Over January 19th and 27th, 2017, the ‘Mihai Eminescu’ National Theater
\nin Chisinau was on tour in Romania, as part of a project titled Romanian
\nTheater in Bucharest, Iasi and Chisinau. It was a project that took off at the
\ninitiative of the National Theater in the Republic of Moldova, which in 2014
\nopened the season of the National Theater in Bucharest with its stage
\nperformances. A week later, the Bucharest National Theater traveled to Chisinau
\nfor a week of Romanian theatre in Moldova.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Such an exchange of tours has become
\nnormal and even tradition, according to actor and stage director Petru Hadarca,
\nwho is also the manager of the Mihai Eminescu National Theater:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
It has enjoyed
\nand still enjoys success. The audience has its own expectations, in Chisinau as
\nwell as in Bucharest. We usually arrive during the week when the Unification of
\nthe Romanian Principalities is celebrated in Bucharest and Iasi. And for the
\nweek when Bessarabia’s Unification with Romania is celebrated, on March 27, the
\nNational Theater in Bucharest and the Vasile Alecsandri theater in Iasi come to
\nus. Theater doesn’t need borders. This is the Romanian theater of Bucharest -
\nIasi – Chisinau. Plays are in Romanian. As Nichita Stanescu used to say ‘our
\ncountry is the Romanian language’.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The
\n‘Mihai Eminescu’ National Theater in Chisinau has presented in Bucharest
\nand Iasi three successful stage performances of its most recent productions.
\nOne of the them is In Your Charming Eyes’, directed by Alexandu Vasilache,
\nafter short stories by Gib Mihaescu (1894 – 1953), who used to be a member of
\nthe artistic committee of the National Theater in Chisinau. The other two premieres
\nbrought on tour in Romania are Anything to Declare? by Georges Feydeau,
\ndirected by Petru Had\u00e2rc\u0103 and The Big House
\nby Ion Dru\u0163\u0103, directed by Alexandru Cozub.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The actors of the
\nNational Theater in Chisinau perform only in Romanian and their repertoire
\ncomprises various pieces of world drama. With details on that, here is stage
\ndirector Petru Had\u00e2rc\u0103 again:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
We try to
\ntackle mostly topics related to us, to Chisinau and Bessarabia. Since it is a
\nnational theater, 80 per cent of the plays are part of the national drama
\nrapertoire. We try to cater for the taste of various categories of audience. We
\nalso have a show created by the theater’s young actors, on a tough, dramatic
\ntopic in our people’s history, based on the testimonies collected by Alexei
\nVakulovski, ‘Children of the famine’.
\nIt is a stage performance dealing with the famine of 1946-1947, during the
\ncommunist regime, when around 500 thousand Bessarabians died. And this is a
\npainful thing, by all means. And I take a look at our audience. There are
\npeople in the audience who have gone through that experience. They were
\nchildren back then. And they come to watch the play with a lot of interest. It
\nis a memory exercise. I have to say that the audience in Chisinau is really
\nspecial, we love them just as much as they love us. Unfortunately, there are
\npeople in our society that make a spectacle of themselves in Parliament, on
\ntelevision. We laugh and say that they are those who are acting, while, we on
\nstage, are just being natural.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
During the tour in
\nBucharest, Petru Hadarca also held a conference titled Documents, an invincible
\npower against historical speculations. Two volumes were launched at the
\nconference, comprising documents about the history of the Chisinau theatre,
\ngathered from the Bucharest National Archives and the library of the Romanian
\nAcademy. They are titled The Genesis of the National Theatre in Chisinau:
\n1918-1960 by Iurie Colesnic, and A Chronicle of the Mihai Eminescu National
\nTheatre in Chisinau: 1818-1930, a volume edited by actor and director Petru
\nHadarca., the general manager of the Mihai Eminescu National Theatre. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here is
\nPetru Hadarca himself:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Each time I
\nthink about those documents, I feel joyful like a child, because I discovered
\nin the archives the deed for the setting up of the National Theatre in October
\n1921, bearing the header and the stamp of the of the National Theatre in
\nChisinau. It’s great! Because, in the Soviet period, historians used to say the
\nbuilding hosting the theater had been erected by two Soviet architects between
\n1953-1954. But the documents that we have found tell a different story. In
\n1930, the theatre was already up, designed just like the Athenaeum in
\nBucharest. They speak of successes different from what they were in the
\ninterwar period, things that were taboo before 1990 and even after. Now that these
\nbooks have been published, a certain part of the press has already started to
\nattack us, to contest us and impose their own point of view, because there are
\nstill many people who choose to forget real history and remember only what they
\nwant. What I have gathered in these books makes me feel proud and I can say
\nthat the National Theatre has had a very beautiful history. It’s for the first
\ntime this year that I’ve said how many seasons there have been, because we
\ndidn’t know before. So, for the first time I said ‘This is the 95th
\nseason of the theatre’ . <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The Mihai Eminescu
\ntheatre in Chisinau has two halls: the Big Hall, with 400 seats, and the Studio
\nHall, with 100 seats. Although it is a national theatre, only 80 % of the
\nbudget comes from the state, the rest being covered by money obtained from
\nselling tickets and private funding. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over January 19th and 27th, 2017, the ‘Mihai Eminescu’ National Theater in Chisinau was on tour in Romania, as part of a project titled Romanian Theater in Bucharest, Iasi and Chisinau.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":161366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44685],"tags":[44830,44829],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-161365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-of-culture","tag-bucharest-national-theatre","tag-mihai-eminescu-national-theatre-in-chisinau"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n