The Nottara Theater Wraps Up the Boulevard Fest(in) Festival

The famous Nottara Theater of Bucharest organized the first edition of the Fest(in) on the Boulevard Festival. The event had two sections: “Terrible Crisis, Sir! and “Boulevard of Comedy.

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Luana Pleşea, 09.11.2013, 12:09

The plays competing there were from five countries, France, Serbia, Bulgaria, Austria and Romania, illustrating all types of crises: economic, social, political, sexual, as well as identity crisis. The winner was Candid, a loose adaptation of Voltaire’s work, directed by Cristian Pepino, a puppet theater for grownups premiering in 2007 at Tandarica Theater, the foremost puppet theater in Romania.

The youngest member of the jury, Radu Alexandru Nica, told us about why it won: “First and foremost, as far as the jury was concerned, the artistic value was what tipped the scales. It was a rather cheeky show. I am delighted that they did with the puppets what I would have liked to do, to treat them violently, with humor and cynicism. This black humor thing is what excited the jury, this kind of lucid approach to this Illuminist text. This unbounded imagination of the director and actors won us over completely. What do I mean by a ‘cheeky’ play? It is a show that challenges morals, and one that shows us our stupid and grotesque side. And not just that, it was also the way in which the puppets were handled, the combination of video and puppet handling, between choreography and acting, which was rather cynical.”

One other show that competed there was from Vienna, put on by a Romanian director, the play “Woyzeck”, by Geirun Tino, played at Pygmalion Theater. A native of Braila, Geirun Tino settled in Vienna in 1985, and ten years later he set up his own theater, the Pygmalion. This year, the artist got Vienna’s Gold Cross Award for Culture in Theater. The famous play Woyzeck, by Georg Buchner, is one of the most widely played productions in the German speaking area.

Geirun Tino told us about his vision of the text: “Woyzeck is the first hero in world drama that is a kind of an anti-hero. Up until Woyzeck, most of the protagonists in drama were nobles, kings, emperors… Woyzeck is the first wastrel, a nobody, a man without a firmly drawn personality, without a well defined social situation. I was interested to see to what extent such a man can develop the same appetite for love of peers, for love in general. Is there anything different in the way that such a man loves others? And we see that there is no difference. And if in this area there is no difference, then the other areas no longer count at all.”

The Festin on the Boulevard festival opened with an original event called “Theater on a Slice of Bread”. The initiative belongs to director Mihai Lungeanu, and his purpose was to draw the attention of passers by to theater.

At the end of the festival, critic Marinela Tepus, director of Nottara Theater, said she wanted to take these meetings with the audience beyond the stage: “I think the sense of a festival is to bring together as many quality shows as it can, from anywhere in the world. My biggest wish is for both sections to include as many shows as it can, making a real street event out of it, not limited to the sidewalk in front of the theater, but crossing the street, and even getting to the Historical Center, following in the footsteps of the festival “Caragiale’s Bucharest”, initiated by Bucharest City Hall, all summer long. It concludes on 15 September, and we begin on 15 October, so we are basically taking over from this festival. Because the weather is fair in October, we could gather people together to come and stay for a while, so we could be closer to the community, because a festival is a feast for the community.”

Nottara Theater will now officially have a Boulevard of Comedy section permanently. The main hall of the theater will now be a constant Boulevard of Comedy, with only comical theater being staged there, as Nottara wishes to tell everyone that comedy is not a minor genre.