{"id":161745,"date":"2017-11-18T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devrri.freshlemon.ro\/news-and-current-affairs\/newsflash\/the-2017-national-theatre-festival-161745.html"},"modified":"2024-02-19T14:49:50","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T12:49:50","slug":"the-2017-national-theatre-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/en\/features-and-reports\/world-of-culture\/the-2017-national-theatre-festival-id161745.html","title":{"rendered":"The 2017 National Theatre Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The festival\u2019s theme this year sparked a lively debate between the participants in the festival. We talked about the festival\u2019s programme and how theatre can change the world with Mihai M\u0103niu\u0163iu 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 M\u0103niu\u0163iu 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: <em style=line-height: 1.6em;>The Trial<\/em> after Franz Kafka, directed by Mihaela Panainte, and <em style=line-height: 1.6em;>Playlist<\/em>, staged by Tudor Lucanu, which follows a Romanian-Hungarian family between 1989 and 2008. Mihai M\u0103niu\u0163iu is the director with most shows selected for this year\u2019s edition of the National Theatre Festival: two performances staged in Bucharest, <em style=line-height: 1.6em;>The Diary of Robinson Crusoe<\/em>, after Gellu Naum, at the Odeon Theatre, and <em style=line-height: 1.6em;>Winter<\/em> by Jon Fosse, at the Nottara Theatre, as well as <em style=line-height: 1.6em;>The Pirandello Cafe <\/em>staged by the Queen Marie Theatre in Oradea, and <em style=line-height: 1.6em;>Rambuku<\/em>, by Jon Fosse, staged by the National Theatre in Timisoara. All these performances betray the director\u2019s interest in what lies beyond the perceivable reality.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Mihai M\u0103niu\u0163iu: \u201cI\u2019m 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\u2019t do realist theatre. I believe there\u2019s 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\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p> As for the message \u201ctheatre changes the world\u201d, Mihai Maniutiu prefers to say that theatre infuses people with energy: \u201cTheatre 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\u2019m happy. I\u2019ve 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\u2019ve spent all your energy watching the show, then it was a bad one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p> 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 <em>The Retro Bird Hits the Building and Falls on the Hot Asphalt<\/em> is a journey back into 1970s Romania written by Afrim himself, who was a child at the time. Another Afrim show in the festival, <em>Job\u2019s Butcher Shop<\/em> by Fausto Paravidino, staged by the Vasile Alexandri Theatre in Iasi, speaks of love, religion and capitalism. His third performance, called <em>If We Would Think out Loud<\/em>, by Adnan Lugonic, staged by the Marin Sorescu Theatre in Craiova, speaks about the problems faced by people today.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>We asked Radu Afrim if he believes that such performances can change the world \u201cThe audience, perhaps, a little bit. <em>The Retro Bird<\/em> is not meant to change mankind. It\u2019s a nostalgic recollection of our childhood. The performance staged in Craiova, yes, it could open some minds. <em>If We Would Think out Loud<\/em> 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\u2019s one of my ambitions, that of staging plays that open people\u2019s minds. I can at least try to do that. <em>Job\u2019s Butcher Shop <\/em>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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p> 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: \u201cHalf of it continues to be rooted in traditionalism. When it is properly done, it\u2019s not bad. Though I don\u2019t find it particularly challenging. There\u2019s also a trend, coming more from independent theatre, to stage political and social plays. I\u2019m happy they exist, but not all of them are to my taste. They are necessary, however. They are a welcome change. There\u2019s also a new group of theatre makers emerging from Bucharest, but I don\u2019t 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\u2019t cause a revolution in theatre. I\u2019ve never been interested in productions that cannot be described as an experiment or a revolution, or as taking theatre a few steps further.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 27th edition of the National Theatre Festival was held under the motto Theatre Changes the World<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":161746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44685],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-161745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-of-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The 2017 National Theatre Festival - Radio Romania International<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/en\/features-and-reports\/world-of-culture\/the-2017-national-theatre-festival-id161745.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The 2017 National Theatre Festival - 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