{"id":290,"date":"2017-04-24T20:38:21","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T20:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/15\/?p=290"},"modified":"2023-06-03T08:00:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-03T08:00:33","slug":"the-present-meaning-of-stranger-revealed-in-cluj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/15\/the-present-meaning-of-stranger-revealed-in-cluj\/","title":{"rendered":"The Present Meaning of “Stranger” Revealed in Cluj"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maria Z\u0103rnescu<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n

INTERFERENCES International Theatre Festival, organized by The Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, Romania. Nov. 26 to Dec. 4, 2016.<\/p>\n

“Ubi bene ibi patria<\/em>,” the famous Latin saying has become, in time, a motto for all the emigrants. The meaning of the migration phenomenon should not be, however, reduced to the \u201cbenefit of the bread.\u201d In a more comprehensive way, migration represents a conscious translocation in the pursuit of new horizons. People, animals, ideas and technologies leave towards places where the constraints that pushed them to embark on this action no longer exist. Migration may be a fertilizing phenomenon, bringing along with it new meanings to life, new shapes to beauty and, by its very nature, the adventure of the Quest. It adds to the existent, thereby forcing a change of values. However, this change carries, most of the time, an estrangement. . . .<\/p>\n

The Stranger’s Odyssey <\/em>was the title of the fifth edition (2016) of the biannual Festival INTERFERENCES, organized by The Hungarian Theatre of Cluj. Who am I and who is the Other? Are we aliens in the world, in our own home country, in our own hometown, in our own home, in our own family, in our own skin? These were just a few of the questions which the festival attempted to answer, under the artistic direction of G\u00e1bor Tompa, who is manager of the institution (since 1990\u2014such longevity is an achievement!) Despite the theme and the diversity of the program, the performances did not seem \u201cestranged” from one another.<\/p>\n

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Mikl\u00f3s B\u00e1cs (as Satin) in The Lower Depths<\/em>. Photo by Istv\u00e1n Bir\u00f3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“In Gorky’s playwriting canon, The Lower Depths <\/em>is the most inspired, contradictory, beautiful, and relevant play. It echoes the world we live in today: the loneliness of the individual, of a social group, of a nation, and the constant struggle to be a part of society.” This is Russian director Yuri Kordonsky’s motivation for choosing this text, performed by The Hungarian Theatre of Cluj. The pessimistic atmosphere of the play has been emphasized since its opening (1902), and its production in the twenty-first century does not convey anything different. Now, the Scenes from Russian Life<\/em>, showing some outcasts living in a night shelter near Volga, in a “cellar resembling a cave” happen\u2014paradoxically\u2014in a contemporary attic that could be located anywhere. The set designer Drago\u015f Buhagiar creates a shabby and dark loft directly opening towards the sky, with just some plastic wrap to protect its inhabitants from the wind and cold outside. As for noise protection . . . that is out of question. Cars, horns and other urban sounds penetrate the space; a shattered radio set tries to broadcast the news. . . .<\/p>\n

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Zsolt Bogd\u00e1n (as Luka) and J\u00falia Lacz\u00f3 (as Anna) in The Lower Depths<\/em>. Photo by Istv\u00e1n Bir\u00f3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is much dampness in the lower depths: ordure, blood and the water used to wash\u2014the living and the dead alike. Here are society\u2019s derelicts. The characters are homeless. They do not have families, jobs, money, means of existence, or hope.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of misery in this parallel, underground world, displaced at the upper floor, as an intermediate stop on the way to the Heavenly Empire. Will they ever reach there? The characters live in a world where God has almost ceased to exist. So, the director asks himself: “How far downward can humanity go?”<\/p>\n

Redemption may come from faith. Brilliantly practicing the uplifting lie, Luka the pilgrim carries the stone cross on his back. He is a fervent follower of Jesus and uses a sacral language. In the lower depths<\/em>, the inhabitants embrace many different religions or none, but the whole atmosphere feels strongly Russian, orthodox. Light comes from the candles that are lit one by one.<\/p>\n

Redemption may come from theatre, too. One of the most touching moments of the show is the play within a play, when a scene from the novel Anna Karenina<\/em> is dramatized on the spot. Theatre \u201clifts any souls,\u201d even those that are at the very end of their limits.<\/p>\n

The end of the show gives one goosebumps. In contrast to other productions of the play, which function like a concert for soloists and orchestra, Kordonsky\u2019s show looks like a symphony: the quality of the ensemble prevails. Such is the case of the team of The Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, a model of artistic force and creative discipline in Romania\u2019s last decades.<\/p>\n

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Tam\u00e1s Keresztes in Diary of A Madman<\/em>. Photo by Istv\u00e1n Bir\u00f3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another must of Russian literature, Diary of A Madman<\/em> (1835) by Gogol, raises another question: “Are we mad or has the world around us gone mad?” The performance, directed by Hungarian Viktor Bod\u00f3, a co-production of Katona J\u00f3zsef Theatre \/ Orlai Production Office \/ F\u00dcGE \/ MASZK Association, does not try to answer it, but restores totally our trust in the theatre, in the director, in the actor. (In case some of us had lost it.) It is an example of high level arts syncretism, an excellent one-man show. The story of the humble clerk, Poprishchin, who gradually descends into insanity, is narrated in the first person by a total actor: Tam\u00e1s Keresztes, who is also author of the set design. His little room, a crooked space with acute angles, becomes a ship, and a prison and, in the end, it turns upside down. A capsized world, just like the character\u2019s life. Once contact with reality is lost, the frail, insignificant little man becomes a rock-star, and a preacher, and a devil, and Jesus with a crown of forks. He is assisted by a remarkable lighting design, but also by an invented character, an alter ego<\/em> meant to emphasize his dual, schizophrenic state. It is the “music” that he creates himself (with the help of a loop mixer) from little household sounds and onomatopoeias. He is no longer alone. Let there be light and let there be sound!<\/p>\n

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Tam\u00e1s Keresztes in Diary of A Madman<\/em>. Photo by Istv\u00e1n Bir\u00f3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tam\u00e1s Keresztes passes from awareness to trance, and expresses mental disorder by making use of experiences related to psychology, psychoanalysis and psychiatry. He makes an astonishing jump from his first anodyne appearance, swinging between graciousness and grotesquery, frailty and force. The special humor of the director, Bod\u00f3, can be perceived all the time, as he instills his actor with a sense of estrangement from the character, without thereby making him less credible or impressive. Even at the moment of death, he produces a gestural apart\u00e9<\/em> that triggers the succession of final cues: “Mother, mother, have pity on your sick child! And do you know that the Bey of Algiers has a wart under his nose?”[1]]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

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The Fuchsiad<\/em>. Photo by Mihaela Marin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A predecessor of Dadaism and Surrealism, the Romanian writer Urmuz (1883-1923) was himself a character. His Weird Pages <\/em>were written at the beginning of the twentieth century (posthumously published in 1985) and have ever since been a model of anti-prose, a cry of revolt against any kind of Establishment, against \u201cthe old lady Mrs. Logic and the eternal Mr. Profit.\u201d Literary and behavioral rebellion, and an inexplicable suicide at the age of forty. The Fuchsiad, <\/em>a production of the German State Theatre of Timi\u015foara, is a tribute to the avant-garde and to this insomniac, eccentric man of letters, also a brothel habitu\u00e9. <\/em>It is a theatrical installation by Helmut St\u00fcrmer, assisted by Silviu Purc\u0103rete and accompanied by Vasile \u0218irli<\/a>\u2019s music. The “heroical-erotic” poem tells the story of the piano player Fuchs: from his birth “through one of his grandmother\u2019s ears (as his mother was completely deprived of \u2018a musical ear\u2019)\u201d until the revolver shot that put an end to the fantastic nocturnal journey in the \u201ctemple dedicated to the Vestals of pleasure.\u201d The show itself is a visual and musical poem of overflowing imagination.<\/p>\n

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Yury Rumyantsev (as Escalus), Alexander Arsentyev (as the Duke) and Andrei Kuzichev (as Angelo) in Measure for Measure<\/em>. Photo by Johan Persson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s story about mortality and mercy in an imaginary Vienna moves in a modern, but equally rotten, city. The British company Cheek by Jowl and The Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre presented Measure for Measure<\/em>, directed by Declan Donnellan. The individual drama remains the same, suspended somewhere between corruption and purity: “some rise by sin and some by virtue fall.\u201d The action takes place in an apparently democratic country, where, however, the means of oppression are perfectly in place. A symbolic red overflows the set designed by Nick Ormerod. The show was conceived as a tense thriller, even more outrageous than it was four hundred years ago. It conveys the balance of themes\u2014law and order \/ sexuality\u2014as well as that of performing styles\u2014Russian viscerality \/ British composure. The director\u2019s ironic look floats above everything, while a Viennese waltz and the crowd\u2019s ovations put an end to scenes that seem taken from Julius Caesar<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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J\u00f3zsef Bir\u00f3 (as Hamm) and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Zsolt Bartha (as Clov) in Endgame<\/em>.
Photo by Zolt\u00e1n Rab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An avid chess player, Samuel Beckett has imagined an Endgame <\/em>(1957): just four human pieces are left on the game board of a depopulated world. They vanish, one by one, while searching for their own individual identity, oscillating between existence and non-existence. The production of The National Theatre T\u00e2rgu-Mure\u015f\u2014”Tompa Mikl\u00f3s” Company, directed by G\u00e1bor Tompa, seeks the purification of the spectators. At first, through words. Then, in the end, water floods the whole set designed by Judit Dobre-K\u00f3thay. The musical structure of the text allows the actors to perform mathematically, as accurately as performing a score. The director considers that Beckett’s plays urge us to a continuous reflection on our daily life: “In his texts we can find the appropriate quote for absolutely any situation.” It is just an answer to a possible question.<\/p>\n

A multitude of questions related to what it means to feel alone or a stranger have been raised in the productions shown at these INTERFERENCES. But, as Chekhov said, “the role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.” Even if only for this reason, the festival has done (once again) its duty. The festival may rest (until 2018, its next edition).<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>[1] It seems that certain texts carry a strong appeal for the selectors of the festival. We could also find good adaptations of Diary of a Madman <\/em>and Brecht’s Good Person of Szechwan <\/em>in the program of the previous edition (2014): https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/11\/jaram-lee-updates-brecht-in-cluj\/<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

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<\/a>*Maria Z\u0103rnescu <\/strong>(b. 1969, Bucharest) is a Romanian theatrologist and critic, Associate Professor at the National University of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography \u201cI.L. Caragiale\u201d Bucharest. Author of books: Music and Muses<\/em> (2015) and The Sound of Theatre Music<\/em> (2016). The Romanian Association of Theatre Professionals UNITER Award for Best Theatre Critic <\/em>in 2015. Consolidated experience as a radio journalist and manager, TV editor and event producer.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2017 Maria Z\u0103rnescu
\nCritical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This work is licensed under the
\nCreative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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