director: Alexandru Dabija
set and costume design: Andrada Chiriac
music: Ada Milea
stage movement: Andrea Gavriliu
assistant director: Ionuț Caras
assistant choreographer: Ioana Moldovan
lighting designer: Jenel Moldovan
stage manager: Ioan Negrea
lighting technicians: Jenel Moldovan, Andrei Mitran
sound technicians: Marius Rusu, Vlad Negrea, Vasile Crăciun
prompter: Alina Forna
photo for the poster: Nicu Cherciu
In memory of Mona Marian
Inspired by George Ciprian's adolescent adventures, the play The Drake Head was seen, upon its premiere in 1940, as a milestone in national dramatic literature, something between a farce and burlesque theater, which nonetheless required its own category and was believed to anticipate a new comedic direction in Romanian literature. This intuitive notion was proven right, and Ciprian's masterpiece is now considered to be an ancestor of the theater of the absurd, as well as Ionesco's dramaturgy.
Ciriviș (created in the image and likeness of the avant-gardist writer Urmuz), Macferlan, Pentagon and Bălălău are reunited after Ciriviș's long absence. They are determined to renew their fame as pranksters, which they had built in high-school. Indiscriminately, they start attacking and defying apparently honest-minded citizens, thus contesting their honorability and depriving them of their rigid masks. Ultimately, their adventure amounts to a quest for people's humanity and for humor, which can break through the hypocrisy of social conventions.
Alexandru Dabija projects the pranks of the small-town "drakes" in an oneiric space, aiming for a surrealist depiction. The confrontations and conflicts between the characters amount to a battle of ideas regarding one's social behavior, both past and present.
Conformism is sanctioned by the four "knights of freedom" who really commit to their role as famous pranksters: Ciriviș, inspired by Dem. Demetrescu-Buzău (Urmuz), played by Ionuț Caras; Macferlan, who represents the author and is played by Matei Rotaru; Bălălău, played very humorously by Radu Lărgeanu and Pentagon, feminized in this show as Pentagoana and played by Ramona Dumitrean. The childishness of these adolescents turns the peaceful citizens against them; it is a blunt attack on conformism and conservatism.
Adrian Țion, The End of the Season at the Nation Theater: The Drake Head, in the magazine Făclia, July 19th 2023, p. 6
It is a rigorous, challenging, fast-paced show, but the ideas are very clear and convergent and generate great performances. Alexandru Dabija has once again pursued artistic quality usque ad finem, just like he always does.
The rebels choose a tree as their home and turn it into a new world. The four friends are not even interested in the tree's fruit. It is an atypical lifestyle, breaking away from an egocentric society. It is a world where sharing is the new religion, and acceptance is the very meaning of life [...]. Ultimately, the colored dust around the tree and a new version of the song People by Aurelian Andreescu prove that the world is beautiful in its diversity, that there is something miraculous in every honest intention. The spectator is convinced that change begins with each of us and joy can be a lifestyle.
Anca Șugar, Vaccinating the Public in the Name of Beauty, under the Guise of the Grotesque,
in Tribuna, no. 503, 16-31 August 2023
On the one hand, there are the pranks done by the four friends. On the other hand, the band of cops, led by the excellent duo Adrian Cucu (the commissary, another major comedy role) - Radu Dogaru (the inspector, a voice to remember). There is a grand system of diverse characters who produce comedy through movement (Andrea Gavriliu) and music (Ada Milea). There are a few personalized jokes and a delirious episode in which Cucu, flesh and blood, is trying to tell his superior (the same Cucu, made of pixels), with a bad internet connection & a lack of IT skills, the details of a small-town scandal. And underneath this charming front, the four drakes causing total chaos, in order to recover their well-buried seeds. The Drake Head inaugurates, for at least two hours, a regime of normalcy. The banality of goodness. A handful of people renounce their beards and, under the branches of the eternal tree (the Godot who is waiting for us as we are waiting for Godot), sing something old and new.
The universe of the drakes is redefined by the director Alexandru Dabija in his show at the "Lucian Blaga" National Theater, which employs almost the entire team of the theater. Alexandru Dabija has cut the denser lines in the text and created a dynamic, energetic and funny show, which allows the actors to shine and play intricate characters [...] Andrada Chiriac has designed the ideal space, with functional elements that are easy to handle, such as the tree, the group's headquarters, an oneiric Paradise, similar to a more diverse Tree of Knowledge, bearing apples, pears, grapes, peaches, plums etc. The intelligent gags round off the show's humorous dimension, which is also aided by Ada Milea's musical moments and Andrea Gavriliu's moments of stage movement.
Gheorghe Pană Constantin was born in Buzău, in 1883, and became famous under the name George Ciprian. Although he cannot be said to have been a prolific writer, as his literary work was qualitative, focused and markedly innovative rather than extensive, he is now considered to be a precursor of the theater of the absurd, especially due to the plays The Man with the Nag (1927) and The Drake Head (1938). His entire existential and professional trajectory was determined by his double role as actor and dramatic author, which he himself described - in his typical style - through the plastic and playful/self-deprecating phrase Măscărici și Mâzgălici (approximately - buffoon and cartoon), which also appears in the title of his collection of autobiographical tales.
His friendship with Urmuz (known among his high-school friends as Ciriviș) and the pranks they used to plan with other two friends (nicknamed Bălălău and Pentagon - Macferlan is the author himself), often mentioned in his short stories and very influential in Ciprian's dramaturgy (constituting the main source of inspiration for the plot of the comedy The Drake Head) - these are two important milestones in the writer's life and can be seen as the source of his specific type of humor.
Of course, the unique modulations of his texts, which balance lyricism and sarcastic exaltation either in a falsely careless manner or a melodramatic one, usually authentic and playful but often deeply erudite, are the echoes of Ciprian's great acting experience, especially at the National Theater of Bucharest. At first, his career was incidental rather than planned: he was already studying Philology and Law when he decided to join the Conservatory, as well, in the hope that it would make him a more convincing lawyer. But it was his destiny to become well-known as an actor and then, organically, as a dramatic author.
Nonetheless, what set him apart - and the reason why his contemporaries could not place him in a preexistent category - was the rejection of consecrated dramatic patterns and old-fashioned, classical comic techniques. In theater, as well as prose, his humor addresses a specific kind of intelligence, which prevents people from taking themselves too seriously and which makes them question their certainties, with simultaneously constructive and destructive results.
In George Ciprian's work, laughter is never gratuitous; it is always meant to reveal something, prompting the public to renounce their inexpressive and dehumanizing masks, imposed by society on its own citizens. In his texts, the battle for the reader/spectator's soul has to do with a very specific moral code. His demonstration is always clear: only by laughing at oneself, at other people and the social conventions which chip away at one's spontaneity can the individual reclaim his human status.
The Drake Head was written more than a decade after the author's other triumph, the comedy The Man with the Nag, which had been a resounding success even abroad, being performed on tour in cities like Berlin and Paris. Between these two major events, George Ciprian also wrote the play Nea Niculae [Uncle Niculae], performed in 1928, which failed to stir up the enthusiasm of the spectators in the capital. Thus, it is difficult to know whether the impact of The Drake Head could have been anticipated upon its premiere (January 1940) at the National Theater of Bucharest. What is certain is that, dissatisfied with director Ion Sava's vision, who had worked on the production, Ciprian took the show into his own hands: he became an author, an actor and a director at the same time, to the (almost) unanimous delight of the contemporary critics.
In fact, the press reviews made him publish a delicious text thanking his critics, an article which should be read alongside the play, given its passionate tone, coated in irony and a combination of playfulness and violence. Thus, Ciprian wanted to express his gratefulness towards his reviewers by "respectfully squatting four times" [1] - a mischievous reference to the symbolic gesture consecrated by the characters in the play. In response to an article that opened with the exclamation "Finally! Real theater!" Ciprian wrote that he himself had dreamed "feverishly, after the premiere, that a dramatic review could one day begin with: finally!" [2]. The conclusion of this so-called open letter is especially funny, addressing the negative reviews, which the author "openly despises".
Despite the warmth of the numerous positive reactions to The Drake Head, which saw in this play the beginning of a new direction in Romanian comedy, the play, as well as the show, also met with criticism. Certain voices argued that the show should have been cancelled due to the perceived similarities between the character Dacian ("the bearded sir") and Nicolae Iorga. But according to the author, this confusion had been resolved through a private audience with the former prime-minister, who had supposedly approved of and had found quite funny the length of the problematic beard.
Consequently, the adventures of the four pranksters, Criviș (inspired by Ciprian's high-school friend, the avant-gardist writer Urmuz), Macferlan, Pentagon and Bălălău, reached their intended public, charming the spectators through their humorous nature, through the sarcastic energy, the political nuances, and the author's humanist ideals, which opposed all social constraints and day-to-day hypocrisy.
Far from being simply mischievous or chaotic, the heroes' pranks invite us today, just as they did back then, to reconsider the masks we wear as obedient and well-integrated citizens in the hardened structures of society, to the expense of our own humanity.
[1] George Ciprian, "An author writing about... his critics", in România, no. 612, February 12th 1940, p. 5
Alexandru Dabija's show, based on George Ciprian's play The Drake Head, is a success due to the compatibility of the type of humor animating the director's vision with the author's dramatic intelligence. In this version, Ciriviș (Ionuț Caras), Macferlan (Matei Rotaru), Pentagoana (Ramona Dumitrean) and Bălălău (Radu Lărgeanu) take up their old hobby, disrupting the public order and its foundational hypocrisy, after Ciriviș's return from his travels. The setting is apparently banal, but day-to-day life ends up acquiring surrealist nuances and irresistible comic accents. Andrada Chiriac's scenography creates a colorful, intentionally contradictory universe, which pushes the plot into an oneiric space. In this world marked by uniformity and dehumanization, the heroes do their best to reignite people's humanity.
A conversation with Ionuț Caras, who plays Ciriviș and who also worked as an assistant director on The Drake Head
Emma Pedestru: Given all the shows that you worked on with Alexandru Dabija in the past, how was this new collaboration?
Ionuț Caras: We are always waiting for him like we're waiting for the Mesia. Whenever we hear that Alexandru Dabija is coming our way, we are giddy with delight, because we like him very much. It is true that we have worked together many times. I myself have been in all of his shows at the National Theater (there have been five shows so far*). I love the fact that you simply cannot capture him and stick him in a box. You cannot limit his aesthetic options or his choice of texts. He is unpredictable and surprising. So far, at our theater, he has directed Alecsandri, Gellu Naum, Jules Perahim, György Tábori, the Presniakov brothers, Budai-Deleanu... Just like Ciprian, all of these authors are marginal, they are not mainstream, they are often avoided, ignored, forgotten. They aren't fashionable. And I like Dabija's approach to this kind of texts and authors. Not to mention his extraordinary warmth, joviality and calm manner whenever we meet. Irony, self-deprecation, even sarcasm at times... Out of all the directors I have worked with, I can unapologetically nominate Sandu as one of those directors who are very close to the actors, with all of their qualities and especially their flaws. Regarding this play, I had read the original text. It even reminded me of an old tv version, a kind of televized theater - with George Mihăiță, who played Ciriviș, with Albulescu playing Dacian. I remember watching it with childish enthusiasm, it made me very happy. And I reread the play when I heard we would produce it. Initially, it was supposed to be combined with some surrealist texts, but we gave up on that... Out of 110 pages (the length of the original text), we started eliminating certain fragments and got to 65 pages, and we are still cutting. My own text has been blown to pieces, there is more silence now, more shutting up than speaking. Somehow, this also came from Sandu's desire to protect us and to protect me after a difficult season. Anyway, I am very glad we are doing it. I head read it as a serious text. Even though I was covertly laughing, I read it through a serious lens. But working on this show proved the contrary. Sandu tramples on all sorts of tabus and preconceptions. Those who are looking forward to a classical version of The Drake Head are in for a surprise.
E.P.: Which elements were of interest to Alexandru Dabija (and to you, as a team) when doing this radical adaptation, so that the text can also maintain its contemporary relevance?
I. C.: A few words come to mind, and I will say them without explaining, without contextualizing: freedom, shock, rudeness, carelessness, courage, humor, irony... They all go into the melting pot of this show. It's not as if we had a well-defined concept, we did not witness a directorial discourse or plea, as is so often the case, where the director explains: "Listen, I am interested in this and that..." No, Sandu doesn't work like that and didn't work like that this time, either. Everything is very fluid, from one day to the next, which I believe to be precisely in the spirit of the avant-garde. No theories, no excess words, no phrases explaining what the author wanted to say, what I want to say... He doesn't care about these things, nor do we. Of course, we do need a sort of coherence, a logical trajectory, a meaning, but other than that we have taken many "outrageous" liberties, which are up for discussion.
E. P.: To what extent is the society that Ciprian was making fun of in 1940 similar to the one that you are mocking in this show?
I. C: One way or another, they are identical. It's the same society. Yes, Ciprian's text describes a dusty provincial town, dormant and frozen, but now, no matter if we are progressive, leftist, liberal, conversative, we are all enlisted in some project or another. Somehow, we all bear certain labels which are very difficult to shake off. Not to mention that we are also dealing with the evil witch, "political correctness", which makes the matter considerably more ridiculous. When I say the matter, I mean life, normal life. All these "isms", all these "musts, shoulds" keep changing, in our society, from one week to the next. You can't keep track of it. Ultimately, nothing "does" anymore, and we keep doing worse. Constant backtracking. There's not much difference between then and now. The hypocrites are the same but they dress better. Those who fear humor, absurdity and ridicule are the same. They have more diplomas and doctorates, it's true, but I see no difference.
E. P.: From this perspective, that is, defiance against society and its consecrated rules, how did you approach the role of Ciriviș?
I.C: Well, the role has been blown to pieces. I have no role left (laughs), the text has been divided, distributed. It is still a catalyzing role, an observer, but I don't see it as a flesh and blood character. He is an unobtrusive witness, who triggers certain events, indeed, causes them, then sits back and lets them unfold. The difficulty - or the effort - has to do with the team, the partner, the colleagues, how do we make things clear, from our perspective, how do we make them easy to comprehend or, anyway, easy to convey? I also feel worn out at the end of this season, more or less exhausted, on autopilot, so I didn't really have the time to reflect on it, to think "Oh no, what did the author mean here?"
E. P.: So how did this feel - stepping back, both you and the team, in order to turn these complex characters into observers or catalysts?
I. C.: It's all up to the team, because there is also a kind of collective character, made up of multiple figures who work together. I wouldn't call it a choir, because it's not a choir, but it has a similar form, with other secondary characters - besides the four "drakes". Just like with any project, it is difficult to listen to each other, to hear each other, to have a dialogue. But that's temporary, it becomes easy with time. Other than that, I don't ask myself existential questions regarding the role or the text, because I have no reason to. I don't think it would be useful.
E. P.: Ultimately, what should the spectators take away from this show?
I. C.: I would like them to be amused. From my point of view, this is the purpose of the show: they should laugh at us and they should laugh at everyone. It should make us all take ourselves less seriously, preventing us from becoming solemn and rigid. I would be happy if the spectators didn't seek meaning where there is none. If they laughed or were simply shocked, without wondering why they are laughing and why they are shocked. The show is characterized by an intelligent kind of childishness, an erudite childishness - but not excessively so. It is a summer show. Sandu used a keyword: entertainment. It is a form of entertainment, after all. A bit denser, a bit bolder, a bit more iconoclastic, which breaks certain barriers.
