International Theatre Festival of Sibiu 32nd Edition

“Thank you!” as a Theme, “Thank you!” as a Code 

(highlights of the International Theatre Festival of Sibiu and its 32^nd edition)

“Let’s say “thank you” to God, to our friends, parents, children, to everyone, that we are alive, that we can smile, that we can love, that we can share; let us thank all those who help us make this festival happen…. this huge and spectacular family that wants goodness and beauty on earth.”

This is how Constantin Chiriac, the founder, president and, in effect, main engine of the Festival since 1993, ends his address in the catalogue this year.

The phrase “Thank you”, though, was not only a theme of the 32^nd edition. It is a code to the essence of the Festival in principle, an explanation, at least partial, of its transformation over the years into a phenomenon of a world scale – so far the third largest one, after those in Edinburgh and Avignon.

In the same address Chiriac pinpoints the main reasons for the theme’s choice, yet one of them stands out: “… in a time of heightened conflict, when war and hatred bring so much destruction,” what was sought out was “… a theme that would make us more open, more thoughtful, and more beautiful…” – “a magic word” that can tame even “those who do us no good…”

This is an excellent encapsulation of the broad-minded manner in which the Festival has been cut out from its very start. It is with the same broad-mindedness and extraordinary panache that its editions continue to be created over the years.

It is the Festival that transformed Sibiu – the 15^th in size city in Romania, with a population of 134000 – into a very sought-out destination, with over 100000 visitors arriving there especially for the event. At the same time, despite the throngs of people and the numerous new, glossy buildings, Sibiu hasn’t lost its authentic atmosphere and spirit. And this too the city owes to the Festival, to its distinct respect for tradition – respect that characterizes many of its accompanying undertakings.

Like the Walk of Fame. There are other such Walks around the world, yet what distinguishes the one in Sibiu – containing already 77 stars of stars – is its special whereabouts. It connects the place of the oldest theatre in Romania (built in 1788) with the place where the future new building of the National Theatre “Radu Stanca” – the organizer of the Festival – will stand.

Yet, among the numerous such undertakings marked with the Festival’s “hats-off” to tradition and its focus on building bridges between the past, present and future, what stands out most is the main rubric in its program, entitled Heritage Performances. Initiated back in 2005, it presents emblematic productions of “Radu Stanca” Theatre. Importantly, the “set” selected for each year does not necessarily differ in full with the one of the previous Festival edition. There are shows which could be in the selection for many years. Such is the case with the famed and spectacular Faust of Silviu Purkarete, created back in 2007, which was the very first show in the rubric this year too; or another long-running Purkarete’s production – The Scarlet Princess, staged in 2018, which also featured there.

20 years after the start of the rubric, these heritage performances could be viewed as forming a special collection – something like a live theatre museum. Notably: a museum not only of the output of “Radu Stanca” Theatre and, thus, of Romanian theatre, but of world theatre as well. For, I dare say, these productions have changed the face of theatre at large. It has to be underlined that they are live shows, part of the repertoire of “Radu Stance”, not revived especially for the Festival.

There are many theatre museums around the world – with important expositions of photos, set-designs, costumes, recreated offices of prominent playwrights, directors, and artists, with arrays of artifacts from emblematic productions, etc. Yet, the special “collection” formed by the heritage performances of the Sibiu Festival is reminiscent only of the Asian “living national treasures” – artists or genres. Here, though, the scale is different – it concerns a whole art form. And an art form in development at that! For, as the time goes by the heritage performances develop, improve; the very chance for the viewers to make a live comparison between them over the years also gets enriched. This gives the “collection” a special educational added value too, transforms it into a one-of-a-kind spiritual institution in the whole theatre world.

Mind you: there is no bombastic title of this unique undertaking; it’s been unfolding to no fanfare. Simply, with the Heritage Performances rubric the Festival says a most humble and yet most inspired “Thank you!” to the Theatre and serves it with an astonishing devotion and dedication. With the this unofficial live museum of theatre Festival creates for the audience, the artists and the students alike a direct access to the assets of an idiosyncratic theatrical spiritual bank which get incessantly enriched and renewed.

Among the shows included in the rubric this year, the one that stood out for me was Games, Words, Crickets… directed by Purkarete. Maybe because it reminded me of another face of Purcarete’s talent, so different from the one manifested in the monumental Faust and in the colorful The Scarlet Princess. Or simply because under this talkative title – seemingly very concrete, yet as though decided to not disclose what the show is about – there is so special gem of a production. It has already been separately covered for this magazine after its premiere in the illuminating review by the esteemed scholar and critic Ion Tomas. (vol. 18, 2023) Yet, I believe it deserves to be placed again and again under our spotlight for more readers to find out about it.

The main character in Games, Words, Crickets… is the poetic word, the word with God’s sparkle in it – the word as a beginning, as a gift from above gathering heaven and earth, flesh and spirit, all in one, united by beauty, by love, by life. Poetry in this show is high and elevating, childish and jumpy, playful and full of joie-de-vivre. A hymn, a prayer, a fable, a story in white verse… A praise for poetry itself, a praise for the Holy Mother, a praise for the plum brandy as a gift sent to the man for help and for joy, a praise for the invincible Balkan spirit… In brief: a praise to God and all His creations… By Nazim Hikmet, Paul Verlaine, Shakepeare, Sergey Esenin, Radu Stanca, Mihai Eminescu, Marin Sorescu… As if all the world and all human life from days of yore till now, as it has been seen by the poets, is now gathered in the palm of one human being who presents it to us with such rapture, such joy, such trepidation as though he himself creates every word, every line, every image, every nuance before us and for each and everyone of us.

Constantin Chiriac is the astonishing actor who savors the joy of sharing with us as if the very birth of all that poetry. I have seen him in many roles and have always wondered if there is any one he can not handle. Now I know the answer. For, this role is much more difficult than all the rest. Here there is no one person to impersonate so organically as if you are that very person. There is no one face, body, soul, behavior to enliven on stage and yet to remain your own self intact. Great poetry is to hand your soul to the others without leaving anything just for yourself so that you can find a shelter there. Great poetry is to give your eyes to the others so that they could see the world through them, to reach out to them as a small child, without fear and trust them with anything to hide. So that you could share the joy of the spring’s advent, the mystery of moon, the sky’s tenderness, the elusiveness of dream, the joy of the crickets’ song, love, happiness, gratitude to God, to nature, to life, the exaltation of dance …

During this show one gets to live though all this in its pure form. Chiriac wakens all these feelings in us not only through the poets’ words but also through his own attitude to everything these words have to say, cry out, cover, shy away from, hide… At one point, he is as if a pure spirit, lost in nature’s beauty, in another, he gluttonously eats a piece of water melon while the juice flows freely down his arm; immediately afterwards, already on his knees and with head resting on the back of his hand – surely the only part of it not sticky then – he prays… And in all that he is so organic, not a hint of falseness cracking the air of full truthfulness he exudes.

In his aforementioned address Chiriac recalls how when his parents made him happy and he didn’t know how to thank them, they would caress his head. Later on, he would regularly say “thank you” “with so much truth in my voice that it brought tears to their eyes.”

In this shared memory, I believe, is the key to his acting approach in Games, Words, Crickets… as well as one more explanation of all he does for the Festival and the theatre in principle. Even in an address of just three paragraphs he needs the “anchor” of a concrete story – something that he has felt with his own heart; a need for enveloping the spirit in a body, for making the common feel personal, so that it doesn’t sound empty, so that it could touch, convince, feel true.

This show does not narrate a single story, as it usually happens in theatre, or one big story, as it usually happens in the theatre of Purcarete. In it every poem is a story in its own right, shared as a first-hand experience, and at first glance these stories may seem small but it is exactly they that form the big story of our life. The very choice of the poems as well as the concrete collage of them makes this even more palpable. Exactly as it is said in one of them, “Words have their time. You can’t just throw them around when you want.”

At times Chiriac steps aside, so that he could look at the words and everything they have to say from “the outside” – to see them together with us, the audience. For instance, when the air in the theatre hall is charged with rapture – our rapture with one of the poems – he looks at us and says, “Paul Verlain!” in such a manner as if asking, “How splendid it is, isn’t it?” At the same time, as if a conductor summoning the sound at the end of a rapturous music piece, he puts an exclamation mark instead of a dot.

Chiriac’s masterpiece of acting in this show is not at all an unexpected tour de force. He has started his career with poetic recitals – a popular genre at that time in Romania – and has a formidable experience in this field. I myself have witnessed many a time how his speeches at international forums, where he’s in his capacity as a Festival head, all of a sudden soar into poetry, or he takes everyone by surprise reciting a famous monologue by Shakespeare, for instance. The hall then gets so quiet, as if people hold their breath, and the respective event immediately gets uplifted to another level. Even in such cases his poetical detours are not simply reciting of a beautiful text, they are an expression of his joy that this text exists and that he can share it with us. And again, at the end, when he tells us what the poem is, the way he pronounces the title and the poet’s name imply the same, “How splendid it is, isn’t it?”, unuttered with words but expressed with eyes, which accompanies the poetry in Games, Words, Crickets…

Although it may not seem so from all already said Games, Words, Crickets… is a one-man show. Yes, it is only Chiriac who has the floor throughout it, yet he is not alone on stage. There are 17 more actors there and part of them are there quite before he makes his entrance. Clad in white shirts and light beige mid trousers, as if giant children, in the beginning they are snowmen, with just hinted most characteristic features; then, with the advent of spring, they “melt down”. Then they build crystal pyramids from transparent wine glasses – pyramids which start slowly gliding on a thin transparent belt horizontally on stage, at the background of sounds of water created before us with of a bucket and small plastic bottles. Further on, one of them would hold a long stick with a lantern and an etude about the moon follows. Then all of them grab umbrellas, wind blows, and it’s already autumn. Then they grab pillows and snuggle, and the night falls….

Not simply do these “grown up” children become the background of poetry on stage, Purcarete transforms them into the very atmosphere of the poetic images and feelings – an unusual Chorus who “comments” and “reacts” on behalf of nature. “What’s going on?”, Chiriac asks them at one point, when the night starts falling down, and they respond with the usual sounds of dusk. This is a dialogue with nature as a Chorus and, naturally, the answers do not come back in words. And again as a Chorus, these “grown-up” children, together with us, are also audience of all the poetry Chiriac endows us with – as it were our extension on stage.

It would be so easy for a director to use multimedia instead as a background of such a show. But would even the most technically modern multimedia be able to substitute all these live eyes and hearts, all the different frequencies exuded by these 18 human bodies and souls? And would it be able to achieve such depth of the communion between the man and the world, such diversity of the nuances of this communion, as it happens in Games, Words, Crickets…? It does great credit to Purcarete that he has chosen to achieve all this and, most importantly, to create the impalpable via the most authentically theatrical and yet most difficult way.

Towards the end of the show, during something like a dance, while Chiriac, standing slightly aside, shares with us the n’th portion of beauty, suddenly it turns out that among the dancers there are two other Chiriacs – puppets of his size, attire, face and manners, each one of them led by several puppeteers. The three of them sit at a table: he en face to us, his doubles at the two sides. The doubles start repeating each gesture of his, each mimic, and the feeling gets to be surreal. Exactly as the watermelon minutes before that, or the ode to the brandy wouldn’t let the show stay on just one lyrical wave, and do balance it instead, now the two counterparts endow it with an additional dimension and make it even livelier.

After the “talk” of the three (with a voice-over of Chiriac), another dance follows – the Zorba’s sirtaki. All 17 actors dance, including the doubles, only Chiriac, again aside, sets the rhythm with a bell and starts the last poem: “Oh, stay and sip from one more cup at the old crossroads of old rivers, for when it comes to love and wine all men become most joyous givers…” As he continues with the marvelous lyrics of Kazantzakis and other poets, he joins the dance and, although the lights soon go off, the music and his words keep on resounding – as a hymn of life – life that goes on even when the actors on its stage have already stepped down and new ones are soon to make their entrance there…

“Poet of the stage,  that’s how Silviu Purcarete was defined by Georges Banu, the late brilliant Romanian-French critic. Adriana Mocca, a Romanian actress, in turn, called him “a collector of beauty”. To me, Games, Words, Crickets… is a hymn of life exactly as poetry and beauty – life as it could be and as it is created to be. There is nothing ugly in it. The ugly and the evil are not invited there. Only the games, the words, the crickets, and everything the dots that follow in the title imply.

To me this show is much more difficult and complex an endeavor than the mega-productions, like Metamorphoses, Faust, and The Scarlet Princess. Of course, they require a mighty directorial talent few others possess – a type of talent that has deservedly earned Purcarete a world-wide recognition as a master of exuberantly rich theatricality (if I may take the liberty to paraphrase another esteemed Romanian critic and scholar Octavian Saiu). Yet, to be able to create such an inseparable entity of poetry and beauty, as he does in Games, Words, Crickets…, and, moreover, to manage preserve its fine frequency vibrations for a whole hour and twenty minutes so that its integrity doesn’t fall apart is an even more extraordinary achievement.

The fact that Purcarete is equally good at both the breath-taking spectacular and the intangible that makes one holds one’s breath, lest the spell gets broken, places him among the very few contemporary directors of such a strikingly wide diapason.

Electra – a production by another revered Romanian director, Michai Manuitiu – was included in the Heritage performances too and stood out with its special status. Created back in 2005, it gained a cult status over the following years. In the beginning of 2025 it was revived in its fully original shape and even with some of its original actors. Of course, now, some of the young actors of “Radu Stanca” Theatre share the stage with them. It is exactly this passing of the acting torch before the audience’s eyes that not only makes the production unique but further underlines the importance of the rubric as a live spiritual territory. For, with Electra in the Heritage “collection”, this unique live theatre museum goes one step further: it manifests the possibility for organic upgrading of the theatre art within one and the same production in a “time lapse” of two decades.

Notably too, Manuitiu’s Electra could serve as a point of reference, an idiosyncratic mirror in which major differences between theatre of 20 years ago and theatre of today stand out, alas, not always in favor of the latter. For instance, the distinct asceticism in terms of the material, like set-design, costumes, etc. stands in stark contrast with the many-ness that tends to overwhelm the nowadays stages. Also, Electra looks and feels like a stylized ritual and, with very few exceptions, doesn’t get into the literal illustrativeness when it comes to the elements of violence in the plot, unlike contemporary theatre which seems nearly obsessed with direct displays of violence. That is why Electra doesn’t look like a B-rated movie focused on close-ups of the very destruction of the human flesh’s integrity but feels rather like a dance or a painting.

As for the regular theatre program, among the main accents was No Yogurt for the Dead, written and directed by Tiago Rodriguez, a production of the NTGent, Belgium (co-produced by Culturgest, Lisbon, Weiner Festwochen and Picollo Teatro di Milano – Teatro D’Europa).

This show, to me, is like an unusual diary of a contemporary Scheherazade.

A first-hand narrative, most of the time directly en-face to the audience, is the main approach for building the story. Importantly, again no multimedia interferes here – i.e. we are not being offered “to go to the movies” in the theatre, as often is the case these days. Moreover, theatre is especially emphasized. 

The audience is introduced to the story by one of the characters – a nurse. She is played by the only one of the three actresses in the show who plays just one role from the beginning to the end. The other two actresses assign themselves the roles of a father and a son, as well as two fake beards that will help us distinguish them – long and short (as their characters will be called, respectively – Long Beard and Short Beard). In the course of the action, they will not only openly exchange these roles, but will also get to play others, yet from the moment they “get into” all these roles, they are completely truthful, nearly without any detachment. This dance of realism and overt theatricality is a very good balancer for the story, as it doesn’t let it become merely documentary, although it is a true one, nor does it let it trespass into the territory of the sentimental and succumb to pain, although it is about the death of a dearest person.

The story is about (and of) the director’s father – a respected journalist who writes his last reportage in the form of a diary in the hospital during his last days before his death.

It is this diary which is the basic material for building the action – it is something like a magnet which draws together the fragmentary pieces of the story. However, it is not an ordinary diary but, exactly like Scheherazade, it sort of manages to win back from death another day and another day, and another day… And, like Scheherazade, this diary has its own secret: in the end, it turns out that in it there are only inarticulate scribbles – dashes and dots.

Most of the action takes place around and in a hospital bed on the left of the stage. On the right, an uneven and fragmented hill rises, made of what looks like pieces of pressed cardboard with visible cracks between them, like in a glacier. There is another hospital bed on it – with a patient. However, he is most of the time in a half-back position or sitting sideways to us. So we don’t get to see him well, but we hear him almost all the time. For, his role is to “provide” the main musical background of the story – on a guitar.

The major musical accents in the show, though, are the songs sang by the two actresses who play the father and the son. And their singing is remarkable, I dare say, it’s truly unforgettable!

These songs, like the diary, are not ordinary ones. They too are like a magnet, even a stronger one than the diary. For, it is exactly they that gather the crumbling world of the dying man and restore not only the contours but as it were the very flesh of his slipping life. They are like the flickering of a fire which is about to go out, but, when it flares up again, it burns for a little while as if it was never about to die. Flare-ups that are sort of mirages, as if death is not coming and there is still plenty of time left for memories here, in this world, with those closest to us.

These songs are the major strength of the show. Not only because of the way they are performed, but also because of the very choice of time and space, when the action should stop its horizontal course and fly up (or downwards, if that’s how we imagine the past). Most often this happens unexpectedly, as if out of the blue. Yet it is always exactly “on time”, when the story has fallen apart into too many pieces – because of the playing with roles and wigs, because of the strange use of two languages at the same time (the nurse speaks in Flemish, the father and son in Portuguese), because of the very fragmentary montage of the separate pieces… And then – then a song bursts forth and immediately brings everything together.

And just as until then the characters (and even the story itself) have “acted like men” – iron, strong and cold-blooded – now they all of a sudden give way to their feelings and let their tears flow. The theatre at this moment is pushed aside and it is the human being in principle who remains on stage – the human being with everything that is a symbol of the heart – love, longing, tenderness, pain… The human being, like one big heart, fills the stage, the theatre, us.

These songs decipher the dashes and dots in the father’s diary. They transform them into meaning, that is, into life. It is through them that death not only gets postponed, they make death pointless, even when the son finds his father’s bed already empty – waiting for the next patient.

It is these songs that “make” the show. They contain the key to Tiago Rodrigues’ directorial talent: his fееl for the innermost human and his skill to fill the stage, the theatre, and us with this so elusive a “substance”; and, importantly, his ability to do so not the usual way, through familiar theatrical means, and, yet, paradoxically, to manage to achieve the oldest thing in the theatre – to move you to the bottom of your heart.

I intended to write about the shortcomings of the show too. About its numerous endings, some of which it could easily do without. About the fact that some details of the story border on clichés, like the pen the son keeps forgetting to bring to his father and when he does so, he is already gone. Or that some contemporary performative clichés could have easily been avoided, like serving tea to the audience during the funeral, as if the viewers too are attending it…

However, now, when time has passed since I saw the show in Sibiu, I find that the flows have faded and lost significance; that, when I think of this unique diary-reportage in songs, it grabs me by the throat as if it were my personal piece of memory. A memory of something the significance of which we find out much later after it happened, when time has erased the unnecessary little details. A memory which as if lifts us up, moves us away from the usual time-track, and extends our life each time when we remember it… I also think now what an amazing gesture of a son to his father’s memory this show is!

The other production from the regular theatre program of the International Theatre Festival of Sibiu that struck me most was Jonah, at that time the newest directorial work of Silviu Purkarete. A co-production of the Romanian “Radu Stanca” National Theatre in Sibiu and the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, it steps on a Romanian play (by Marin Sorescu) which is, in turn, based on the famed Biblical story. The main performer is Asian (the Japanese star Kuranosuke Sasaki) and there are three speechless characters played by Romanians.

“Why do people waste their time on things that are useless after death?” – wonders Jonah, the main character of the play, created back in 1968. This question, so topical in the nowadays world of excesses, is like a pitchfork both for the play and the production. The focus of both aligns according to this question. I.e. Jonah, as a play and as a production alike, is about all the rest: “… the spiritual communion that brings us closer to the primal energies of nature in which divinity manifests itself,” if I may take the liberty to quote the excellent description of the show in the Festival catalogue.

Jonah, the show, is like a revelation. It is wise in a Biblical manner and luminous in a New Testament way. The first feature is a contribution of the playwright, the second – of the director.

The play is a 26-page monologue, which I strongly recommend for reading – it brings a true literary joy. Jonah, like his namesake in the Bible, is in a big fish, but here the fish is in another, even bigger one, which in turn is in a third. However, notably, the direction of the “opening” of these, so to speak, Matryoshka type of fishes is the opposite of the way we do open Matryoshka dolls in reality, as here Jonah goes from the smaller fish to a bigger one and then to an even bigger one. I.e. the direction is vice versa.

None of these fishes appear to be familiar with one of the main laws of life formulate by Jonah: “There should be a grid at the entrance of every soul. So no one can get inside it [armed] with a knife.” (He reaches this conclusion as a result of his personal observation after having managed to cut his way from fish 1 to fish 2.) I can’t help sharing yet another of Sorescu wisdoms presented as Jonah’s lines: “In the life of the world, I think, there must be a moment when all people think about their mother, even the dead. The daughter about the mother, the mother of her mother, the grandmother of her mother… until you arrive at the first mother great and good… What stillness then must be in the world! In that moment, if someone cried for help, he’s be heard by the whole earth.” Another unforgettable image is the dream Jonah has of building “a wooden bench in the middle of the sea. A grand construction of planed oak, so that the more cowardly seagulls could rest on it during a storm. … the wind to settle there from time to time [too], and, thinking of me, say, ‘He never made anything worthwhile in his life apart from this wooden bench, putting the sea all round it.’ I’ve given it a lot of thought, and that is what I’d really like to do. Oh, what a sanctuary, to sit head in hands, in the middle of the soul.”

The so profound and so beautifully put insights Jonah comes up with do not make the play abstract. The poetical streak that goes through it intertwines with a splendid sense of humour and with the extraordinary ingenuity of the character in his attempt to talk with the world inside and outside of the fishes. For, “like any very lonely man, Jonah talks aloud to himself”, as Sorescu describes him in the beginning of the play. “He asks questions and gives answers, behaving all the time as if there were two characters on stage. He ‘splits’ and then ‘contracts’ himself back according to his inner life and stage demands.”

This distinct dialogical nature of Jonah’s monologue – both as contents and as a manner of expression – is also a substantial strength of the text, as it doesn’t let the viewers’ attention get distracted from the stage for a single second. At one moment, two other fishermen enter the stage – they too have been swallowed by the fish – but they serve as just another spring-board for Jonah’s imagination.

To handle the role of Jonah is a big challenge, indeed, since, apart from the concrete man, the actor has to be play as it were the whole world – the sea, the fishes, his wife, the wives of the other two fishermen in there, his mother, the cloud, whose shadow weighs in the fisherman’s net…. Sorescu very well knew this and he even suggested, “if the role is too difficult, another actor may play the last two scenes.”

Purcarete’s decision to invite an Asian actor to perform Jonah further enhances the role, and considerably at that! In the first place, the main character, “his” world and “his” life, which at their very core are Romanian and, thus, also bear the distinct characteristics and mentality of the Balkans, get to be seen “from the outside” – through the eyes of a totally different culture in general – and get to be explored via a totally different sensitivity.

Apart from that large cultural new viewpoint, there is also the personal new point of view of the actor himself. In interviews Sasaki mentions that before his work on the role he was not familiar with the Biblical story about Jonah and the whale, so he plays the role as the story of an ordinary fisherman.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that the viewers familiar with the story would entirely forego searching for allegorical layers in the play. On the contrary!  And this, in turn, adds yet another parallel viewpoint.

Finally, the very organic disassociation of Sasaki from the Biblical story can be perceived as type of an estrangement in handling the character, adding one more perspective. This perspective might be perceived as a hint at the typical estrangement in the traditional Asian theatre.

The effect of all that is very similar to the Matryoshka effect of the fishes in the play and on stage, each one opening up new perspectives towards Janah and the world.

Sasaki is impressively economic in his choice of acting means of expression. During a considerable part of the time he sits or squats in the middle of the proscenium, and in the second case his hands are embracing his legs. This outside ascetics is coupled with the special inner finesse that humility and wisdom result in. This combination helps every detail of the text to stand out. So none of the words he utters, nor anything in-between the lines, gets lost en route to the audience; everything resonates with crystal clarity. In the beginning of the play Sorescu underlines that the role requires “great flexibility and simplicity”. This is exactly what Sasaki brings to it.

Sorescu defines his play as “a tragedy in four scenes”. Indeed, in the original text, after Jonah manages to get out of fist 1 and then out of fish 2, and again doesn’t see the sun, at the very end, he gets out his knife again and “cuts open his own stomach”, pronouncing at the same time the final words, “Somehow we’ll find our way to the light.”

Having decided not to follow these instructions and to cut the end and the final line of Jonah, Purkarete in effect changes the genre of the play and, thus, allows both the main character and respectively the whole show to dwell in the sphere of light – both literally and figuratively.

He doesn’t follow Sorescu’s instruction for the set either. While in the original the milieu is predominantly naturalistic – inside the fishes, thus, very dark, the set-design in Purkarete’s Jonah is mainly in light, pastel tones. During the first part of the action, a large, slightly wrinkled, paper curtain in off-white plays the role of a back-wing of the proscenium, leaving the rest of the stage off-sight. It is right in front of it where Jonah sits with only a small aquarium with a red fish in it next to him. Then this curtain gets torn from behind at only several places, so that Jonah, already behind it, appears to be like a giant – with hands and legs far apart. Afterwards he cuts all of it, when he gets into the bigger fish.

The overall feeling this curtain brings, together with most of the rest of the set, yes, could be of a vast water space, but could also easily be of a vast sky. For, Jonah and his whole world feel like being imbued and enveloped by that tenderness which exists only in the sky. Maybe he actually floats on a cloud, like in an Asian fairy-tale? And maybe this cloud is in another cloud, and it, in turn, is in another one….

In its colours – pastel in both literal and figurative sense, and in its inner light, Jonah resembles Games, Words, Crickets… The semblances continue in that both are one-man shows, yet there are other actors on stage – here, apart from the other two fishermen, we also get to see the actress who sings a beautiful melody as a music background. At the same time, the roles of the three speechless actors are not really big, unlike the role/s of the 17 actors in Games, Words, Crickets…

To me, Jonah is even more difficult as a directing task than Games, Words, Crickets… On the one hand, it is very chamber-like. I first saw it during its visit to Sofia before the Sibiu Festival and the size of the National Theatre’s big stage and hall suddenly ceased to matter. Jonah managed to turn them into the most intimate chamber theatre – in terms of impact.

At the same time, the production is monumental in a special way – so to speak, monumental from the inside – because of the revelatory feeling it evokes.

I guess Jonah is a future “exhibit” in the Festival’s Heritage “collection”. A remarkable demonstration of how cultures could hug and understand each other on the stage, and how together they could hug, understand and love the human being. In other words, Jonah is another opportunity for the International Theatre Festival of Sibiu to say “Thank you!” to the theatre and to the audience.