporary, from its value and message. “Theatre is tradition. Each generation climbs on the shoulders of the previous one”, stresses Alexa, claiming as his model Liviu Ciulei, who argued that “there is no irreconcilable contradiction between tradition and innovation, that everything can be grafted onto the predecessors’ legacy”. Thus, the “lessons” bequeathed by two remarkable personalities, Ciulei and Brook, assimilated creatively and not imitatively, define an authentic and original directorial universe in the Romanian theatre, establishing Alexa as a high-profile director.

Volum

This study centers upon Martyr, a Marius von Mayenburg play, staged in 2014 at the National Theatre in Târgu-Mureș by the Romanian theatre director Theodor-Cristian Popescu. Using specific artistic tools, the director manages to transform a closed play into an open work of art. The result can be classified as an efficient performance. Confronting this performance with the local theatrical environment, the result cannot be considered a cultural success.

Cotidianul „Steaua roșie”, observator al activității Teatrului Studio în perioada comunistă

The informative publication “Steaua roșie” (“The Red Star”) appeared between 1952 and 1989 in Târgu-Mureș, generating, through its articles, a detailed inventory of the activity within the “Szentgyörgyi István” Theatre Institute, an aspect which transforms the publication into a vital documentary source. The history of the “Studio” Theatre, recorded by the newspaper during its almost four decades of daily appearance, presents a high relevance because, generally speaking, during the communist period, the cultural articles were the only ones managing to limit the ideological invasion in the journalistic pieces, unlike the informative, political or sports articles. Thus, “Red Star” monitored and described in detail all the events, the personalities, the artistic productions and the institutional changes that marked the existence of the “Studio” Theatre, using a different perspective from the strictly professional one offered by the theatrical publications of the period. This day-to-day perspective outlines the ”Studio” Theatre’s profile as an institution that influenced the development of Romanian theatre and theatrical pedagogy, but also as a space of communication and expression for the entire local community.

The Transylvanian Postdramatic Theatre of Radu Afrim

One of the leading figures of contemporary Romanian theatre, director Radu Afrim, has been working with Hungarian companies for more than a decade, producing more than a dozen performances, which has its own significance under the circumstances that in his director’s theatre, the text is never taken for granted, be it a pre-existing and pre-chosen dramatic text or the product of a collective effort. Nevertheless, due to his peculiar, non-hierarchical handling of all the theatrical devices, where equally intensive attention is accorded to each one of them, his productions always fall under the category of postdramatic theatre. We are dealing here with two aspects of contemporary Eastern European theatre: the blurring lines between director’s theatre and collective production and the multiethnic character of it. As an aesthetic experience, his performances may be best described using Gilles Deleuze’s terms of aspects and perceptions.

About theatre with love

Anaid Tavitian, a well-known theatre critic and literary secretary dedicated her book `Agatha Nicolau – Din dragoste. Antologie teatrologică` to an actress whose long career in various Romanian theatres has become an example of devotion for the words recited on a stage and emotional involvment of an artist for each part. Agatha Nicolau played in theatres in Timişoara, Arad, Constanţa and Bucharest and received numerous prizes and distinctions for her interpretation. She had recitals of highly professional levels and they have been appreciated by critics and public. The confessions of her colleagues showed their esteem for her entire career. The world of theatre, with actors, directors, scriptwriters and playwrights is brought in front of readers by Agatha Nicolau who was interviewed by Anaid Tavitian, who has, at her turn, a very good knowledge of this field. The portraits of the stage colleagues complete an approach of high intellectual level, focused on the Romanian theatre and its personalities.

The Acting Teachers – The Usual Students

During the last 10 years the field of Acting has witnessed an unprecedented development in Romania – now it encompasses teaching, personal development, sometimes even therapy; it has blended well with the visual field in Installations and, due to pandemic situation, it has engulfed the virtual medium. Therefore, Acting has changed – nowadays, the purpose of an Acting School is not that of forging masters of Acting, but of guiding and supporting the discovery and designing of the unicity, creativity and personality of each and every artist. Romanian theatre has fought many battles along the way – that with censorship, that with mass media and now a completely new and insidious challenge – the fight with the present sanitary situation. Nowadays, the theatres, either conventional or unconventional, are closed due to various reasons: the political wage of war, the conflict between the vaccine followers and the vaccine opponents, the gulf between the majority parties and the minorities, various restrictions and our own personal fears. Thus, nowadays artists should prove, once more, their amazing capacity of adapting themselves to these conditions. And, if our times are confusing for artists, they are even more bewildering for the Acting teachers. An Acting teacher that is a former graduate of a 4 year course of study in a form of 5-6 fellow mates, that, most likely, has a job as an actor in a National Theatre, is supposed now to teach in Bologna system to a double number of students than the one he was used to (and that even online) and to prepare them for a very crowded and diversified market place. So, what is to be done on part of the Acting teacher?

Embracing The Phantom Or The Imaginary Show

Abstract Hundreds or maybe thousands of ghosts haunt our theatre. When I say ours, I do not want to refer to the Romanian one, but neither to the territory proposed and researched by Monique Borie in her already famous book dedicated to spectres. All my shows, and here we talk about more than seventy performances, now appear like ghosts to me. They were played sometime and constitute, not only for me, but for thousands, or tens of thousands of spectators, memories, true glimpses of moments, sometimes beautiful, sometimes sad, relics that begin to fade into a mnemonic mechanism of decomposition of the sensations once arisen by the scenic action and the image proposed through the presence of the actor. Thus, the spirit places the theatre under the protective wing of the document-memory, remaking, for those who were not in the position of witnesses, the way of late understanding for the one who can only imagine. The Romanian theatre does not have too many moments, perhaps astral, that could elucidate us on a certain artistic approach or against another. Too often the document-memory is activated by chronicles that bear far too many subjective opinions or timid analyzes on the work of a profession that deserves more in this regard. A very important director of the end of the last century, a student of Professor Radu Penciulescu, defined his own phantasma through the imaginary shows he left us. Blessed is he. Aureliu Manea’s writing allows us to imagine more than the chronicles of his shows played on Romanian stages could do. The document-memory of these documents concerns me and holds me in an embrace that I feel violently present.

An overview of the Open Scene of the Village and the World

What should a book about theater look like? How about the one about a category of theatrical performances in the ethnological dimension? Research project of the Institute of Romanian Philology B. P. Hasdeu stimulates research into socio-cultural contexts and European connections, and Eugeniu Coseriu urges us to open up universally - each with his own field of research. In the sub-theme National Folklore Corpus, the popular (folkloric) theater is my area of expertise and the Latin phrase Theatrum mundi = The spectacle of the world. The world seen as a spectacle it is the universal concept of theatricality. The definite sign of the theater is the character. In illo tempore, man invented an incredible, saving theater, modeling fictional characters from the most abundant matter - from what he did not know, out of ignorance. For phenomena that man could not explain in the beginning, he shaped ... spirits, supernatural beings, elves. The nebula of imaginary characters fell into two broad categories – the good and the evil ones. In order to understand the diversity of masks and clothing of modern times, it is imperative to accept a scaffolding of archetypal dichotomies, resulting from this modeling of beginnings: life - death, good - evil, beauty - ugly, God - Satan, love - hate , wealth - poverty, Christ - Herod, the wise – the stupid ... All the characters - not just from the theater of any kind - are derived from these archetypal dichotomies, and the triggering axial motives, in which it manifests itself in tension, are love, fertility, fecundity, disease, healing, death, resurrection. The Romanian folk theater is part of the same spectacle of the world, and the eternal scene is on the doorstep of the house with a spinster to be married. More important deduction - this is also the engine that sets the characters and the scene in motion: the love that moves the sky and ... the scene.

Using Archive Work in Live Stage-Directing

"This paper will present in a narrative form the documentary and the creative process followed by four young theatre directors while studying at the University of Arts from Tirgu-Mures as part of their master class program in Theatre Directing. Firstly, the reader will be familiarized with one of this master class curriculum’s assignments designed by Theodor-Cristian Popescu: to deliver a performative essay using as a starting point one famous Romanian theatre performance. Secondly, this presentation will record, for each of these students, the path from documents and archives to their exam/performance. The purpose will not be to evaluate or investigate the artistic value of these products. The focus will be guided towards the students’ approach while accessing archive documents and the transformations of all these materials in an artistic concept. Keywords: 1960s and 1970s Romanian theatre performances, master class curriculum, Theodor-Cristian Popescu, University of Arts from Tirgu-Mures, performative essay. "