1. Alveoli of loneliness

After a very good show inspired by Fassbinder’s text Freedom in Bremenyoung Florin Caracalla, a graduate of the University of Arts George Enescu, relapses. He returns to the stage of the Iași National Theater with a wonderful production based on the motives of Gerhard Hauptmann Lonely people. Written in the last years of the 19th century. The drama is as realistic as possible, even if historians of literature and theater place Hauptmann in such an inaccurate category of naturalism. Which, as you know, even in France, even in the works of Zola, who, by the way, also theorized naturalism in the theater, was more of an aspiration, an idea, than something concrete at that time. No matter how much they talk about Antoine’s naturalism in director’s doctrine courses. In addition, the director of the play from Iasi has relatively little interest in the naturalism of the writing. It seems to me somewhat forced to say that certain parts of the setting (also invented by Florin Caracalo) or the scene in which the young Brown self-flagellates, perhaps to exorcise his sin of forbidden love for Johann, would prove profoundly staged. naturalism.

The main concern of the young director was to demonstrate the modernity of the play. Starting with the relevance of the topic. Even if the bigotry that Mrs. and Mr. Wockerath suffers from may not cause us too much of a headache today, loneliness represents an increasingly powerful disease that is increasingly difficult to cure/counteract. This is despite the fact that means of communication have diversified. But what they offer is a false relationship between people. The idea of ​​the signatories of the notebook – Cristina Redulescu and Silvia Gilas – to insert a fragment from the terrible book by Norina Hertz is therefore excellent. A century of lonelinesswhich was published relatively recently by the Bucharest publishing house Humanitasbut which, unfortunately, did not cause the debate it should have caused in Romanian society.

Each of the seven characters in the series represents a certain type of loneliness. They live in alveoli or in aquariums (an idea beautifully emphasized by the decor), they talk without listening to each other, they communicate without dialogue, they repeat words in high tones, postulates, the purpose of which is to make the fortress in which they live a little smaller . less vulnerable, they self-isolate voluntarily. What show is dissected with the help of a camera. This is done by the young actor Marian Chikulita, who to some extent makes an impression of his kind voyeur beyond the paroxysmal excitement of the other characters, he amplifies, multiplies what is happening inside/outside, on which the general concept of the play is based.

Johannes, Kate, Mrs. Wockerath, Mr. Wockerath, Brown have survived to this day, respecting each other’s realms and boundaries of solitude. Mr. and Mrs. Fokerath were a respectable couple, Johannes was seen as a future scientist busy with his doctoral dissertation, Kate was the ideal wife and daughter-in-law. It gave birth to a long-awaited child, which means in the eyes of the community, to whose perception everything is connected, a higher sign of order and respect. The apparent stability, the poise of the facade, the respectability that Mr. Vokerat so admires, with a wonderful sense of proportion, played by Daniel Bousuyok, are thrown into the air by the arrival of Anna Mar. The only one Johannes really communicates with.

The young woman’s long stay away, the prototype of a modern woman (both in the text and in the play, there are many hints that cannot help but suggest Ibsen’s universe), her sometimes defiant calmness, even independence. in the relationship with Johannes – the details are very well revealed by the performance of Andrea Bobok – undermines everything. They cause crises, the victims of which are Mrs. Vockerat (strongly played by Tatiana Ionesi), the neurotic and indecisive Brown (once again I appreciated the evolution of a very young Rezvan Kontzu) and, above all, Johannes. This difficult role was entrusted to Marian Stavaraki, a second-year student of the theater faculty. Clear. Its evolution should be followed with special attention. Marian Stavaraki has all the data to become an important actor.

This, in my opinion, is the most difficult role in the play, the role of a fragile, indignant woman, a wife who suddenly becomes in vain (Kate Vockerath is the loneliest person in a suffocating universe, well drawn in the editing) fell for Melina Lazar. Which turns out to be great this time too.

Andriy Kozlats (video design), Alisa Veliche (stage movement) and Cesar Ihim (music preparation) also deserve praise.

No, not everything is perfect in the show Lonely people. Imperfections are revealed both in the adaptation of the text and in bringing it to the stage, and in the excess of mechanization, and in the curious happy ending marked by the school’s closing intonation of the song Love has returned. But there is no doubt that Florin Caracalla is a real director.

National Theater Vasyl Oleksandri from Yass

LONELY PEOPLE after Gerhard Hauptmann

Translation by Paul B. Marian

Directing, scenography, text adaptation and sound world:Florin Caracalla

Assistant Director: Marian Cuculita

Video design: Andriy Kozlak

Stage movement: Alisa Veliche

Musical preparation: Caesar Ichim

Dissemination:

Marian Stavarachi (Johannes Vockerat), Malina Lazar (Kate Vockerath), Tatiana Ionesi (Mrs. Vockerath), Daniel Busuyok (Mr. Walkerath), Rezvan Kotsu (Brown), Andrey Budok (Anna Mar), Marian Chiculita (Operator)

2. Museum of our sufferings

National Theater Vasyl Oleksandri from Yass

The book was written by Eric Arthur Blair 1984 year in 1948. A year later, he published it under the pseudonym George Orwell. In 1948, the world, Europe, the USA already knew enough about the destructive dimensions, about the attack on human consciousness, about the operation to destroy humanity, perpetrated by Nazism, fascism, and the Shoah. It took place between 1945 and 1949 The process from Nurnberg and mankind seemed to have taken sufficient measures to prevent the recurrence of such atrocities.

Was it the same in the case of the second great calamity of the century? Totalitarianism of the communist type. No nothing. The world was deaf to Stalin’s terror until the Second World War. He almost didn’t even want to hear about artificially induced hunger, sending to the Gulag, show trials, apparently inexplicable disappearances of people. An exchange of letters between Ernest Nolte and Francois Furet, published a few years ago in Romanian by Artthe articles of Albert Camus, grouped in vol current, so many other books, a mass of testimonies that appeared after 1989, largely explain why this silence, blindness, indifference. A strange criminal phenomenon with many different kinds of complicity, with high-level cowardice, which lasted approximately until the first half of the 70s, when it appeared in France, first in Russian, and only later in French. Gulag Archipelago. When the exorcism finally began.

In his book, George Orwell described in detail almost everything that was experienced by the enslaved half of Europe until 1990, which is also experienced today by other countries in Asia and Africa, where the export of the revolution took place. Lies, accepting and applauding it, hunger, fear, pretense, the terror of surveillance and Big Brother, who is of course always right, the identification between Big Brother and the Party, the undermining of human relations, the distortion of family relations. Supremacy of denunciation. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro