\n\tIn early December 2012, the central Romanian city of Cluj Napoca hosted the 3rd \u201cInterferences\u201d International Theatre Festival, organised by the Cluj Hungarian State Theatre.<\/p>\n
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\n\tThe director of the theatre, Tompa Gabor, attempted a few conclusions for that year\u2019s edition:<\/p>\n
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\n\tTompa Gabor: \u201cThere have been several remarkable performances. We managed to offer the public a number of diverse shows, which seek to recreate or rethink the relationship between music and theatre, because this is the central theme of this festival, \u2018Dialogue between Voices.\u2019 We were careful not to have simultaneous shows, so that everybody may see all the plays. I was happy to see that, mid-way into the Festival, the number of viewers was already higher than in the previous editions \u2026 I feel that, for the first time, the people of Cluj Napoca were more interested, more curious than they used to be. Some shows were sold out online, even before the festival began. Stage director Purcarete\u2019s shows, \u2018The King Dies\u2019 and \u2018Gulliver\u2019s Travels\u2019 set the record in this respect.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tThe show \u201cThe King Dies\u201d\/ \u201cLe Roi se meurt\u201d, which was quite popular among experts and the general public alike, was staged by Silviu Purcarete at \u201cLes Arts et Mouvants\u201d, France. The question that stage director Silviu Purcarete asks in his play, which brings Eugene Ionesco\u2019s absurd theatre closer to the public, is \u201cWhat kind of seeds does a dying man sow?\u201d Here is Silviu Purcarete:<\/p>\n
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\n\tSilviu Purcarete: \u201cI find the text quite clear and very well written. Of course, it is a bit excessive, in quantitative terms, and we had to cut out a lot of it for the show. We focused on story-telling, on making a show which is quite basic, almost without a stage set, with just a few props… The play relies on what the text actually offers, we needn\u2019t look for anything else. The theme is already complex enough, because it discusses something that is not part of a shared experience, something all of us will go through alone. Trying to complicate that would have been too much. The play is about the mystery, agony and inscrutability of this individual experience, as well as about how this reflects on the others. And this is, most of the times, grotesque and comical.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tIn a year that UNESCO dedicated to the great Romanian playwright I. L. Caragiale, the Interferences Festival was bound to include performances based on Caragiale\u2019s works. The Cluj Napoca State Theatre, the host of the event, presented a show called \u201cLeonida Gem Session\u201d, adapted by Tompa Gabor and Andras Visky from the works of Caragiale. The play is structured into three parts. The first one includes files from the archives of the communist political police, the Securitate, the second one comprises the actual play written by Caragiale, \u201cDon Leonida and the Right-Wing Conspiracy,\u201d while in the third part, a character from the play, a maid called Safta, is turned into a symbol of ultimate reality. Andras Visky explains:<\/p>\n
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\n\tAndras Visky: \u201cWhen reality invades this media-dominated world, this world must be confronted with a marginalized reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tDirector Tompa Gabor explains where the idea of the performance came from.<\/p>\n
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\n\tTompa Gabor: \u201cRe-reading \u2018Conu\u2019 Leonida\u2019 , the only of Caragiale\u2019s plays that I had not directed, I understood that it is actually divided in two. The first part is about glorifying the revolution, a revolution of words rather than a real one, and the second one is about the fear of a real revolution. And then the play started to talk to me about the need to reflect on the 23 years that have passed since December 1989. In order for us to get free and prevent us from being stifled by this recognition, we should carry through the process of rendering our near past transparent. I thought that the characters could be some code names for a social class that dominated the last decades before 1989 and which, I believe, has not totally disappeared, because we have not publicly ended the process of x-raying this phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tThe 2012 Interferences Theatre Festival, had the logo dialogue among voices\u201d, so musicians were among the guests. Composer Vasile Sirli, the one who wrote the music for both The King Dies\u201d and \u201cLeonida Gem Session\u201d, talked at a meeting with the public about his interest in theatre music.<\/p>\n
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\n\tVasile Sirli: \u201cI\u2019m interested in getting to know people through music and letting them enrich me. I work with them as if I worked with musicians, with people who are specialists in literature, of which I know almost nothing. I\u2019m interested in their musicality, even when they do not have an ear for music, I\u2019m interested in their rhythm, even when they can\u2019t make the distinction between one and the other. I\u2019m interested in providing them with some elements of musical logic. And I think it\u2019s very important for actors, the director, the stage director, to all participate in a show where the music is adopted. I\u2019ve always seen myself as adopted by theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tIn figures, the 2012 Interferences International Theatre Festival was: 13 days of events, 21 performances, 9 countries. However, the program also included concerts, book launches, workshops, photo and musical installations exhibitions, discussions with the public. The third edition, dedicated to the dialogue between theatre and music, was also a platform for the performances given by the members of the European Theatres\u2019 Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In early December 2012, the central Romanian city of Cluj Napoca hosted the 3rd \u201cInterferences International Theatre Festival, organised by the Cluj Hungarian State Theatre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":157101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44685],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-157100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-of-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n