I read Gaze with the natural interest I have always shown in George Banu’s books, that is, right after 1989, when the name and work of the great French theater actor of Romanian origin won the right to no longer be a secret in the author’s homeland. From Theater of memory, Orchard of the villagecherries are our theater and Red and gold up to Damaged itemsvolumes published in Romania between 1993-2022, none of the books with his gilded signature of talent, thoroughness, competence, unusual ability to associate, the fruits of reading and various concerns, did not leave me indifferent, and the lack of indifference took the form of chronicles, essays and reviews I have devoted to him over the years.

I had the extraordinary opportunity to create a book with George Banu, the title of which contains the phrase “second life”, as well as the idea of ​​theater as a second life, which is repeatedly confirmed in the almost 170 pages of Close View. . Book of wills and book of conclusions. In which, as George Banu himself testifies in the chapter The logic of dreamsthe theater scholar began work with the desire to restore “effortlessly his legacy as a full-fledged spectator.”

Elsewhere, George Banu recalls Pak, his exhortations to the audience to go home when the play is over and meditate, and even dream, marked and stimulated by what they saw. So that the dream seen on stage becomes their dream. Undoubtedly, we are talking about the same Puck, which, for example, in a memorable performance in DreamBrook, which took place in Bucharest precisely in the years when the totalitarian night was reviving in Romania, seems to have been the reason for George Banu’s decision not to return to the country. In the final moments of the show, Park walked down the corridor and shook hands with the audience. An emblematic gesture (here I take the title of the mini-essay from the book), a gesture of separation.

However, in life, as in the theater, nothing is final, so since 1990 the theater expert has again become a permanent presence in Romania. And look, this is how it happened entre- deux which he often mentioned in his books, George Banu took another form after 1989. A form that also contributed to the realization of the theater expert as a spectator. A fulfillment that turned out to be in favor of the Romanian theater, because I don’t think that after 1990 there was a book by George Bana published in the West that didn’t mention performances from the narrator’s native country. I say that the narrator again agrees with George Banu, who never liked to say that he will analyze the shows, but tells us about them. And who was terribly happy to learn that so many enamored viewers could benefit from his stories. “History,” George Banu tells us in a mini-essay Theater stories– this is a memory … recorded in writing. Memory imbued with subjectivity. This explains its power, but also requires our vigilance.”

The stories of George Banu, of Brook, of Strehler, of Mnuchkin, of Ostermeyer, or of Aurelia Manea, Andriy Sherban, Felix Aleksa, Rada Afrim and many others are discourses to fall in love with in the sense given to Roland Barthes’ phrase. A versatile critic, whose writings mean a constant reference in the books of Georges Banu, in much the same way as those of Jean-Pierre Richard. Through the stories of a theater actor (yes, I also choose this formula, following the call of Accompanying word thanks to Mateus Vishnets) bequeaths what he has seen throughout his life in his ever-repeating journeys, thus recalling Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and starting from the oft-affirmed and well-argued belief that theater is always somewhere else.

George Banu practiced criticism of details. He was attentive to vocal impression, to duration and rhythm, to symbolic gesture, to proportion, to detail, to balance and redundancy. He was afraid that he would become what I myself call an impatient spectator. He loved and respected actors, those whom Kafka called ambassadors of the unknown. In his works, he always accompanied people and details, trying to understand their purpose, meaning, originality. Often unique. Explain it first to yourself, and then to those who read it. He did not want to build a school, although he was a teacher (cf. Monologues of impossibility), but rather the art of the viewer. I do not insist here on the polemical distinction between school and art. And not on the person with whom he is arguing. To do this, he used the close-up view, “a deliberately myopic view but capable of informing the creation of a work that can be followed at a distance in favor of a middle-distance view that associates distance and proximity.” Distance and closeness, another form of representation of the eternal and always different entre- deux.

I read Gaze not just with interest, but with emotions. Emotional and natural, since this is the first reading in the absence of the author. Usually, from a certain point, after I became friends with George Banu, immediately after the publication of the chronicle, I took care to send it to a theater critic. Since January, this is no longer possible. So I read the book, a conscious testament, regretting that I would no longer receive an always kind message from the one with whom many associated me. Not only love for the theater. Years ago, when the journal XXI century dedicated two consecutive numbers to George Bann, numbers in which close friends of his were invited to present a theater connoisseur, I chose as a gift a wonderful poem Sea breezes Mallarmé. I informed him of the option and that’s how I found out about it Sea breezes, to which the theater critic refers indirectly in Privirea de probo, is one of his favorites. Now, in this last book, I was surprised to find an essay entitled Pencils and markers which is the starting point They have colored pencilstheater the same Mallarme. A poet who loved the theater, integrating it into what he would like to see it as book. Mallarmé did not have time to complete his project. He left only us acoup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard. A strange text, shocking, first of all, by its placement on the page. At an angle of 30 degrees. What is characteristic of painting? Shocking due to the use of different characters, bigger or smaller. Everything there resembles a stage or production. and it was this similarity that led me to believe that “Un coup de dés…” is also a theatrical performance. Words as symbols. Main, secondary, episodic. I developed this idea at the suggestion of my teacher, the late Maria Vaudet-Kapusan, in my thesis (which later became a book) and later in my doctoral thesis. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro