The Sibiu International Theatre Festival
In June, the city of Sibiu hosted to the 21st International Theatre Festival, this year held under the motto “Uniqueness in Diversity.
Luana Pleşea, 02.08.2014, 01:09
The festival brought together 2,500 artists and representatives of cultural institutions from 70 countries and featured 381 different events, including theatre and dance performances, music concerts, exhibitions, book launches and lectures held in conventional as well as unconventional settings.
Theatre director Radu Afrim, who in the coming weeks will be staging two performances at Sibiu’s Radu Stanca National Theatre, participated in the festival with a solo photo exhibition, a stage performance and a performance as part of the festival’s Music Performances section. His photo exhibition comprises snapshots of everyday life and portraits of actors. Here is what Radu Afrim told us about his exhibition in Sibiu, which was hosted by the Thalia Hall and benefited from the involvement of set designer Dragos Buhagiar:
”The photographs are nudes and half-nudes of actors I met through my work, people I spend time with between rehearsals and outside the theatre. The photographs were taken during our walks in the forest, the trips to the Great Island of Braila and on the banks of River Olt, or some other location. They have nothing to do with our theatre work. It is so easy to take pictures of actors. You don’t have to work that hard to get them to relax. Actors live in a world of their own and I hope I managed to show this in my photos. I have worked with young, well-known actors and I wanted to make them even more popular.”
The guest performance in this year’s edition of the festival, Andrew Bovell’s “When the Rain Stops” was first staged by Radu Afrim at the Toma Caragiu Theatre in Ploiesti. About the show, Afrim says it is a much more settled and mature performance based on a modern tragedy, to which the director has lent a slow, almost hypnotic rhythm. Featuring in the festival’s Musical Performances section, Afrim’s Hai Iu Iu Nu Hey You You (Maria Tănase remix) was born during the Young Actor’s Gala held in Costinesti last September and is the outcome of a creative workshop entitled ”Maria Tănase: 1913-2013”, run by the musician Vlaicu Golcea. Radu Afrim explains:
“I am very fond of this Maria Tanase remix project. It is a non-commercial experiment that involves young drama school graduates. The performance, which is full of humour, has a certain a narrative thread, a story, up to a point. It also consists of cabaret-type scenes featuring young male actors. This performance cannot be classified easily, as it neither a musical, nor a concert. It is not a staged performance, it has no props, all I wanted to do is bring people together. In this sense it is a modern performance, because Maria Tanase herself was urban. To show this, we have used a photograph of Maria Tanase in which she looks like a Hollywood star.”
One special moment in the festival, and a first in Romania, was the opening of a photography exhibition called “Oidip”, by Mihaela Marin”, which previewed Silviu Purcarete’s performance by the same name premiered a few days after the exhibition. Here is theatre critic Octavian Saiu:
“I would like to thank Mihaela Marin for introducing us to the universe of this performance, which we can only glimpse at in her photographs. I haven’t seen the Silviu Purcarete’s performance yet, but I am convinced there will be scenes in Oidip which I will be unable to separate from what Mihaela chose to share in this exhibition. There are photos here that capture a certain nuance, a certain state of a scene, at the same time offering the image of an entire show. I believe that any gesture made by Mihaela Marin falls into an area of cultural memory and theatre memory that is extremely important. One of the emblematic images of last year’s festival in Edinburgh, which sparked national pride in me, was a photo of a Hamlet show staged by the Wooster Group Theater from the US, a photo also taken by Mihaela Marin.”
One of the important books launched at the 21st edition of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival was “New Practices in Stage Arts in Eastern Europe”, edited by Iulia Popovici. According to Iulia Popovici, this is the first book covering Central and Eastern Europe published in this part of Europe. It comprises 10 essays, 10 interviews and a text about Ukraine written by theatre critic Viktor Sobiiansky:
“The main purpose of this book, which I hope is its main merit, is that of creating a concrete context for theatre everywhere. You feel it resonating with what happens in surrounding countries and in our country too. For instance, of all our neighbours, we are the only ones who have a theatre of real issues, a strong documentary theatre. In Bulgaria they only made the first attempts this year. In Hungary they have a documentary show staged three years ago. In Ukraine there is an effervescence related to the recent protests, which has generated reality theatre, but not much else. Poland and Slovakia have reality theatre too. What brings us closer is this tense relation with production, with the system of financing and with the dynamics between new and traditional, in the context of performance art with strong public financing in all these areas.”
The Sibiu festival barely finished when organisers announced the next edition will be held between 12th and 21st June 2015. The schedule of events will be published next year. “We are preparing a mature edition, with the promise of the most complex festival of performance arts ever held in this country. Sibiu is a European city, a city who knows how to preserve its beauty, and that makes us proud’, said Constantin Chiriac, the director of the Sibiu Festival.
