The Cluj-Napoca National Theatre invites you to take part in a dialogue on DESTINIES by joining us for the 14th edition of the International Meetings in Cluj that will unfold from 9 to 12 October 2025.
We are going through challenging moments, not only in Europe, but all across the world. We are at a crossroads, the world roiling with wars, social unrest, alliances to be made, decisions to be taken, elections whose results are not only up to us. These are times when the wheel of fortune can either land on bright or on dark wedges, changing the course of events in the most unexpected ways. This year, promoting critical and constructive thinking, and participatory, liberating emotion, the actors of the Cluj-Napoca National Theatre will guide you on the winding paths of some emblematic destinies.
On the main stage, you will folllow Pirandello's six characters in their troubled search for an author to give them the fullness of their life, and Gogol's gamblers, deft buffoons, unremorsefully altering the destiny of trustful partakers. Also on the main stage, unique characters such as Dostoevsky's Stavrogin will come under the spotlight, haunted by desire, obsession and visionary madness, and Molière's Harpagon, in a grotesque comeback, fulfilling his destiny in the profit-driven 21st century society, as reimagined by the contemporary Italian playwright Michele Santeramo.
The performances in our studio venue will illustrate how frail the thread on which a human life hangs. We will collide there with destinies somewhat closer to those of ordinary people, yet on a completely different register: the comic - with versatile characters, albeit unaware of the traps they are walking into, like in the performance Schindler; the fantastic - governed by its own laws, transforming the drama of the loneliness of the self in the face of death into surrealist voyages to Max Blecher's immediate irreality, in Adventures in Immediate Irreality; the tragic - defining the fierce struggle between the implacable destiny imposed by the tyranny of totalitarianism and the super-human resilience of an ordinary woman who becomes an example of determination and heroism after 20 Years în Siberia. Intertwining on stage, these destinies bring myth back into the present, just as the performers in Gilgamesh do, in the newest performance signed by Ҫağlar Yiğitoğulları, demonstrating its vitality and relevance. The fundamental dramatic conflicts between life and death, the tragic and the comic, surface and depth are just as significant today, and their embodiments on the Cluj stage represent a renewed invitation to dialogue and reflection.
Through the performances and adjacent events it presents, the International Meetings in Cluj festival aims at supporting these essential conversations, encouraging its audience, together with artists and theatre specialists from Romania and all over the world, to have profound experiences and explore new and diverse questions. This year, as a complement to the performances, the Cluj-Napoca National Theatre invites you to participate in the events of the Conference of the International Association of Theatre Critics - Film, Video, the Digital And AI on Theatre Stages - on the mornings of 10, 11 and 12 October, at the Doctoral School of the Theatre and Film Faculty of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca.
Thursday, 9 October 2025
5 pm, Euphorion Studio
ADVENTURES IN IMMEDIATE IRREALITY, after Max Blecher | directed by Tudor Lucanu
7 pm, Foyer, 2nd level
Opening of the photography exhibition: TEN DESTINIES FULFILLED ON THE STAGE OF THE NATIONAL THEATRE | curators: Emma Pedestru and Ștefana Pop-Curșeu
Opening of the installations: THE RESILIENTS and SONAR: The Take-Off of a Collective Memory | in partnership with Reactor Cluj
7:30 pm, Main Stage
DEMONS. STAVROGIN'S CONFESSION, after F.M. Dostoievski | directed by Tudor Lucanu
Friday, 10 October 2025
4 pm, The National Museum of Transylvanian History
9 DISGRACES and other scandalous scenes from Romania's recent past (I) | texts by: Cosmin Stǎnilǎ, Saşa Ceban, Ionuț Caras | directed by Ionuț Caras and the team | a Texte Bune în Locuri Nebune [Good Texts in Crazy Places] project, co-produced by Create.Act.Enjoy and the Cluj-Napoca National Theatre
6 pm, Euphorion Studio
20 YEARS IN SIBERIA, after Anița Cudla | directed by Sorin Misirianțu
8 pm, Main Stage
MR. HARPAGON'S BRAVE NEW WORLD by Michele Santeramo | directed by Roberto Bacci
4 pm, The National Museum of Transylvanian History
9 DISGRACES and other scandalous scenes from Romania's recent past (II) | texts by: Cosmin Stǎnilǎ, Saşa Ceban, Ionuț Caras | directed by Ionuț Caras and the team | a Texte Bune în Locuri Nebune [Good Texts in Crazy Places] project, co-produced by Create.Act.Enjoy and the Cluj-Napoca National Theatre
6 pm, Euphorion Studio
SCHINDLER by Dragoș Pop | directed by Dragoș Pop
8 pm, Main Stage
SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR by Luigi Pirandello | directed by Tudor Lucanu
Sunday, 12 October 2025
5 pm, Euphorion Studio
GILGAMESH | script by Çağlar Yiğitoğulları, inspired by The Epic of Gilgamesh | directed by Çağlar Yiğitoğulları
7:30 pm, Main Stage
THE GAMBLERS by N.V. Gogol | directed by Ionuț Caras
