Through Foreign Eyes: Reflecting on the Bucharest National Theatre Festival (2025)

Savas Patsalidis*

Abstract

This festival report offers a panoramic account of the 2025 Bucharest National Theatre Festival as seen through the eyes of a foreign spectator. The eight performances discussed, ranging from psychological realism to documentary theatre, technological hybridity, political critique, and folkloric memory, reveal a dynamic theatrical landscape negotiating between past and present, intimacy and spectacle, innovation and cliché. While productions such as Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Tempest, and Reenactment showcased ambitious reinterpretations of canonical or historical material, others engaged with the social pressures shaping contemporary Romania, from media violence (Lina) to urban gentrification (Treasure City). The article concludes with a brief commentary of two additional shows outside the festival programme: Who Killed My Father (Teatrul Metropolis) and Rave de Ravel at the MASCA Cultural Center, one of Bucharest’s most active off-centre theatre hubs. Taken together, these works remind us, some more successfully than others, that theatre remains a space not only for emotion, but also for thought.

Keywords: Bucharest National Theatre Festival, contemporary Romanian theatre, audience reception, memory and history, political performance,meta-theatre, technological hybridity,urban and social critique

The Bucharest National Theatre Festival, beyond the foreign productions it hosts, offers visitors a panoramic and telling view of the contemporary achievements of Romanian theatre. Nearly all of the country’s national and state-funded theatres are represented, showcasing mostly large-scale, high-budget productions that are seldom encountered within the independent sector.

This year I was able to attend only eight performances, regrettably missing several I had been particularly eager to attend, such as Botond Nagy’s stage adaptation of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth. Nonetheless, the productions I did see in the 35^th edition of the Festival offered a coherent impression of the dominant trends in contemporary Romanian theatre: works drawing on historical archives, memory, and trauma; modern interpretations of Shakespeare and other canonical texts; and productions distinguished by their striking scenographies, lighting scores and soundscapes.

Regarding the audience, it was once again among the most striking aspects of this year’s festival, with theatres consistently full, even on weekday afternoons. Each year I’m both fascinated and perplexed by the sustained standing ovations from these highly enthusiastic spectators. They follow nearly every performance, including works that, in my view, do not merit such praise. I have no firm explanation, as I am not aware of any systematic research on local theatre audiences. The only tentative explanation I can offer, based on observing similar patterns in other former Eastern Bloc countries, from Armenia and Georgia to Bulgaria and Slovakia, is that this heightened enthusiasm may reflect a widely shared theatrical culture and mode of reception.

With this in mind, I now turn to the performances I attended this year, along with two outside the festival, beginning with the remarkable Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill, a production of the Sibiu National Theatre, directed by Timofey Kulyabin, adapted by Roman Dolzhanskiy, and translated by Raluca Radulescu.

Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Radu Stanca National Theatre, Sibiu

The Long Journey of Memory Through Light and Darkness

Any adaptation of a work as significant as Long Day’s Journey into Night constitutes a multifaceted challenge. On the one hand, there is the concern not to diminish the qualitative magnitude of the original; on the other, there is the need to identify an entry point that allows the adaptor to re-read the work with a fresh perspective, one that respects the original while daring to make it resonate in a contemporary and localized context.

Nicu Miho (Edmund Tyrone), Raluca Iani (Mary Tyrone), Marius Turdeanu (James Tyrone), and Horia Fedorca (Jamie Tyrone). Absent from the family portrait is the Nurse, played by Ioana Cosma. *Long Day’s Journey into Night*’s Tyrone family—condemned to remain together, bound by love and resentment. Photo: Vlad Dumitru

Kulyabin’s directorial work, in collaboration with adaptor Dolzhanskiy, was simultaneously ambitious and audacious. The challenge extended beyond the play’s content, that is to say, the what of the text, to its very atmosphere, the how embedded in the psychological realism of pre-second World War American theatre. During this period, Freudian thought profoundly influenced both the thematic concerns and stylistic approaches of many American modernist playwrights. Among them was Eugene O’Neill, a perpetually restless artist who drew on the turbulent currents of his own life to create one of modern drama’s most fully realized works of psychological realism. He began writing the play in 1939, completed the first draft in 1940, and finalized revisions by 1941.

This context, inviting as it is, presents a dilemma for any contemporary director: how does one confront a realism already deconstructed by postmodern, anti-essentialist theories of identity and behavior? How can the infernos lurking within O’Neill’s characters gain convincing theatrical visibility, and with what tools of excavation? Traditional methods, such as those of Stanislavski and Strasberg, seem to offer little guidance.

Seeking to penetrate the protective shell of the Tyrone family, Kulyabin employs the poetic and self-reflexive language of metatheatre to access alternative routes into the darker recesses of the human psyche. He isolates O’Neill’s fragile alter ego, Edmund, situating him outside the family’s suffocating milieu as an older writer recalling, frame by frame, the pivotal moments of his troubled past. On the final day of his life, he performs the act he has always known to be inevitable: to write.

Through this reframing, the production acquires a renewed immediacy, a heightened sense of the “here and now,” realized with professional precision and performative cohesion by the ensemble, consisting of Nicu Mihoc, Raluca Iani, Marius Turdeanu, Horia Fedorca, Radu Costea, Ioana Cosma, Adrian Neacșu, David Cristian and Vlad Robaș.

The dying Edmund (Nicu Miho). By his side Marius Turdeanu. The long day’s journey into night ends. And so does the (re)writing of the family’s tragedy. Photo: Vlad Dumitru

Within the poetics of metatheatre, narration functions not merely as recollection but as an act of embodied memory, a process of writing-as-performance that operates simultaneously as redemption and self-condemnation.

In Kulyabin’s conception, writing becomes a generative force that directs the body, orchestrates stage action, and determines presence and absence alike. In this framework, writing itself writes, remembers, and stages memory, transforming O’Neill’s once closed text into a perpetually unfolding work in progress—always open and in flux.

This is a compelling idea, no doubt, with considerable performative potential: it might have unified the play’s stage elements by mediating shifts in space and time, fragmentary dialogue, and sudden leaps of memory had it been more organically and consistently integrated into the dramatic structure. But Kulyabin never fully exploits this potential. His configuration of the theatrical world ultimately limits the characters’ depth and diminishes the audience’s emotional engagement, particularly for viewers unfamiliar with O’Neill’s original text.

A telling example is the mother’s monologue in which she recalls her years in the convent and her first encounter with the actor who would become her husband. Although Raluca Iani delivered the scene with genuine emotional intensity, it did not fully convey the mother’s existential yearning for belonging and rootedness. After years of wandering alongside her actor-husband, when she finally secured a home of her own, a space she hoped would anchor her dreams, it became instead a site of despair, a suffocating domestic prison for all who inhabited it.

Edmund (Nicu Miho) and his mother, Mary Tyrone (Raluca Iani), gaze into the mirror. Once a would-be nun who married a wandering actor, Mary drifts through her fragile, ever-receding dream of finally “belonging.” Photo: Vlad Dumitru

The absence of certain textual layers made it difficult for those unfamiliar with the narrative to discern the underlying motivations of the characters’ behavior. It is within this submerged text that the source of each character’s guilt resides. In this family drama, no one is innocent; every figure has betrayed or wounded another. Darkness prevails, even in daylight.

Marius Turdeanu (Father Tyrone, left) and Nicu Miho (Edmund, right), with the bottle of whiskey poised between them, an ever-present catalyst of the Tyrone family’s undoing. Photo: Vlad Dumitru

Beyond the interpretive choices of the director and adaptor, Oleg Golovko constructed a liminal space, at once domestic and spectral, that mirrored the play’s oscillation between past and present, balancing a degree of domestic realism with theatrical distance. Yet its bare, almost clinical appearance ultimately intensified the sense of emotional detachment rather than the play’s inner heat. Yet Long Day’s Journey Into Night demands fever, conflict, and passion. The relationships O’Neill forges among his characters are incandescent, even pathological; there is no distance between them. They live their tragedy within an embrace that fuses love and hatred, tenderness and destruction. In this self-constructed familial inferno, they are both perpetrators and victims. No one is innocent, and for that very reason, no one can escape.

In this context, Kulyabin’s decision to release Edmund from the family’s vicious circle was truly inspired, as it gave him space to breathe and reflect, even if it did not attain the full depth of psychological exploration. Yet the production gained in other, equally significant ways. Kulyabin approached an immensely demanding and deeply personal play with respect, care, and imagination, managing to render it both contemporary and communicative once again.

It has been a long time since I have seen a Long Day’s Journey Into Night that kept me so alert and engaged, even if it did not fulfill every expectation I brought to the work. I would gladly see it again.

Special mention is due to Raluca Rădulescu’s translation, which preserved the linguistic richness and stylistic nuance of O’Neill’s text with clarity and fluency.

❊ On the last day of life, memory writes more powerfully than any light can illuminate.

The Lesson
“Marin Sorescu” National Theatre, Craiova

Between Language and Power

For a foreign visitor, engaging with an Ionesco play in the playwright’s homeland carries an almost magical resonance: one feels every word, gesture, pause, and silence. This setting provides a deeper insight into his aesthetic, the absurd exaggerations, tonal nuances and deliberate madness. I refer here to Ionesco’s The Lesson, presented on the main stage of the National Theatre by Bobi Pricop (translated by Vlad Russo and Vlad Zografi).

In his director’s note, Pricop observes that the notions of learning, education and authority depicted in the play transcend the classroom and the teacher–student relationship, extending into broader structures of power within the home, particularly the parent–child dynamic and the family itself.

The three protagonists—Sorin Leoveanu (the Professor), Raluca Păun (the pupil), and Iulia Lazăr (Marie, the maid)—in the sitting room of the beautifully crafted, deliberately “kitsch” set designed by Oana Micu. Photo: Volker Vornehm

Starting from this premise, Pricop staged the play so that the lesson leads to inherent behavior, a ritual repeated so often that it becomes entrenched as a pattern. It remains unchallenged precisely because clichés, stereotypes and familiar stimuli, normalized through constant repetition, gain a deceptive naturalness that renders them invisible and, in many cases, invincible. This recalls Wittgenstein’s prison-house of language as well as Foucault’s panoptic gaze: we are subject to the subtle operations of modern systems of power whose violence is exercised almost imperceptibly.

This conceptual thread forms the foundation of the production. The tyrant–teacher of Ionesco’s text is enacted by the father (Sorin Leoveanu), who wields authority with cold indifference, performing it as a habitual routine rather than an act of instruction. Nothing disturbs his composure. Opposite him stands the student/daughter (played by the talented Raluca Păun), a Felliniesque figure distinguished by heavy makeup and grotesque expressions. The mother and/or housekeeper (Iulia Lazăr) remains a passive observer throughout, reinforcing the sense of a world trapped in endless repetition and unchanging hierarchies of power. Victimizers and victims alike are flattened into types, existing only to breathe and repeat the same clichés simply because they exist.

Raluca Păun as the pupil, increasingly crushed under the authority of her domineering and manipulative father-teacher. Photo: Volker Vornehm

These hollow figures are echoed in Oana Micu’s inspired pop-art, cartoon-like set, with its vivid colors and flat furniture evoking a child’s room turned prison, an environment inhabited by two dimensional beings caught in a ritual of everyday violence.

The “absurd” three-member family of Ionesco, set amid a stage design full of humor and a deliberately child-like atmosphere by Oana Micu. Photo: Volker Vornehm

While the central concept and visual design were compelling, the essential tension between the kitsch aesthetic of space and the mechanical human presence was missing. Such a counterpoint might have illuminated more clearly the political and existential dimensions of the play, with its critique of authority and representation of education and gender relations as an interlocking system. In its absence, the characters seemed to move and speak within a conceptual void.

Nevertheless, Pricop’s ambition to make Ionesco’s play speak to us today, not as a museum relic of the Theatre of the Absurd but rather as a living commentary on violence, power and the domestic order, was both thoughtful and fertile, even if not fully realized in execution.

A captivating tableau of the family, framed by the designer’s telling use of color and playful, “kitsch” architectural elements. Photo: Volker Vornehm

❊ No one truly learns anything, yet we all remain both teachers and students, equally impacted by the same invisible authorities.

Queen of the Night
“Fani Tardini” Dramatic Theatre, Galați

When the Village Became Memory

The production Queen of the Night, directed by Leta Popescu, immediately drew me into the world of a Moldavian village, a place scented with wet brooms and night-blooming flowers.

*Queen of the Night.* With Bogdan Spătaru’s set design, Elena Anghel’s movement direction, Csaba Boros’s music, and Oana Mogoș’s lyrics. Photo: Costel Crafciuc

Popescu created a vibrant sensory universe rich in stories, memories, humor, songs, movement and confession. Her aim was to evoke a collective memory, especially for spectators who had grown up in the countryside or were still immersed in its echoes, awakening nostalgia without dulling critical awareness, a thoughtful yet risky choice, since dramatizing nostalgia can easily prompt audiences to respond more to sentiment than to artistic achievement. In such cases, applause may honor not the performance itself but the recognition of familiar certainties, turning the spectators’ response into a quiet personal declaration: “Thank you for moving me with something familiar.”

That said, as someone not intimately familiar with the life and traditions of the Romanian countryside, I could not fully determine whether the production resonated primarily through memory or aesthetic accomplishment, or precisely what inspired the audience’s warm reception. From the flow of action and subtext, however, I inferred that spectators responded to both content and form.

Through the choric ensembles, the performance radiates joy, playfulness, and theatricality, conjuring a nostalgic vision of village life. Photo: Costel Crafciuc

Popescu handled the richness of her characters and the humor of the piece with ease and clarity. The performance remained festive, colorful and lively, though it offered little that was radical or formally innovative. The folkloric dimension was coherent and well-structured, if somewhat predictable in its development.

Oana Mogoș dominated the stage as the central figure and narrative focus, while the remaining seventeen performers animated a fragmented, colorful set, generating vivid storytelling pockets, archetypes and tableaux rather than fully developed characters.

The male villagers contribute an additional dimension to the performance, their humor, actions, and perspectives subtly exposing the dynamics of gender relations. Photo: Costel Crafciuc

❊ The production celebrated memory while allowing for reflection, a communal act of remembering that balanced affection with awareness.

NIJINSKI: Agonie și Extaz
Odeon Theatre

The Agony of Creation

NIJINSKI: Agonie și Extaz depicted the life and particularly the mental collapse of the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Director and choreographer Arcadie Rusu explored the fragile dialogue between creation and self-destruction, between dream and nightmare.

The cast: Răzvan Mazilu, Meda Victor, Vlad Bîrzanu, Niko Becker, Vlad Crudu. Photo: Victor Oancea

Răzvan Mazilu, in the role of Nijinsky, embodied both the ecstasy of artistic creation and the terror of psychological disintegration. Despite his technical mastery and unwavering dedication, the performance emphasized visual spectacle more than genuinely innovative choreographic ideas.

The evocative set design of Yasmin Asan. Photo: Victor Oancea

The set by Yasmin Asan and the lighting by Arcadie Rusu created atmosphere and visual depth but contributed little to the dramaturgical evolution of movement. While the audience’s enthusiasm was palpable, my impression was that the applause honored Mazilu’s enduring contribution to Romanian dance culture rather than the specific merits of this performance.

Răzvan Mazilu as Nijinski. Photo: Victor Oancea

❊The performance seemed to dance around rather than move into the legend.

The Tempest
Tamási Áron Theatre, Sfântu-Gheorghe

**A Contemporary Tempest in Fast Forward**

Viktor Bodó’s Tempest, translated by Ádám Nádasdy and dramaturgically adapted by Anna Veress, ran for about ninety minutes without intermission, nearly an hour shorter than the classic version. This condensation seemed designed to quicken the pace and intensify the storm of visual imagery while at the same time keeping the play’s central themes of freedom, self-knowledge and forgiveness in clear view.

The impressive opening storm scene of the *Tempest, d*irected by Viktor Bodó and dramatised by Anna Veress. Assistant director: Laky Dia. Translated by Ádám Nádasdy. Set design by Hanna Erős. Light design by Sándor Baumgartner. Photo: Zsolt Barabás

The production offered a distinctly modern reading of Shakespeare, supported by Hanna Erős’s set design, Bori Zatykó’s costumes, Sándor Baumgartner’s lighting, and Klaus von Heydenander’s music. Together, these elements formed a rich audiovisual environment that privileged external action and sensory immediacy over linguistic texture or interpretive depth.

Familiar with the original text and inevitably comparing it to this accelerated version, I felt that the condensation left little room for the characters to develop as individuals, or for the play’s intricate, multi-layered structure to unfold. The Tempest is not merely Prospero’s story; it is a polyphonic network of interwoven narratives, almost musical in its construction, culminating in a meditation on life, art, and theatre itself. Compressing this complex universe inevitably tested the production’s clarity, especially for spectators unfamiliar with the original, who could easily lose their bearings in its labyrinthine narrative.

As often happens at international festivals, subtitling poses a recurring challenge, especially when language is central. Shakespeare’s plays are, above all, poetic; their power flows from the vitality of the language; The Tempest is no exception. Here, the production was performed in Hungarian, with Romanian and English surtitles. Those unable to follow the spoken language were compelled to fix their gaze on the screen, fragmenting attention and undermining the immediacy of the theatrical experience.

The music was one of the distinct features of Viktor Bodó’s reading of Shakespeare’s text. Original music: Klaus von Heydenander. Photo: Zsolt Barabás

Within these constraints, Bodó constructed a Tempest of transformation and paradox. From the opening moments, his approach was clear: the visual storm functioned as a theatrical shock, immersing the audience in a world of sound, movement, and phantoms, a realm of inner turbulence where everything was in flux. Nothing was certain, neither the real nor the illusory. And what better medium to explore that instability than theatre itself, the art of duality par excellence.

Particularly striking was Bence Kónya Ütő’s portrayal of Caliban. The actor, who rightly received the Best Supporting Actor Award from the Theatre Critics’ Association (15 September 2025), combined the grotesque with humor while also merging physicality with delicacy. His Caliban oscillated between monster and child, rage and vulnerability, a figure who, in Bodó’s reading, became a mirror of human contradiction.

In the main roles: Prospero: Tibor Pálffy. Miranda: Zsuzsanna Vass. Caliban: Bence Kónya-Ütő. Ariel: Janka Korodi. Antonio: József Kolcsár. Alonso: László Szakács. Ferdinand: Kristóf Nagy-Kopeczky. Sebastian: Dezső Derzsi. Gonzalo: Annamária D. Albu. Stefano: Gábor Erdei.Trinculo: Lóránt-László Márton. Photo: Zsolt Barabás

Overall, Viktor Bodó’s Tempest was an inventive and daring proposition, another bold attempt to reintroduce a classic through the expressive tools of contemporary theatre. It offered moments of genuine visual and emotional beauty and once again affirmed the vitality and adventurous spirit of the Hungarian stage, which shows no fear of experimentation.

Approaching the end. Photo: Zsolt Barabás

❊ This was an imaginative and audacious reinterpretation, a modern Tempest in motion.

The Reenactment
Marin Sorescu National Theatre, Craiova

History Is Not Re-lived; It Is Re-invented

Before turning to the performance itself, I would like to consider the broader implications inevitably raised by works of this sort. Reenactment, by its very nature, is an ambiguous act. It is less concerned with memory than with our stance toward history. It does not attempt to resurrect the past but rather to render it visible in a new light, subjecting it to renewed scrutiny. Through repetition, every reenactment gestures toward a past already completed, one that, intentionally or not, exposes the theatricality of history, that is to say, events as performance or as otherness.

*The Reenactment:* Concept by Catinca Drăgănescu and Ciprian Făcăeru. Albert Dobrin, Cosmin Kleiner Stoian. Directed by Catinca Drăgănescu. Set design, VR/AR & lighting design: Ciprian Făcăeru. Costumes and set design consultant: Lia Dogaru. Photo: Albert Dobrin and Cosmin Kleiner Stoian

Theatricality is inherent to every reenactment. It is already a performed act, a dramatized imitation of the mechanisms of representation. This raises a series of compelling questions, such as:

Which notions of theatricality can provide fertile ground for dialogue between politics and aesthetics?
What becomes of the authority that defines what really happened?
To what extent can directorial choices transcend the authority of the event or its media representation, or do they merely generate yet another version of the same story?

These questions are not new; they echo through the work of artists such as Rimini Protokoll, Forced Entertainment, Tim Crouch, Milo Rau and Lola Arias, among others, whose performances interrogate how representation conveys or distorts truth.

Such reflections were with me as I was watching, sometimes via screen and sometimes live, Catinca Drăgănescu’s Reenactment.

Software Development of *Reconstituirea* VR/AR: Augmented Space Agency (Dan Făcăeru and Sabin Șerban). Music composition and sound design: Cristian Vieriu. Lights: Alina Mitrache / Marian Tudorache. Sound: Emy Guran. Video: Florin Chirea. Photo: Albert Dobrin, Cosmin Kleiner Stoian

Drawing inspiration from Lucian Pintilie’s emblematic 1968 film Reconstituirea (The Reenactment), Drăgănescu created a contemporary, hybrid performative collage, an artistic breaking news bulletin capturing the spirit of our time: lost idealism, the need for freedom, the right to dream and the desire for collective action.

The result was a fragmented yet vibrant universe without a fixed center, constantly shifting across temporal and spatial coordinates. Spectators oscillated between real and virtual, past and present, theatre and metatheatre, hope and disillusionment, moving between the events of May ’68 and contemporary Romanian history. The performance unfolded as a dreamlike journey, a performative album of documents, memories, slogans, bodies, sounds and music, persistently asking how much truth can be conveyed in an era of pervasive post-truths. We know that neither the screen, the camera nor virtual reality is ever neutral; narratives are never innocent. They simultaneously bring events closer while distancing them from authenticity. Every reenactment thus exposes the authority of narration, asking who defines what happened, and whose memory prevails. That was the sensation I had while watching a performance that transformed actors into time travelers and spectators into witnesses of a reenactment that promised not truth but awareness, a consciousness of the conditions under which history is told and retold.

Cast: Ana / Girl in the bathing suit: Iulia Colan. Lior / Vuică: David Drugaru..Tom, / Ripu 2: Robert Ioan. Julie / Prosecutor: Romanița Ionescu. Cameraman: Cătălin-Mihai Miculeasa. Theatre Director / Sergeant: Raluca Păun. Ripu / Narrator: Nicolae Vicol. Photo: Albert Dobrin, Cosmin Kleiner Stoian

While I cannot say to what extent my own concerns align with Drăgănescu’s, Reenactment struck me as an intellectually demanding experiment, exploring non-linear temporality in an effort to create a third space where past and present intersect, replaying history without closure or justification. To this end, the director’s role, interpreted by Raluca Păun and interspersed within performance, interrupting and commenting on the action, amplified the interplay between truth and fiction, and reinforced the search for a new performative language.

Although I was generally able to follow the onstage action, there were moments when I felt lost amid the torrent of fragments. At those points, a more decisive dramaturgy might have provided a more successful structure with stronger transitions between stage moments and particularly between live performance and technological mediation. At times their encounter obscured rather than illuminated meaning. Similarly, a tighter dramaturgical framework could have moderated moments when slogans and manifestos became overly declarative, and thus diminished slightly the work’s reflective force.

Even so, the project’s aesthetic richness was prominent throughout the performance. It dissolved the boundaries between yesterday and today, reminding us that idealism and revolution are not dead and indeed can always be rekindled, reinvented and rearticulated. A decisive contribution came from Ciprian Făcăeru, who repurposed old-style television sets and VHS cameras as mediators, highlighting both the tension of the performance and its dialogue with Pintilie’s film.

In close interplay with technology, the musical compositions of Dan Făcăeru, Sabin Șerba and Cristian Vieriu, along with the lighting design by Alina Mitrache and Marian Tudorache, created a multilayered audiovisual landscape experienced as a rollercoaster of experiences, emotions, anxieties and dreams, and reflected a younger generation’s search for air, space and possibility.

*The Reenactment.* Photo: Albert Dobrin and Cosmin Kleiner Stoian

❊ History is never revived in its original form; it is reimagined through the eyes of those who remember or wish to remember. Every gaze is already a performance, and as performance it is an imitation which compels us to ask, again and again, how close to truth it can ever be.

Treasure City
Reactor, Cluj – Creation and Experiment Hub

The City as a Commodity

The performance Treasure City, performed by the independent group Reactor, directed by David Schwartz and written by Petro Ionescu, examined how a city is gradually transformed into a marketable product. The play dissected processes of urban gentrification such as deindustrialization, the conversion of industrial spaces into luxury areas, the increase of land prices and the reconfiguration of social hierarchies.

Two members of the cast are discussing the transformation of industrial spaces into luxurious neighborhoods. The Cast: Alexandra Caras, Zsolt Csepei, Cătălin Filip, Ana Maria Marin, Paul Sebastian Popa, Doru Taloș, Tavi Voina. Photo: Ioana Groza Pop, Roland Vaczi

The decision to incorporate elements of stand-up comedy initially provided relief, as they introduced humor and sarcasm which underscored the absurdities of contemporary urban life. Yet this theatrical device remained underdeveloped, and ultimately lacked the incisive edge required by its political subject matter.

Still, the topic held considerable potential, as the performance illustrated a confrontation between the aesthetics and the ideology of the city, using a stage architecture that revealed how the economy shapes not only urban spaces but also the lives of their inhabitants. Nostalgic undertones which might have offered a counterpoint failed to translate into compelling and imaginative theatrical imagery.

Overall, the performance exhausted its potential by relying too heavily on simple description and narration, missing the opportunity to create a new and unpredictable stage dynamic. As documentary theatre has advanced significantly in the way it presents material, I had expected more daring and imagination from these young artists.

Light and sound design by Cătălin Filip and Alex Maftei. Photo: Ioana Groza Pop, Roland Vaczi

Certainly, the only independent company I saw at the festival, the artists earned my respect; however, my hope was to see a livelier presentation of such an interesting topic. While both intention and enthusiasm were evident, what was missing was the stagecraft needed to create a fully realized experience.

Set design by Mihai Păcurar. Photo: Ioana Groza Pop, Roland Vaczi

❊ Treasure City reminds us that urban development, like theatre, is an act of choice: key actors, in deciding which spaces are preserved and which are erased, ultimately determine whose stories are allowed to endure.

Lina
Teatrul Bulandra, “Toma Caragiu”

Publicity as a New Form of Violence

The performance Lina, directed by Adina Lazăr with text by Alexandra Felseghi, is inspired by actual events from the 1990s. It explores the relationship between politics, media and public image through the story of a young student caught in a sexual scandal and subjected to relentless public scrutiny.

The three-part set by Bianca and Sabina Veșteman, allowing for the development of the central narrative and its subplots. Photo: Volker Vornehm

The three-part stage design by Bianca and Sabina Veșteman was functional and precise. It featured an elevated domestic space at the back, a secondary private zone and a television talk-show studio at the front, close to the audience and dominated by the figure of a former politician who cynically exposes Lina. This spatial arrangement effectively served the play’s central aims of demonstrating how private and public spheres intertwine, how the personal becomes political, and how public image turns into a mechanism of social control.

The play opens with Lina testing herself in the role of Desdemona, thereby foreshadowing the themes of sexism, humiliation and disillusionment. Meanwhile, the relationship between Ruxi and Anca introduces the secondary goal of exploring gender identity and difference.

The acting spaces of *Lina*. Photo: Volker Vornehm

In a pivotal scene, the confrontation between Ruxi and her mother is depicted as the latter discovers her daughter’s lesbian relationships; this moment captures both the generational divide and the clash between social hypocrisy and the need for personal freedom. The plot peaks when Ruxi’s family sells Lina’s photographs with the President to a TV station, fabricating a scandalous story that ultimately destroys her life. Publicity, television, and fake news form a web of violence that, even before the rise of social media, feels almost prophetic.

The performance features lively and realistic dialogue, rhythm, humor and sarcasm. The actors, Mădălina Mușat (Lina), Oana Jipa (Ruxi), Daniel Rizea, Ioana Alexandrina Costea, and Sebastian Marina, consistently support Lazăr’s direction and maintain audience engagement. The ensemble shares a strong chemistry with each other as they communicate with clarity and immediacy. Despite these strengths, however, the dramaturgy feels somewhat dated. While the ideas are substantial, they unfold predictably through stereotypes and emotional overstatement. As a result, the play gradually exhausts its dramatic potential, slipping into television-style melodrama dominated by shouting and didactic dialogue rather than nuanced psychology or reflective critique.

The women at the centre of Lina’s tragedy, frozen in shock and dismay as the scandal tightens its grip. Photo: Volker Vornehm

The direction would have benefitted from a more compact structure and a reduction of the 2 hours and 40 minutes duration of the actual performance. With tighter editing and a less didactic tone, Lina could have achieved greater impact.

Beautiful atmospheric lighting. Photo: Volker Vornehm

❊ I applaud the ambition to revisit a 1990s case which exposes how society observes, judges, and sensationalizes private lives, first through media and then through digital platforms. Yet sentimentality and melodramatic clichés often weaken the political edge. In the end, the question is not who tells the truth, but rather who controls the narrative. Theatre remains as one of the few spaces where that narrative can still be questioned.

Postscript

During my stay in Bucharest, I attended a performance of Who Killed My Father, the acclaimed play by Édouard Louis, which depicts the playwright’s return to his childhood village to visit his sick, aged and life-worn father. Through this visit unfolds a relationship filled with tension, estrangement and unspoken love, a love expressed not through words but through silences and glances. We glimpse the life of a working-class father in rural France, marked by poverty, social prejudice, and the toxic masculinity imposed upon him, forces that ultimately lead to both physical and psychological exhaustion. By the end of the play, the narrative takes on sharp political intensity: French politicians, from Jacques Chirac to Emmanuel Macron, are shown to have killed the father, not through metaphor, but rather through policies that systematically condemn the poor and working class. It is a stark reminder that the system does not need weapons to kill; words and indifference suffice.

An acrobatic move in *Cine-l-a-ucis-pe-tata* [*Who Killed my Father*?]. Photo: Twobugs

The performance at Teatrul Metropoli was directed by Andrei Măjeri. Adrian Balcău’s set design transformed the stage into a kind of gymnasium, a space where obsession with the body met stillness, and the private intertwined with the public. By turning the monologue into a six-character drama with actors portraying the same person at different life stages, the director intensified the emotional charge and offered multiple perspectives on the protagonist.

The cast of *Cine-l-a-ucis-pe-tata* [*Who Killed My Father*?]. Andrei Majeri transformed the original monologue into a multi-voiced narrative, using six actors to expand the story’s social and historical dimensions and amplify its collective resonance. Photo: Twobugs

The direction was inventive: a multi-layered drama with strong social and political undertones explored the shifting relationship between stage and audience. The soundscape, created entirely by the actors’ voices, along with rapid transitions and constant role-switching, maintained a relentless pace and taut energy. The shift from monologic to polyphonic performance illuminated both the tragic and everyday dimensions of the father–son relationship, showing how much the father had paid the system and how much the son continues to carry its burdens.

Despite its power, the performance did not entirely escape occasional moments of excess, such as the theatrical flourishes that seemed to compete with rather than underscore the message. Still, it remains a performance that captivates, provokes thought and moves its audience, fusing the personal and the political in a raw and unmediated way.

Two members of the cast in the gym, the main acting space of the performance. Photo: Twobugs

❊ The story of father and son reminds us that politicians do not need to kill to defeat; it is enough to make one feel small. The theatrical experience speaks louder than any law or decree.

MASCA

On the outskirts of Bucharest, in a neighborhood with no other cultural landmarks, the MASCA Cultural Center has operated for 35 years as a space for experimentation and community engagement. It is a venue that links creativity with the everyday life of the neighborhood. Its full houses prove that theatre here is not separate from community life; indeed, it is part of it, alive, participatory, and renewing. To my knowledge, MASCA remains Romania’s first school of alternative theatre.

The premises of MASCA. Photo: Courtesy of MASCA

There, I attended Rave de Ravel by Andrea Gavriliu, a dance performance structured around the music of Maurice Ravel and performed by a group of enthusiastic young actors who were not professional dancers. Through a combination of instinct and technique, they realized non-linear choreographic sequences that created a dialogue between Ravel’s refined musical forms and the visceral language of street dance and African tribal-influenced movement.

*Rave de Ravel/ Rave by Ravel*. Photo: Adda Mihăescu

Without claiming radical innovation, the choreographer’s choices managed to reposition classical heritage in a present-day youthful context. The performance contained humor, radiated energy, and at times created a hypnotic aura.

❊ At MASCA, theatre breathes with the neighborhood and reminds us that art is not a luxury but rather a way of living.

The End

The lights fade, the echoes remain. Until next time, Bucharest.

*Savas Patsalidis is Professor Emeritus in Theatre Studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has also taught at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Northern Greece, the Hellenic Open University and the graduate program of the Theatre Department of Aristotle University. He is the author of fourteen books on theatre and performance criticism/theory and co-editor of another thirteen. His two-volume study, Theatre, Society, Nation (2010), was awarded first prize for best theatre study of the year. In 2022 his book-length study Comedy’s Encomium: The Seriousness of Laughter, was published by University Studio Press. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Hellenic Association of Theatre and Performing Arts Critics, a member of the curators’ team of Forest International Festival (organized by the National Theatre of Northern Greece), and the editor-in-chief of Critical Stages, the journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics.