The Cherry Orchard by A.P. Chekhov, translated by Maria Rotar, opens at Cluj-Napoca National Theatre 27 April 2014, at 7 pm, in the Main Hall.
This innovative and impressive approach to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard marks a double celebration: 110 years since the play’s premiere on 17 January 1904 at the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Stanislavski, and at the same time, 110 since the playwright’s death (2 June 1904).
A symphony in white would be the proper name for this orchard because the stage is inundated by the color white: transparent white curtains which circumscribe the performance spaces, white flower petals fill the cherry orchard, being scattered both on stage and on the runway that leads to the auditorium. The auditorium chairs are also white, thus allowing the spectators to take part in the characters’ inner struggle. The only dark shade in this décor is represented by Lopakhin, the man of the matter, whose existence is divided between the practical world of the newly rich, and the world of the orchard, a world of gratuitous beauty. The orchard represents the melancholy, the past and the tranquility of the traditional world, a certain calmness, the harmony between man and nature, to which Lopakhin’s modern, merchant-like, attitude appears as foreign and strange. The orchard belongs to a lost past, it is the orchard of the dead. The orchard re-echoes sounds, noises, nostalgia and disillusion which are all too familiar to every one of us.
We would like to remind you that for this opening all guests are invited to wear WHITE clothes. It is the director’s request as it has a strong connection with the production’s stage design and costumes. The invitation is extended to all guest, if, of course, they have the possibility.
Roberto Bacci is Artistic Manager and founder of Fondazione Pontedera Teatro in Italy. Fondazione Pontedera Teatro, which uses this name since 1999, was established in 1974 as Centro per la Sperimentazione e la Ricerca Teatrale (The Center for Theatre Experiment and Research). Inspired by the Living Theatre, its founders created "a theatre which was needed by very few at the beginning, handmade, poor and megalomaniac, but envisioned for a large scale; isolated, at the beginning, in the little town where it started, but starting connections with theatres from a great distance (first of all Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret and Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre)" - www.pontederateatro.it. Since 2002, Fondazione Pontedera Teatro is the theatre coordinator of Fabbrica Europa Festival, the most important and well known Contemporary Art Festival in Toscana.
Roberto Bacci is the one who, in 1985, together with Carla Pollastrelli, invited Jerzy Grotowski to Pontedera, in order to create an Institute in which he could undertake systematic research. Since 1986, Grotowski moved to Pontedera where he established, the same year, the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski, and where he remained until his death in 1999.
Roberto Bacci worked at numerous theatre productions, in Italy and abroad, together with renowned artists such as Peter Brook, Anatoli Vasiliev, Raul Ruiz, Sanjukta Panigrahi, Julian Beck and Judith Malina. Between 1978 and 1987 he was the Artistic Manager of the Santarcangelo di Romagna International Theatre Festival, and between 1990 and 1998 he was the director of the International Festivals Volterra Teatro and Passaggio a Pontedera (the last one known since 2000, as Generazioni).
Roberto Bacci is a Theatre Studies graduate with the thesis "Theatre and Alchemy" about Eugenio Barba’s performance at the Odin Teatret, "Min Fars Hus". Since 1976 he directed numerous productions, at Piccolo Teatro di Pontedera and Compagnia Laboratorio di Pontedera. His performances were presented in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
This is the Italian director’s second collaboration with the Cluj Napoca National Theatre. Two years ago, Roberto Bacci directed in Cluj Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a highly successful production, currently in the repertoire of the Cluj Napoca National Theatre.
Cast:
Ramona Dumitrean - Ranevsky Lubov Andreyevna
Alexandra Tarce - Anya
Anca Hanu - Varya
Ionuţ Caras - Gaev Leonid Andreyevitch
Sorin Leoveanu - Lopakhin Ermolai Alexeyevitch
Cristian Grosu - Trofimov Piotr Sergheyevitch
Cătălin Herlo - Simeonov-Pischin Boris Borisovitch
Irina Wintze - Charlotta Ivanovna
Radu Lărgeanu - Epikhodov Semion Panteleyevitch
Patricia Brad - Dunyasha
Cornel Răileanu - Fiers
Matei Rotaru - Yasha
Miron Maxim - Officer, Tramp, Servant
Pusztai Renato Aladar, Albert Gábor Balázs - band
Director: Roberto Bacci
Dramaturge: Stefano Geraci
Set Designer: Adrian Damian
Assistant directors: Maria Rotar, Francesco Puleo
