{"id":428,"date":"2024-11-06T16:30:18","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T16:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/?p=428"},"modified":"2024-11-06T17:27:17","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T17:27:17","slug":"ntc-purcarete-and-boroghina-pilgrims-of-the-great-theatre-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/ntc-purcarete-and-boroghina-pilgrims-of-the-great-theatre-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"NTC: Purc\u0103rete and Boroghina: Pilgrims of the Great Theatre of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Ludmila Patlanjoglu<\/strong>
Bucharest: Romanian Cultural Institute, 287 pp<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewed by Maria Shevtsova<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This large and rather imposing book will no doubt take an important place in the world panorama of theatre. Its author, a Professor of Theatre Studies at Bucharest University and a former head of the Romanian section of IATC-AICT, puts director Silviu Purc\u0103rete and festival creator Emil Boroghina side by side marking their respective professional identities as well as their linked interests during their years at the National Theatre of Craiova (NTC). One of the finely honed and effective theatre ensembles of Europe today, the NTC can trace its roots back to 1850 when a small theatre was established in this Romanian city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patlanjoglu offers extended profiles here of her two main protagonists, noting that Boroghina was early on an actor, having studied at the Theatre Institute in Bucharest. Subsequently assigned to the NTC, he became its director in 1988 (a position that he held until 2000). In 1994, he also founded the Craiova Shakespeare Festival which absorbed \u2018International\u2019 into its title in 2006 affirming the theatre\u2019s increasingly outward looking practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2024 edition of the Craiova International Shakespeare Festival — its 30th — was overseen by Boroghina in his role as its now Honorary Director with Vlad Dragalescu, the current director of the NTC, as the Festival\u2019s head. Patlanjoglu\u2019s book testifies to Boroghina\u2019s expansive, energetic, and imaginative vision, which really took off after the end of the Ceau\u015fescu regime in 1989. For the record, the Festival — held every three years in the twentieth century– is now a biennial one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patlanjoglu allows her readers to glean from dates resonant with political history that Boroghina was never a flag-and-slogan-waver. He was, in her image, a “pilgrim”\u2013 an apt description, given Boroghina\u2019s almost complete devotion to Shakespeare. Indeed, it has become increasingly clear over the years that, for Boroghina, Shakespeare remains the very epitome of civilization, the embodiment of the depth, range, power, tragedy and hope of humanity, a model for articulating the life of human beings to which theatre in its varied forms can aspire. For him, Shakespeare clearly remains “eternal.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patlanjoglu in this book is a pragmatic and \u2018facts\u2019 kind of writer. That said, she might well have embraced more warmly the imaginative poet<\/em> in Boroghina who with loving and inspired curation of these Shakespeare Festivals overcame numerous obstacles including serious state budget cuts in order to bring renowned productions to Craiova. Such was the case, for instance, in 2012 with Robert Wilson’s super-expensive Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets<\/em>. The same poetic spirit and resolve guided the Festival\u2019s own tours of the Sonnets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also Boroghina who invited Purc\u0103rete to join him as one of the theatre\u2019s main directors in 1989 and it was very much Purc\u0103rete\u2019s productions which garnered world-wide fame for the hitherto unknown-beyond-Romania NTC company. Early Purc\u0103rete productions included The Gnome in the Green Garden<\/em> by the Romanian D. R. Popescu (1989), an explosively menacing-satirical Ubu Rex with Scenes from Macbeth <\/em>(1991)that evoked the Ceau\u015fescu period (also performed in the Edinburgh Festival in 1991); and Titus Andronicus (<\/em>1992), which premiered in Tokyo, winning global accolades and awards including the Critics\u2019 Prize at the Festival TransAm\u00e9riques<\/em> in Montreal in 1993. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Greek cluster by Purc\u0103rete followed including Les Danaides <\/em>(1996) with a cast of 100, which travelled to the Avignon Festival and elsewhere in Europe after its Craiova premiere and Romanian tour. Such touring was doubtlessly instrumental in consolidating Purc\u0103rate\u2019s international reputation and his being offered the directorship of the Centre Dramatique in Limoges soon afterwards. Patlanjoglu notes that numerous countries as far away as Australia and Brazil saw NTC productions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Offered in this volume as well are images of posters, a compendium of quotations from Purc\u0103rete about his own work and pithy quotations from international reviewers recording this work\u2019s impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A section called \u201cAnthology: Great Theatre Companies, Great Performances, Great Directors\u201d is also full of sumptuous photo-album style pictures that reveal the wide range of productions seen at the Boroghina-inspired Craiova Shakespeare Festival. Included here is a letter from Romanian-born Georges Banu, then Honorary President of the International Association of Theatre Critics, announcing the 2015 Europe Theatre Prize to Purc\u0103rete. Purc\u0103rete, of course, returned frequently to the NTC to stage several productions including a biting Measure for Measure<\/em> in 2008 and a more pensive, dream-like The Tempest<\/em> in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photographs of such productions, while triggering spectator memory, also serve as historical information for the future. Clearly, the extraordinarily productive tandem of Boroghina and Purc\u0103rete was at the heart of the vital role played by the NTC over this period. One notes here Robert Wilson\u2019s Craiova-made Rhinoceros <\/em>(2014) and Declan Donnellan\u2019s Oedipus Rex<\/em> (2022) as well as the production of Hamlet<\/em> shown during the 2024 edition of the Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toward the end of Patlanjoglu\u2018s book there is a fascinating list of the various networks established through the NTC and the Festival\u00ad \u2013 some critical, others academic and institutional\u00ad\u00ad, journal editors, publications, podcasts, and media generally (including radio interviewers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A major compendium bound to attract readers world-wide, this volume is not only for those interested in the lives and works of these two major men of theatre but it is also for anyone interested in the important work done over recent decades at the National Theatre of Craiova and at its now internationally-important Shakespeare Festival. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Maria Shevtsova <\/strong>is Emeritus Professor of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmith\u2019s College, University of London and co-editor of the prestigious international journal New Theatre Quarterly<\/em>. A member of the Editorial Board of Critical Stages<\/em>, her many books include Rediscovering Stanislavski, Sociology of Theatre and Performance<\/em> and studies of directors Robert Wilson and Lev Dodin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2024 Maria Shevtsova
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em>, #30, Dec. 2024
e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Creative<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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