Cluj-Napoca National Theater announces the opening of the production American dream by Nicoleta Esinencu, which will take place in the "Art Club" Studio, Tuesday, 5 May, at 07 pm. Director: Leta Popescu, assistant director: Cătălin Filip, set design: Brândușa C. Bălan, assistant set designer: Gloria Gagu, video: Alexandru Lupea, Alexandru Ponoran, music: bhkata. The cast is comprised of the actresses Diana Buluga, Sînziana Tarța, Alexandra Tarce.
Favoring a documentary-political theater, Nicoleta Esinencu speaks in her play about the "American dream" and the "Russian" one, mixing English with Moldavian Romanian, in a collage-type structure having as a starting point the rules of the game "Monopoly". A Moldavian student crosses the ocean to the America of all possibilities, borrowing money for the trip. She returns not only without any earnings, but also forced to go in the opposite direction, Moscow, a place where new humilities await. In the intimate space of the "Art Club" Studio, the story of young Tatiana flows with great easiness in the interpretation of the three actresses led, in an inspired manner, by the director Leta Popescu.
Nicoleta Esinencu (born 1978 in Chișinău) is a playwright of Romanian origin from The Republic of Moldova, graduate of the Moldova State University of Arts, Playwriting and Script writing. She is the literary secretary of the "Eugène Ionesco" Theater from Chișinău. Author of the plays How to Write a Play, Fuck you, eu.ro.Pa!, The Seventh Whorehouse (co-author, together with Dumitru Crudu and Mihai Fusu), Zuckferei, Clear history. The play American Dream was written in 2014. In an interview, the author declared the following about her plays: „Perhaps some are inspired by reality, others provoked and others hurt. All I do is take pieces of reality and lay them on paper."
Leta Popescu (born. 1989) is at her fifth collaboration with Cluj Napoca National Theater. She was an assistant director for the performances The Star without a Name (director Alexa Visarion), Sânziana and Pepelea (director Alexandru Dabija), Mein Kampf (director Alexandru Dabija) and The Extraterrestrial Clowns (director Eli Simon). She graduated from the Faculty of Theater and Television, BBU Cluj, in 2013, majoring in Directing, and she is currently a MA student at the same faculty. For co-directing the production Parallel, at the Cluj Paintbrush Factory, Leta Popescu shared the 2014 UNITER Award for DEBUT with Lucia Mărneanu, performer in the production and with Ferenc Sinkó, co-director and choreographer of the production.
The author... from life to novel
The novel The Last night of love, the first night of war was written in 1930. Almost twelve years had passed since Camil Petrescu had returned from war, his hearing weakened and three times injured in the two years spent in the trenches. When creating his character, Gheorghidiu, he took into account his experiences during World War I, his enlisting on August 1 1916, as well as his student life at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, Bucharest University, and, simultaneously, his studies at the School for Officers (graduating it as a sub-lieutenant). Next to the "insight into the obscure regions of the conscience", as Tudor Vianu states, the search for an "almost scientific analysis of the typical soul complexes" has been a preoccupation of Camil Petrescu ever since his work on the play Jocul ielelor, in the summer of 1916.
As the author himself confesses: "Every one of my works is arborescent, meaning it continuously develops, amplifies, ramifying in all its dimensions [...]. This arborescence is achieved in different stages, like a sketch which is gradually amplified through new episodes which are added laterally or intercalated to add to the generating organic idea." This organic arborescence can be found both in the novel and in Ada Lupu’s stage adaptation, a national premiere.
Roxana Croitoru and Eugenia Sarvari
The heroes... from mental images to stage images
In Ada Lupu’s vision, the troubled consciousness of sub-lieutenant Gheorghidiu is envisioned as a dialogue with the Psychiatrist, an invented character, a character derived from Camil Petrescu’s hero, who helps him better understand himself and confront the two overwhelming dimensions of his life: love and war.
This introspection, conceived almost cinematographically, leads to the duality of the hero from the novel, played by two actors. So, He is Ștefan Gheorghidiu the speaker, hunted by a troubled self, a "hard soul", as Pompiliu Constantinescu states, "lost in life and unable to compromise, with a geometrically organized mind, yet torn by the insidious assault of love". The other Gheorghidiu is the Ștefan from the past who experiences a passionate last night of love with Ella, torn by jealousy, fighting in the trenches during the first night of war. They are two transparent images of the same intransigent consciousness searching for absolute love and confronted with the social reality of couple life.
In a sort of psychoanalytical duality and multiplicity of mental and physical spaces, all the characters enter in a sort of pluridimensional labyrinth where beliefs, consciences, prejudices, projections, desires, frustrations, egos, love and regrets are confronted. Iuliana Vîlsan’s set design, combined with all the videos and images, organically contributes to the stage representation of a true vivisection of the consciousness of Camil Petrescu’s hero.
Ştefana Pop-Curşeu
Cluj-Napoca National Theater announces the following change in the schedule for April 2015: the premiere of the production THE MAIDS by Jean Genet, initially scheduled for Wednesday 22 April 2015, is postponed to Saturday, 25 April 2015, 7 p.m. The performance on 24 April will be presented as scheduled, as a preview.
Tickets purchased for 22 April are valid on 25 April or can be reimbursed at the ticket agency, no later than 25 April. Tickets purchased online can be reimbursed by contacting the biletmaster.ro representatives at the email address info@biletmaster.ro, no later than 25 April 2015.
We apologize for the inconvenience and we would like to thank you for your understanding.
On 6 April 2015, at 5pm, in the "Art Club" Studio of the Cluj-Napoca National Theatre, Andrej and Teresa Welminski invite you to a public meeting, celebrating 100 years since the birth of Tadeusz Kantor.
Polish Theatre director, set designer, actor, painter, emballage creator ("Emballage Manifesto", 1964) and theoretician, Tadeusz Kantor was born on 6 April 1915 in Wielopole Skrzynski, and died on 8 December 1990, conducting his activity mostly in Cracow. He is one of the top representatives of Polish Avant-garde, a true revolutionary of performance art, his most important productions being The Dead Class (1975), Wielopole, Wielopole (1980), Let the Artists Die (1985), or I shall never return (1988). He is the founder of the Cricot 2 Theatre company, together with which, starting with 1955, he created perfomances and happenings presented in Poland and around the world.
Andrej Welminski is a graduate of the Faculty of Graphic Art from the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts. Actor and director, Andrej Welminski was one of the close collaborators of Tadeusz Kantor. From 1973 to 1990, he was part of all the productions and tours of the famous Cricot 2 Theatre. He currently organizes conferences and workshops based on the history, theory (philosophy) and stage practice of the Cricot 2 Theatre.
Teresa Welminski graduated from the Medical High School of Cracow in 1976. She collaborated with Tadeusz Kantor for almost 20 years, acting in all the major productions of the Cricot 2 Theatre. As of 1990, together with Andrej Welminski, she directs performances and conducts specialized workshops.
Entrance is free, according to availability.
