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European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 18, Fall, 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) By Kalina Stefanova Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF “Once upon a time there was a festival, and when its time came it went out into the world to seek its fortune” Liviu Timuş With all its natural givens, Piatra Neamt—a city of 80,000, ensconced in a beautiful valley surrounded by the lusciously green mountains of North-Eastern Romania, with a river running through it and a lake where flocks of swans nest all year round—could well be a thriving resort town and home of rich theatre institutions and events, like the Shaw Festival at the Niagara-on-the-Lake or the Shakespeare Festival of Canada at Stratford-on-Avon. Instead and, most surprisingly at first glance, Piatra Neamt is a home of a festival of an entirely opposite type: focused on poignant social and political issues of both national and international scale. It is the oldest international festival in Romania—an institution of a very rich and awesome biography which stands out even against the background of the festival-rich contemporary Romanian theatre scene. Let me just mention two of the other international festivals in the country: the one in Sibiu, which ranks already third in size and clout in Europe, after those in Edinburgh and Avignon, and the one in Craiova, specializing in Shakespeare, which has established itself as the must-see showcase for productions of the Bard’s oeuvre from all over the world—the first having turned 30 this year and the second to celebrate the same age in 2024. Romanians at the Gate of the World . Photo: Adrian Nita. Romanians at the Gate of the World . Photo: Adrian Nita. The Piatra Neamt Theatre Festival is run by and has its headquarters in the Youth Theatre—the only institutional theatre in the city. It belongs to the county of Neamts and is, thus, a theatre of a regional rank. At the same time, it is considered as “one of the most important Romanian cultural institutions,” as the leading Romanian critic Maria Zarnescu puts it. The theatre’s building is very special, both in terms of its architecture and of its location. Although built about half a century later than the impressive old houses in the city--in the 1930s and 1940s—it has something of their combination of shy grandeur and modesty. It is beautiful and quite big, and, while one goes up the slightly steep street leading to it, it looks even awesome. Yet, since it stands literally in the outskirts of the hill, where the main square is located, and only its upper floors are on the level of the square, once you are already in front of the theatre you have a feeling as if it holds its hat off in reverence to the beautiful old buildings above it. This exuding of humbleness, of full awareness of its place in the city landscape’s hierarchy, and of paying due respect, is further enhanced by the special glitter of the dark brown-to-black tiles of the roof, typical of the city’s roofs, as if after rain—a type of glitter celebrating nature and our modest place in it, so different from the lofty shine of the usual gilded facades of the old grand theatres. All this lack of ostentation makes the Piatra Neamt Youth Theatre’s building stand organically in sync with the general atmosphere of the city. The theatre started functioning as such only in 1959 but got its name nearly a decade later, in 1967, and soon afterwards, in 1969, the Festival had its inaugural edition. During its first seven editions (then as a biennale) it was and it wasn’t international – all at once! That is, in terms of participating productions there were no foreign ones in the selection, yet there were many invited foreign guests and the special milieu created for discussions about theatre on such an international scale substantially contributed to opening up the horizon of the Romanian theatre. So it was in effect only in 1992, when, being revived after a long pause, the Festival became de facto international and substantially grew up in size, formats and programs. The 2017 edition turned out to be a new turning point in the Festival’s development. And this was so not only because the edition was part of the celebrations of the Youth Theatre’s 50 th anniversary but also because the Festival acquired a number of very important upgrades of its profile. After-show discussions between the casts and the audience, a new workshop entitled “The Spectator as a Critic,” a photo exhibition Theatre of Youth Actors and Spectators , a jury consisting of high school students from Piatra Neamţ … And soon afterwards another novelty was added to the list: an award for overall contribution to the theatre art given to a female Romanian theatre-maker. Romanians at the Gate of the World . Photo: Adrian Nita. Romanians at the Gate of the World . Photo: Adrian Nita. Initiator of all these substantial quality changes was the new head of the Youth Theatre and the Festival, whose very appointment was in the first place a pioneering development. For, in their already considerably long history, the two institutions got for the first time a female theatre-maker at their helm! And a very special one at that: Gianina Carbunariu, the enfant terrible of contemporary Romanian theatre. Gianina Carbunariu. Photo: Dorin Constanda. Born in Piatra Neamt, but having left it to study theatre in the beginning of the millennium, Carbunariu actually came back there with an already large collection of firsts. She was the first female director to win the Romanian Association of Theatre Professionals UNITER Award for Best Show ( For Sale , Odeon Theatre Bucharest, 2014). She was short-listed by the Romanian media as one of the 100 most influential women in Romanian society today. She was the first Romanian female artist whose works were included in the official selection of the Avignon Festival. Most importantly, all that was so, since she was so brave as to dare to challenge the status quo by raising up on stage issues and problems long overdue to be solved—issues and problems having to do with hypocrisy and double standards on a national and international scale. And she was doing it in a very artistic way, not just as an activist’s statement. In brief, in 2017, Carbunariu was already an established artist with an international reputation—as a director, as a playwright, and as an author of her shows alike—because of her ground-breaking work that was literally changing the face of the theatre both in Romania and abroad! I myself saw a stunning show by Gianina Carbunariu ( 20/20 ) several years earlier, in the very beginning of that decade, in 2011, and immediately knew I had come across a unique talent and tried to follow her work from then on. “Her greatest achievement is the remarkable balance between ethics and aesthetics,” Maria Zarnescu has written … “The audience ‘manipulation’ is done by artistic ways, not political, and the emotion keeps its own sense. So it seems that Gianina Cărbunariu found the alchemical secret through which she discovered the philosophical stone of the 21 st- century theatre.” The very acute social edge, markedly accompanied by openness for a dialogue and for finding ways to solve problems together, rather than with the imperative approach bordering on dictate, so typical for many a theatre activist today, is maybe the most important feature with which Gianina Carbunariu has endowed the Festival. In the same vein, the urgent need for ceasing the enhancement of division lines between people and for finding ways to genuinely understand each other and genuinely be together is what permeates the motivation of the theme of this year’s edition of the Festival— Safety Zone — as beautifully expressed by Carbunariu, its curator. Here’s part of her introduction: “The Safety Zone is a space of solidarity, not of polarization.The Safety Zone has room for the sort of real dialogue that TV discussions and online interactions often only mimic.In the Safety Zone, the authentic living of collective experience raises a question mark over the noise of ready-made ideas, of wrong turns that risk becoming the norm.In the Safety Zone, we celebrate together inspiration, generosity, irony, vulnerability, difference, courage, empathy, aesthetic risk-taking, and exchange of ideas. We celebrate life and trust that humanity will win in its confrontation with the absurd or with injustice.” Indeed, diversity was one of the features of the program of the Festival’s 34 th edition. It consisted of three sections—national, international, and local—in the framework of which altogether 35 productions were presented. They were works of state, regional and independently-run theatres. There were performances of huge casts and solo ones, inside –on the stage of the Piatra Neamt Theatre and on its second, so-called, “Mobile Stage,” at the other end of the town—and outside, on squares. There was drama, dance, performance art, puppets… There were shows closer to the traditional type of theatre, others having nothing to do with it, and third ones—a majority—which dwelled in the in-between area. Naturally, the most populous was the Romanian part of the program which displayed theatre from all over the country, as well as three shows of the host theatre. In keeping with the tradition of the Festival, the international program had a special Focus: European women artists (under the title Something to Declare ), and the six shows comprising it were created by female theatre-makers from Belgium, Bulgaria, The Czech Republic, Kosovo, Slovenia, and Ukraine. Notably, the diversity of the program did not translate into many-ness—this so unfortunate feature of our time. Well distributed in the framework of two weeks—from September 8 th to the 21 st —all, that theatre did not, so to speak, spill over and infringe upon the tranquil air of the town. This, to me, is a real asset of the Festival, since, the biggest festivals aside, a city can have its spirit genuinely enriched by an event only when it is not overtaken and exhausted by it. Of course, the very fine flair for keeping the right measure in the curatorial process on the part of Carbunariu doesn’t come as a surprise. After all, being in the first place a socially conscious artist, she very well knows that theatre could easily become a claustrophobic place, when theatre-makers snobbishly sniff at reality outside theatre’s walls and forget that this art is here for the sake of that very reality. So Carbunariu has managed very finely to steer and contain the Festival so as to make it feel like an organic part of everyday life and, thus, bring joy and be of potential help in the most unobtrusive way. And not only in Piatra Neamt at that! Some of the Festival’s shows are presented in two other towns as well (Roman and Târgu Neamț) and in rural parts of the Neamț county too. As a matter of fact this comes as an extension of the Youth Theatre’s profile actually, since it travels throughout the county catering to a population of 400,000. And one more aspect of the Festival’s program struck me: its truly egalitarian spirit. No genres or types of shows were there just as an addition “to fill in the picture,” or just “for atmosphere,” like confetti – a role in which, for instance, street theatre tends to be often cast at many festivals. Actually, it is exactly with a street show that the Piatra Neamt Theatre Festival started for me (as I attended its last six days) and it remained as one of the most memorable theatre experiences there. The two parts of Romanians at the Gate of the World (of the Maska Theatre, Bucharest) took place on the main square (above the Youth Theatre), which was arranged as a meeting point between us, today’s people, and eminent personalities from the time of the belle époque and the interwar period who have made great contributions in the science and arts fields. Each of them was allotted a separate small podium (about eight altogether in each part) and, like in a museum, was arranged seemingly as a wax statue, clad in a gorgeous costume of the respective time, standing or sitting on a chair, with just a few objects connected with their life and achievements placed on a small table or next to it. The invisible curtain of the show goes up when recordings of short texts about these personalities start sounding from loudspeakers next to each “small stage.” Simultaneously with the recordings, the statues gradually begin coming to life, with stiff movements at first—after all, so many years have passed since they have left our world—but with eyes full of curiosity, as if at once listening to how they are being presented to us and enjoying their visit to our world. At some point, some of them talk together with the loudspeakers, when there are quotes by them, or just sit and touch their objects. Then, as their presentation comes to an end, they “freeze” back in their initial postures. All this gets repeated many times nearly simultaneously, while the viewers move from one “exhibit” of the makers of Romanian culture and science to another and try to catch up with all their stories. In the beginning, while one is concentrated on acquainting oneself with the details about all these people and their achievements, the experience feels like a guided tour in a museum. Then one comes to realize that it is exactly to concentrate that is challenging here, since the square is not at all large and all the stories from all the stages resound loudly and at once, thus nearly overlapping and overshadowing each other. It is exactly then when this mixture of street art and traditional type of theatre, in terms of acting, gets the shape of a powerful contemporary theatrical installation which transcends by far a mere exhibiting of a past spiritual glory. It appears to be more about a juxtaposition of our world and the world of these personalities on the territory of the spirit. And the power of this installation stems, I find, from the stark contrast between the minimalism accompanying these people of great deeds, on the one hand, and the chaos and cacophony of our everyday environment, with stepped-up decibels and fights for attention, which make maintaining normality even on a small scale feel like a big achievement. No matter how vain and eccentric all these celebrities might have been in their time, compared to the ubiquity of noise and many-ness today, and the resulting lack of clear focus in the figurative sense of the word, they radiate dignified modesty and simplicity, and make one feel humbled at least for a short while. Interestingly, the topical issue of many-ness kept on reappearing in different ways in some of the next productions I saw. Not so much as an issue on focus, though, but rather as a temptation they had not fully managed to resist or vice versa—something which, either way, emerged as a factor for their overall impact. Naturally, the large-scale, indoor productions were most prone to succumbing to this so common temptation today. For instance, in The Dream (Reactor de Creatie si Experiment, Cluj-Napoca) the effect of the impressively good music, the talent of the actors and the very important issues in focus were slightly undermined by the too frequent repetition of the main refrains—a repetition that inevitably led to diminishing of their meaning. Or, in the hilariously funny Artists’ Factory (Teatrul Municipal Bacovia) the stereotypes of in-theatre relations and the scenes which look like quotes (e.g. at least close to the musical Hamilton , or the notorious case of David Merrick announcing the death of the director of 42 nd Street ) at one point piled up to an extent of going slightly over the top and threatening to exhaust the comedy. Or, in Operation “Firecracker” (Teatrul Nottara, Bucharest), while the mouse tails of the Securitate agents were an excellent phantasmagoric type of an extension of the characters, the adding of more puppet elements (mouse heads of these characters and a gigantic head of their female master) did not really contribute to enhancing the clout of the show. These ostentatious puppet theatre guest-elements as well as the projections on screens didn’t feel as if they were growing organically out of the preceding action and only overburdened the otherwise very clearly cut and well-acted production. These shows made me feel they needed some small editing for the sake of keeping the right measure. Operation Firecracker . Photo: Andrei Gindac . The most impressive of the large-scale shows to me was Magyarosauris Dacus (of Teatrul Szigligeti, Ordea), the newest work of Gianina Carbunariu. It tells the defying-imagination life-story of a much larger-than-life and truly encyclopedic type of a person – a Hungarian baron whose discovery of dinosaur fossils was just one of the impossibly wide diapason of his ventures and adventures at the turn of the 20 th century and onwards. Carbunariu’s directorial choice of having different actors and actresses play him in his different ages, endeavors, and, in effect, faces comes as an organic extension of this many-faceted personality and makes the show feel like an unassuming visit of our time to the universe of his life and, at once, as an invitation to him to peek at our world. The use of painted wings and of painted figures dropping from the ceiling while, at the same time, live music is played on proscenium further helps the mixing of times and makes references to poignant topics of the baron’s world sound strikingly contemporary—like the Western stereotypes regarding the Balkans and especially Albania, the place of women, anti-Semitism, etc. This unexpected topicality of the story happening over a century ago, of course, brings in a sad overtone about the state of our world. But can we imagine Gianiana Carbunariu doing a show even about something having happened millennia ago without a reason other than exploring our world and pointing at its problems, of course with both laughter and sorrow?! After all, she didn’t hesitate to invite even extra-terrestrials (in Planet Mirror , Piatra Neamt Youth Theatre, 2021) to make us think about ourselves and what we do to our world. Magyarosauris Dacus . Photo: Theatrul Szigligeti . There is one detail even of her show, though, which is not entirely spared by the influence of the many-ness trend: some of the costumes, more concretely the contemporary clothes of the actors. Most probably they are chosen to be very tawdry and eclectic as sort of an extension of the main character’s singular colorfulness and many-sidedness. Yet they tend to distract the attention from the very acting of the actors clad in them and, at times, even from the story itself. Their effect is similar to that of an excessive number of trailers and photos which intersperse a very well related story in a digital magazine literally getting into the way of the reader to fully enjoy the beauty of the narrative and see the depicted personality in its wholeness. La Fracture . Photo: Pauline Vanden Neste. The show that unequivocally grabbed my heart was the one that employed the most austere stage means of expression: Fracture , a 50-minute one-woman show of Yasmine Yahiatene (Little Big Horn, Belgium), where the concept, text (much less than ten full pages) and interpretation, as well the live drawings (on the stage floor) and their simultaneous animation on a screen are all created by her. The very powerful impact of this show is, of course, not a result solely of its frugality. It comes, in the first place, from the very brave associative and contrasting montage the narrative is based on. It starts with footage from a football match with Zinadine Zidane, back in 1998, which Yasmine watches with her dad, and the Marseillaise proudly resounds, yet, oddly, the bloodiness of its text coming to the fore. Footage of her father and herself growing up follow on the screen—nearly all the time they are from parties, where he’s always with a cup in hand and invariably looks happy. And then, all of a sudden, in the projection her father cries and the story makes a rapid turn, as Yasmine says something as if out of the blue which does indeed have an effect of a bolt from the blue: when her father was eight, during the Algerian war, French soldiers entered their house in Algeria and told his mom to choose between her son and her brother--whom to save, the other one would be killed. The choice was to be done immediately. Yasmine relates this very calmly and it is in the same way that she very briefly describes the horror of the running away of a mother and a child through the desert and then up to Europe. The narrative then is back again to the area of the mundane, only now the father’s drinking is placed under question, as is the connection between it and colonialism, and two songs cut through the “normal” life in Europe, saying everything that is at the bottom both of the laughter in those previous parties and the tears that followed: “We’ll always be guilty of being Africa/ Mama, the moment has come, we’ve suffered too long.” I will not spell any more beans. Importantly, Yasmine doesn’t comment, doesn’t accuse or blame, she just lays out the outline of the story and doesn’t even get overtly emotional, leaving the emotions to the altogether three songs she has us listen to--the Marseillaise and the two songs of the second half of the show. These songs serve as sort of emotional pillars that hold the very brave construction of this show which feels like a suspension bridge over the chasm of failed humanity. There is something of the spirit of the ancient traveling storytellers in Yasmine’s way of relating the narrative. Only instead of a rebeck in hand, she has a camera, recordings and electronic means to set the houses in her drawings on the floor to flames and to make tears pour from her father’s face, drawn there and seen on the screen. Also she has the courage to mix cartoon-like drawing with tragedy--maybe in order to make it easier for us to understand, at long last. To understand both the past and the present of an, alas, still ongoing drama that so often turns out to be a tragedy. The eye-opening and heart-rending quality of this show reminded me of the remarkable works of the South African director Brett Bailey, especially of his Exhibit B series, the most powerful glimpse at colonialism I have ever witnessed the art of theatre to offer. Likewise, when Fracture finishes, one has a feeling one has lived through not only a family’s story but the plight of a whole continent. The Return of Karl May . Photo: Atdhe Mulla. For me, one of the most anticipated Festival shows was The Return of Karl May , a production of Qendra Multimedia, Kosovo, since I had never before seen theatre from there and also because of the implied by the title, always a sensitive topic of Western stereotypes of the Balkans, myself being from there. With all due respect to the creators of the show and their unquestionable talent, what struck me most were the striking similarities with the first shows of Oliver Frljic. I will never forget his Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland (2010) , his international break-through work, because of the powerful impact of its direct, in-face contact with the audience, the walking-on-the-edge mixture of facts and fiction, and the no-beating-about-the-bush when it came to problems that were in urgent need to be stated out loud, no matter if that would mean trespassing into the territory of illustration or getting into a literally declarative spirit. I still present it to my students as one of the shows that started a new wave of great overtly political theatre around the beginning of the second decade of the new millennium. And I have no doubt that the team of the Kosovo company has not been directly influenced by Frljic, since they said at the after-show talk that they have actually only seen his theatre once. The thing is that now this type of theatre has for a while already been in competition with a foretold end with the placard-ness and fixation on statements of social media and the internet on the whole, and has, thus, rather exhausted its means of expression and, consequently, its power, precisely because it has become just a part of the incessant declarative talking on a global scale. So, leaving Piatra Neamt, I came to wonder if the overt social and political theatre is not in need of reinventing, or rather re-imagining of itself. Especially, given the mighty impact of the other type of social and political theatre that does not simply name, spell out loud, and shock us with, the ills of our time and world but, by transforming them into (parts of) stories, manages to make them feel genuinely ours and, thus, make us genuinely care. Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Kalina Stefanova , PhD, is the author/editor of 15 books on theatre and criticism. Five of them are in English: one with Palgrave Macmillan (co-editor with Marvin Carlson) and three with Routledge, launched in New York, London and Gdansk, and included in indicative reading lists in universities world-wide, as well as one with St. Kliment Orchidski University Press, launched in Wroclaw. She is also the author of 2 fiction books (published in nine countries, one of them in three editions in China). She has edited a two-volume anthology of Eastern European drama in China (China Theatre Press), the first anthology of spoken Chinese drama in Bulgarian (Bulgarian Bestseller) and a two-volume presentation of Bulgarian theatre in English (Routledge). She was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the New York University (1990/1992) and has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Meiji University, Japan, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, China, among others. In 2016 she had the privilege to be appointed as Visiting Distinguished Professor of the Arts School of Wuhan University, as well as a Distinguished Researcher of the Chinese Arts Criticism Foundation of Wuhan University. She has delivered lectures and lead seminars world-wide. She served as Vice President of the International Association of Theatre Critics for two mandates (2001/2006) and as its Director Symposia (2006-2010). She was the dramaturge of the highly acclaimed production of Pentecost by David Edgar, directed by Mladen Kiselov, at the Stratford Festival of Canada, in 2007. Since 2001 she has regularly served as an independent evaluation expert of the European Commission for cultural and educational projects. She is on the editorial board of a number of theatre magazines world-wide, among which Theatre Arts of the Shanghai Theatre Academy (since 2015), European Stages of CUNY, USA, (since 2016), DramaArt, of the West-Universität Temeswar, Romania, (since 2016). She is on the board of the International Theatre Towns Alliance, affiliated with Yue Opera Town, China. Currently she’s a Full Professor of Theatre Criticism at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. Among her main interests is contributing to the creation of cultural bridges between cultures. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Report from London (December 2022) Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 “Regietheater:” two cases The Grec Festival 2023 The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Report from Germany Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

After The Time of COVID the New York theatre and performance landscape woke up in the daylight a new reality. Theatres are experiencing a collapse of the subscription system, a loss of audiences, the closure of spaces and festivals. Do we need a renaissance to get back to where we were before — or do we need a revolution? What was wrong before? What do we need now? What can we do? What must we do? A panel with playwright Anne Washburn, theatre artist David Levine, scholar Hillary Miller, Jayme Koszyn, founder of Koszyn & Company, and Rob Fields. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PANEL Re-Inventing Institutions and Re-Generation Anne Washburn, David Levine, Hillary Miller, Jayme Koszyn, and Rob Fields 7:30PM EST Thursday, October 12, 2023 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All After The Time of COVID the New York theatre and performance landscape woke up in the daylight a new reality. Theatres are experiencing a collapse of the subscription system, a loss of audiences, the closure of spaces and festivals. Do we need a renaissance to get back to where we were before — or do we need a revolution? What was wrong before? What do we need now? What can we do? What must we do? A panel with playwright Anne Washburn, theatre artist David Levine, scholar Hillary Miller, Jayme Koszyn, founder of Koszyn & Company, and Rob Fields. Content / Trigger Description: Anne Washburn is a playwright whose works include 10 out of 12, Antlia Pneumatica, Apparition, The Communist Dracula Pageant, A Devil At Noon, I Have Loved Strangers, The Internationalist, The Ladies, Little Bunny Foo Foo, Mr. Burns, Shipwreck, The Small, and transadaptations of Euripides' Orestes & Iphigenia in Aulis. Her work has premiered with 13P, Actors Theater of Louisville, the Almeida, American Repertory Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, Classic Stage Company, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Dixon Place, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Folger, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, Two River Theater Company, Vineyard Theater and Woolly Mammoth. David Levine is an OBIE and Guggenheim-award winning theater director and visual artist. His work has been covered by Frieze, Artforum, The New York Times, and his writing has appeared in n+1, Theater, and Parkett. He is Professor of the Practice of Performance, Theater and Media at Harvard University, and the author, with Shonni Enelow, of A Discourse on Method, published by 53rd State Press. His holographic film, Dissolution, will debut at the Museum of the Moving Image in late October. He is also the author of Re-Public, a 2005 manifesto for the artistic, fiscal, and operational overhaul of the Public Theater, commissioned by the journal Theater. Hillary Miller teaches twentieth and twenty-first century dramatic literature and performance in the English Department at Queens College (CUNY) where she serves as Assistant Director of the English M.A. program. She has published essays and reviews on numerous topics related to theatre post-World War II in the United States, including performance and urban space; racial, ethnic, and geographic inequalities in the arts; activist theatre traditions; and the politics of producing. She is the author of  Drop Dead: Performance in Crisis, 1970s New York (Northwestern University Press, 2016) and Playwrights on Television: Conversations with Dramatists (Routledge, 2020). She is currently researching a cultural history about the Greenwich Mews Theatre (1952-1973), one of the first professional theatres in New York to mount plays with integrated casts. She is an affiliate faculty member in the Theatre and Performance doctoral program at the Graduate Center (CUNY). Jayme Koszyn’s directing work has been nominated for Helen Hayes Awards and her controversial production of Romeo and Juliet was featured in the book Women Direct Shakespeare.During her career she directed over 50 productions at theaters including the Huntington and Woolley Mammoth. She taught directing and dramaturgy for many years at Boston University, Boston College, and Brooklyn College. Following a decade as dramaturge at the Huntington—working with August Wilson, Kenny Leon, Eric Simonson, and Mary Zimmerman, among many others—serving as President of Literary Managers and Dramaturges of the Americas, and publishing “The Dramaturg and the Irrational” in the text book Dramaturgy in American Theater, Jayme was recruited by Harvey Lichtenstein and Joseph V. Melillo to create BAM's first-ever Department of Education and Humanities, where she worked with John Barton to co-produce “Playing Shakespeare, USA” among presenting major artists for the first time at BAM, including Mary Zimmerman and Rennie Harris. After BAM, Jayme founded Koszyn & Company as a way to help NYC nonprofits after 9/11. In addition to writing, with John Rockwell and Philip Lopate, the Theater Library award-winning book BAM: The Complete Works, her articles on fundraising have appeared in Crain's and other non-profit periodicals; the Koszyn & Company’s lecture series, “The Moral Meaning of the Pandemic,” which took place in 2020-2021, drew the country’s top fundraisers and theater artists. Koszyn & Company has, since its founding, yielded nearly half a billion dollars for its over 135 clients in many sectors of the non profit world, most specifically in the arts and higher education, and Jayme was named Crain’s New York Notable Consultant four years in a row. In 2022, she was nominated for Crain’s New York’s Powerful Women. Jayme is a member of SDC, the directors’ and choreographers’ union. Rob Fields is a strategist who connects people, art, and ideas through marketing, cultural strategy, and art advising. He developed his approach to brand-building and marketing-informed leadership over a 30+ year career that includes leading cultural institutions, representing artists, producing events, doing PR, and working on account teams at several New York City marketing agencies and trade associations. He is the former director of the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling. Prior to Sugar Hill, Rob was the president and executive director of Weeksville Heritage Center, and led that organization’s turnaround and secured its designation as the first new member of the NYC Cultural Institutions Group in over 20 years. From 2007-2017, Rob published Bold As Love, an online magazine that covered left-of-center music and culture. In 2011, he produced the NBI Festival, a TED-inspired celebration of the Black people and ideas that are driving culture forward. Over the course of his career, he’s been a marketer for big brands, cultural institutions, and indie artists; a cultural programmer; and has written about the connection between marketing, business, and contemporary culture for Forbes.com and the Huffington Post, among the several outlets where his work has been published. He can be reached at robfields.com or @robfields on X, IG and Threads. Photo credits: David Levine. Photo courtesy of the panelist. Hillary Miller. Photo courtesy of the panelist. Rob Fields. Photo courtesy of Bridgett M. Davis. Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

LESLIE CUYJET + KAREN KANDEL presents Going Beige at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 Going Beige LESLIE CUYJET + KAREN KANDEL 5:30-6:20 pm Friday, October 18, 2024 Elebash Recital Hall RSVP Performing artists Leslie Cuyjet and Karen Kandel sit down for the first time to speak about their experiences, forming the start of a collaboration of a potential project. LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that classroom is a breeding ground for lobsters. LOBSTER by Kallan Dana directed by Hanna Yurfest produced by Emma Richmond with: Anna Aubry, Chris Erdman, Annie Fang, Coco McNeil, Haley Wong Needy Lover presents an excerpt of LOBSTER , a play about teenagers putting on a production of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth . THE ARTISTS Needy Lover makes performances that are funny, propulsive, weird, and gut-wrenching (ideally all at the same time). We create theatre out of seemingly diametrically opposed forces: our work is both entertaining and unusual, funny and tragic. Needylover.com Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed and presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group TAG and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Rooting for You The Barbarians It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization. Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. THE ARTISTS Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed ) and Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text, and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. THE ARTISTS Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River ), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon ) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez . He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory, and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover, and Mozart in the Jungle. Chloe Claudel is an actor and director based in NYC and London. She co-founded the experimental company The Goat Exchange, with which she has developed over a dozen new works of theater and film, including Salome, or the Cult of the Clitoris: a Historical Phallusy in last year's Prelude Festival. She's thrilled to be working with Paul and Jerry on The Barbarians . Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido . In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada ?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming: The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). Photo: Maria Baranova Karen Kandel is a cultural worker, mentor, performer, writer, and a co-Artistic Director of NYC based theater company, Mabou Mines. Leslie Cuyjet is a performer, artist, and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. More information at lesliecuyjet.com Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 18, Fall, 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage The Grec Festival 2023 By Anton Pujol Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF As it does every July, the Grec Festival arrived in Barcelona, but offering more shows than ever before. Over the course of just one month, across various venues around the city, the Grec Festival presented over 90 shows, encompassing all genres and catering to all audiences. The 47 th edition of the festival had a unique opening this year. In celebration of the 200 th anniversary of Passeig de Gràcia, the emblematic Modernist thoroughfare in the middle of the city, the Festival extended an invitation to the French group “Les Traceurs.” Under the direction of Rachid Ouramadne, the tightrope walker Nathan Paulin crossed Plaça Catalunya en route to the Generali building at the corner of Passeig de Gràcia and Gran Via, another major artery of the city. Nathan Paulin accomplished a remarkable feat by walking a 350-meter tightrope back and forth, suspended at a height of 70 meters. What made this performance even more captivating was that the spectators below could hear Paulin's thoughts being broadcasted. This unique addition allowed the audience to feel the nervousness and danger that the artist was experiencing in real-time. The spectacular opening served as a promising prelude to the successes that followed. Francesc Casadesús, the Festival's director, reported impressive statistics, with a 72% occupancy rate translating to over 130,000 spectators. Here is a recap of some of the highlights the Festival had to offer. The Australian cirque company, Gravity & Other Myths, had the honor of officially opening the Festival with their performance, The Pulse . Directed by Darcy Grant and featuring music by Ekrem Eli Phoenix, this Adelaide-based troupe collaborated with the Women's Chorus of the Orfeó Català. While the 24 acrobat-dancers constructed impressive human towers in various patterns, threw themselves into the air and onto the floor with mesmerizing fearlessness, and presented unforgettable tableaux, the 36-woman choir provided an eerie a cappella counterpoint to the company's death-defying acts. While The Pulse was undoubtedly a group effort, there were two standout moments that deserve special mention. On the musical side, Buia Reixach, the chorus conductor, delivered a solo performance, singing in perfect harmony with individual dancers' routines, creating an ideal fusion of music and movement. Another highlight was the solo by Dylan Phillips whose body contorted, tumbled, and bent to seemingly impossible degrees. With a runtime of just seventy minutes, the show also incorporated some clever and humorous moments. For instance, there was the 'human piano,' where the circus troupe arranged themselves in a semi-circle, and each emitted a grunt in various tones when one of the dancers stepped on their abdominals. Another noteworthy element was the exceptional lighting design by Geoff Cobham. It served as a unifying and indispensable component, introducing visual effects that enhanced the drama of the performance and seamlessly complemented the expansive open-space venue. The Pulse . Photo: Dancy Grant. Dance has always been at the heart of the Grec Festival, and this year was no exception, featuring several outstanding performances. Vessel is the culmination of a collaboration that began in 2015 between Belgo-French choreographer Damien Jalet and Japanese visual artist Kohei Nawa. The performance begins on a pitch-black stage, and slowly, light begins to filter in. At first, the audience cannot discern what lies on the stage. Gradually, a white platform, reminiscent of an ice cap or a lunar surface, emerges from the darkness, surrounded by water. This striking centerpiece is encircled by three dense, quarry-like sculptures that, upon closer examination, reveal themselves to be composed of human bodies. These performers then begin to untangle themselves, slowly moving onto the shallow black pool that forms the stage floor. Throughout the performance, the dancers maintain a unique posture, with their arms positioned over the back of their heads, concealing their faces from the view of the audience. The performance creates a striking and disorienting effect, intensified by the reflection in the water, which keeps the audience from fully grasping the unfolding events. At times, the contorted bodies take on an otherworldly quality, resembling aliens, monsters, or creatures not yet fully human. This ambiguity persists until the end when, standing on this island-like platform, they extract a thick, white, and pasty liquid from the floor, pouring it over themselves. This act raises further questions about the nature of these enigmatic beings. Numerous hypotheses abound regarding the meaning of it all, ranging from the beginning or ending of the world to the existence of a parallel reality. Yet, meaning remains elusive, for as their bodies transform, so does our comprehension of the performance. Vessel is a truly hypnotic and captivating display that swiftly became one of the Festival's highlights even in such a dance-heavy program. Vessel . Photo: Yoshikazu Inoue. The dance troupe, Mal Pelo, presented Double Infinite: The Bluebird Call at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. Since its inception in 1989, Mal Pelo has emerged as a significant presence among Catalan and Spanish dance companies, boasting a portfolio of over thirty productions. In this showcase, the company's leaders, María Muñoz and Pep Ramis, graced the stage alongside three talented musicians: Quiteria Muñoz (soprano), Joel Bardolet (violin), and Bruno Hurtado (cello). The performance is structured around two dance monologues followed by a final duet: first, Muñoz, then Ramis, and finally, the two together. The stage is framed by colossal screens displaying black-and-white images of snow-covered forests—a desolate landscape that mirrors the unfolding narrative on stage. Muñoz initiates her solo performance with a discussion of longing, seamlessly transitioning into dance. It is remarkable to witness choreography designed for mature bodies, where Muñoz and Ramis skillfully incorporate the passage of time into their movements, crafting an arc of yearning that is both exquisite and profoundly moving. The concluding segment, The Bluebird Call , incorporates a poem by Bukowski (“there's a bluebird in my heart that/wants to get out/but I'm too tough for him,/I say, stay in there, I'm not going/to let anybody see/you”). While the ending takes on a more playful tone, Muñoz and Ramis guide the audience through a beautiful journey of recollection—technically impressive and achingly beautiful. It feels less like an ending and more like the start of something new and captivating. Rocío Molina, one of the most revered dancers in Spain, is known for infusing flamenco with a contemporary twist, revolutionizing this millennia-old art form. Her show, titled Carnación , alludes to the process of adding color to flesh in painting to make it appear more authentic, a metaphorical journey that unfolds on stage. She begins the performance in a stunning, vibrant pink chiffon dress. Molina climbs onto the back of a chair and violently drops herself multiple times, foreshadowing her rejection of conventional paradigms imposed on young women, regardless of how hard they might try to conform. It is evident that her interpretation and execution of flamenco defy its traditional rigidity, which may not sit well with purists of the art form. Soon, this doll-like figure sheds not only her dress but also her physical body and even her soul, with the assistance of Niño de Elche, another prominent singer in the world of contemporary flamenco. To describe her performance as 'raw' would be an understatement, as her physical metamorphosis transcends anything witnessed on stage before. While at times she dances solo, her body is often entwined with her partner's and that of Maureen Choi, a violinist who gracefully traverses the scene. Pain becomes the shared theme in their entanglements—they struggle against one another, vying for space and presence, as if asserting dominance over the other is the only means of survival. Yet, they ultimately converge in a spatial union where their diverse bodies can coexist. Towards the finale, Molina binds her body with ropes, drawing from the Japanese tradition of Shibari, which has applications ranging from torture to bondage and sexual pleasure. Molina's flesh is tightly bound; her ponytail is even tied to her toe. Her breasts, limbs, and body teeter on the brink of physical exhaustion, all the while undergoing a transformation in color before our very eyes. It is a personal ecstasy and a distinctive triumph that she achieves. Rocío Molina and Niño de Elche in Carnación . Photo: Simone Fratini. La Veronal needs no introduction. Directed by the wunderkind Marcos Morau, this company stands among the most sought-after dance troupes worldwide. The world premiere of Firmamento was a standout event at the Festival, although it did not receive the same ecstatic critical acclaim as their previous works, Opening Night (2022) or Sonoma (2020). Morau explained that their new piece was crafted with younger audiences in mind, particularly adolescents whose worlds are on the brink of significant personal and societal changes. As always, the technical aspects were impeccable. Max Glanzel (scenic design), Bernat Jansà (lighting design), and Juan Cristóbal Saavedra (sound design and music) created three distinct settings for the performance. The first part unfolded in a music studio, followed by a segment featuring a cartoon on a cinema screen. Eventually, the cinema screen revealed a stage for the final act. Deliberately, it seemed, the audience was left in a state of partial comprehension. Was it a dream or a chaotically reconstructed memory? Morau artfully incorporated a wide array of intertextual references borrowed from various genres, spanning cinema to Japanese anime, puppets, toys, and fragments of multilingual texts and songs. This mosaic reflected the intricate workings of a young person's mind—a delightful clutter that everyone must sort through before moving forward, though this is merely conjecture. What truly shines, however, is the whimsical imagination of La Veronal and the unwavering commitment of its dancers to continually push the boundaries of what the arts can achieve. Circus is another staple at the Grec. This year, two shows quickly became the critics’ and audiences’ favorites: L’absolu (The Absolute) and Sono Io? (Is It Me?) Created and performed by Boris Gibé, L’absolu was the perfect combination of space and spectacle. The performance takes place inside a towering silo, standing at an impressive twelve meters in height and with a diameter of nine meters. Audience members ascend the cylindrical tower and arrange themselves along its wall in a spiral configuration, leaving the central space free for the performer. Gibé leads the audience on a vertiginous and exceedingly perilous journey through the four elements. As the performance commences in complete darkness, the rumble of a storm fills the air, and at the very top of the tower, faint glimpses of plastic and soon human appendages emerge. The womb-like structure ruptures, and Gibé descends, secured by a rope. Further into the performance, at the tower's base, he appears to be swallowed by quicksand, sets himself on fire, and in the final segment, he blindfolds himself and ascends the cylindrical tower with minimal protection until he ultimately vanishes. Gibé's daring feats sharply contrast with the highly poetic and existential essence of the performance. The numerous allusions to Greek mythology (including Narcissus, Prometheus, and Oedipus), the strenuous struggle to free himself from the elements, and his eventual triumph all serve to question the inherent fragility of humanity. The audience is continually engaged in a seemingly futile pursuit to find significance. Circus Ronaldo came back to the Grec after a six-year absence with Sono Io? Danny and Pepijn Ronaldo wrote and performed this autobiographical show about fathers and sons, the passing of time, and intergenerational conflicts. The performance begins with Danny, seated alone in a bathtub, playing recordings of his past successes on a tape recorder. The setting paints a clear picture that his triumphs are now a distant memory. His son arrives after what appears to be a prolonged separation, sparking a friendly competition between the two. It becomes evident that the father can no longer execute his usual tricks, but his son, unbeknownst to the elder Ronaldo, secretly assists him in completing them. Simultaneously, the son attempts to showcase his own new set of tricks, but his father persistently undermines him, reminding him of the traditional ways practiced by the Ronaldo family for seven generations. This playful banter and rivalry weave through a series of astonishing classic circus performances. As the back-and-forth continues, the son ultimately takes center stage, unveiling his unique brand of circus artistry to the astonishment of both his father and the captivated audience. The show's narrative simplicity, emotionally charged conclusion, and its profound love for a profession that seems to be fading away culminate in a perfect evening, leaving the audience thoroughly enthralled and appreciative. Danny and Pepijn Ronaldo in Sono Io? Photo: Festival Grec. María Goiricelaya gained national prominence through her daring staging and widely acclaimed production of García Lorca's Yerma in 2021, performed both in Basque and Spanish. In 2022, in collaboration with Ane Pikaza, she ventured into the realm of documentary theatre with La dramática errante (The Wandering Theatre Troupe) as part of the Altsasu project. This project was a part of “Cicatrizar: dramaturgias para nunca más” (“Healing Wounds: Dramaturgies for Never Again”), led by José Sanchís Sinisterra and Carlos José Reyes for Nuevo Teatro Fronterizo. The initiative aimed to present five plays from Spain and five from Colombia, addressing issues related to Historical Memory—a topic of great controversy in Spain. Goiricelaya's work dramatizes the events that unfolded in the small town of Altsasu on October 15, 2016. At approximately five in the morning, a bar brawl occurred between a group of young Basque separatists and two off-duty Guardia Civiles (members of the Civil Guard, Spain’s rural police force). The altercation resulted in one of the police officers sustaining a fractured ankle. Initially, local authorities regarded the case as a typical alcohol-fueled altercation, not attaching significant importance to it. However, a few days later, the prosecution, acting on direct orders from Madrid and under pressure from right-wing parties and associations, reclassified the case as an act of "terrorism." The prosecution initially sought a 62-year prison sentence for one of the accused and 50 years for the other seven. Ultimately, these young men received disproportionately harsh sentences, ranging from three to nine years in jail. Crucially, the prosecution disallowed the use of footage from the fight, early statements made by the participants, and other key evidence. Goiricelaya presents both perspectives as objectively as possible, incorporating footage, depositions, and media interviews from all sides. However, the inconsistent verdict and several questionable episodes of misconduct during the trial procedures lead the audience to sympathize with the accused. With only a cast of four actors, two men and two women, the director and adapter narrate the story based on all the available information about the case. The actors take on multiple roles, with the two male actors seamlessly switching between playing the accused and the police officers simply by donning or removing a jacket. Towards the conclusion, Goiricelaya interweaves the regional tradition of “Momotxorroak,” which occurs during Carnivals and had been banned for over forty years. In this tradition, townspeople dress up as animals and smear their bodies with animal blood. The Altsasu case bears a resemblance to another significant legal drama portrayed by Jordi Casanovas in Jauría (2019), where Spanish Justice ultimately emerges as a flawed, antiquated, and ideologically influenced institution. Carolina Bianchi, a Brazilian playwright and performer, along with her company Cara de Cavalo, brought a highly controversial show to the Grec Festival. Her production, titled A Noiva e o Boa Noite Cinderela (The Bride and The Goodnight Cinderella) , serves as the inaugural chapter of her trilogy Cadela Força (Strong Bitch) . The show is characterized by two markedly contrasting parts that present the topic of rape in an unconventional and deeply unsettling manner. In the first segment, Bianchi herself addresses the audience, issuing a warning about what we are about to witness. She reveals that she was a victim of rape after being drugged with a date rape substance known as 'the goodnight Cinderella.' On stage, she prepares the drug and consumes it, acknowledging that she may lose consciousness before completing the first part of the performance. She assures us that her company is prepared to step in at any moment. Bianchi proceeds to read from a stack of papers, delivering a text that could easily pass as an academic conference paper. Her discourse commences with quotes from the initial verses of Dante's Inferno , showcases paintings by Botticelli, and delves into the significance of performance artists such as Marina Abramović, Ana Mendieta, and, notably, Pippa Bacca (1974-2008), an Italian performance artist renowned for her project “Brides on Tour.” Bacca, perpetually adorned in a wedding dress, embarked on a hitchhiking journey from Milan to Jerusalem, consistently accepting rides regardless of the circumstances. Regrettably, Bacca's expedition ended tragically when she was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in a town in Turkey. Before she loses consciousness, Bianchi utilizes Bacca's narrative to delve into the entrenched issues of rape and femicide within Western society. As she collapses, completely unconscious, her company members carefully relocate her to the side of the stage. In the second part of the performance, the company members engage in suggestive dancing, sing songs inside a car that later crashes, and share horrifying stories about rape in Brazil. One such story involves a soccer star who murdered his pregnant lover, subsequently feeding her remains to his dogs. Shockingly, this soccer star was later reinstated in his club, as if the heinous act had never occurred. Bianchi also invokes Roberto Bolaño's renowned chapter in 2666 , which addresses the ongoing femicides in Santa Teresa (a stand-in for Ciudad Juárez). The audience finds itself immersed in Bianchi's personal hell, and while it becomes challenging to discern specific actions on stage, one is undeniably witnessing sheer horror. However, Bianchi refuses to grant us respite. Toward the end of the play, two of her company members place her at the center stage, undress her, and insert a small camera into her vagina. A giant screen suspended above her slumbering body then meticulously reveals the actual space where the rape occurred—the precise location where the trauma began, creating wounds that can never truly heal. The phrase “No act of catharsis overcomes the damage” appears repeatedly on various screens, highlighting an unfortunate truth. As the lengthy performance reaches its conclusion, the effects of the drug wane, and a member of her company assists her in waking up. Yet, she remains silent. The audience is left to contemplate whether it was necessary to present such a vivid account of her story and whether reliving her ordeal with each performance is healthy. This production undeniably leaves a profound impact on its audience, the kind of play that lingers in one's thoughts long after the curtain falls. Carolina Bianchi in A Noiva e o Boa Noite Cinderela . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage. Experimental theatre held a significant place within the Grec Festival's diverse program. Often challenging conventional definitions, experimental theatre frequently thrives in festivals like these, where artists are invited to push the boundaries, blend genres, and challenge preconceived notions of what art and theatre should be. Works such as Riding on a Cloud by Rabih Mroué, One Night at the Golden Bar by Alberto Cortés, and Love to Death (Amor a la Muerte) by Lemi Ponifasio were prime examples of this trend, which the Grec sometimes categorizes as “Hybrid Scene.” Two of Spain's leading theatre companies also presented their new works. Una Illa by Agrupación Señor Serrano brought artificial intelligence (AI) to the forefront. Creators and directors Àlex Serrano and Pau Palacios embarked on an exploration of what a play generated by AI would look like. They allowed AI to generate text, music, images, and voices to shape the performance. The narrative commences simply enough, with a young woman engaging in a conversation with an AI device while practicing yoga. This seemingly mundane dialogue sets in motion a series of vivid yet lengthy scenes. The journey unfolds through a progression of pseudo-classical paintings, morphing lamps that transform into faces, and ultimately culminates with a group of young people dancing inside a large balloon until their escape. Upon reflection, after the extensive performance, it becomes apparent that the play created by AI, while visually captivating, falls short in terms of quality. Perhaps, in the end, this was the intended message all along—a commentary on the limitations of AI-generated art. Cabosanroque, an experimental group founded by Laia Torrents Carulla and Roger Aixut Sampietro, presented a trilogy of exhibits under the title of “A Trilogy of Expanded Theatre.” The works included are: No em va fer Joan Brossa (Joan Brossa Did Not Create Me), Dimonis (Demons) , and Flors i viatges (Flowers and Journeys) where they explore a particular aspect of Joan Brossa, Jacint Verdaguer, and Mercè Rodoreda; three influential artists in Catalan culture. Among the exhibits featured at the Grec Festival, only the one dedicated to Rodoreda was entirely new to the city; the other two had been previously presented in different editions. It is worth noting that the professional backgrounds of Torrents Carulla and Aixut lack any theatrical pedigree; one is an industrial engineer, and the other is an architect. However, their immersive installations are undeniably rooted in theatrical conventions, which they manipulate not merely to craft a dramaturgy or storyline but to evoke profound sensations. In each exhibit, designed for a limited audience of 15-20 people and featuring distinctive themes, viewers are invited to immerse themselves in the author's universe. In their Rodoreda exhibit, participants are seated on low stools, surrounded by screens and other enigmatic objects. On these screens, ten Ukrainian war refugee women read passages from Svetlana Alexievich's The Unwomanly Face of War (1983) and Last Witnesses (1985), while fragments from Rodoreda's literary works resonate in the background read by Mónica López. Beneath the screens, mounds of soil undulate, resembling the rhythmic breath of the earth, or perhaps concealing the bodies of soldiers whose harrowing stories the women recount. The exhibit holds more surprises in store, ultimately submerging the audience in a sea of laser lights and fog, leaving them with a profound sense of melancholy and sadness. One of the last plays to open was also one of the best offerings of the Festival. Alberto Conejero’s En mitad de tanto fuego (Amidst So Much Fire) premiered at the Sala Beckett. Conejero draws inspiration from the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles in Homer's Iliad , transforming it into a poignant and passionate monologue that brings the often-overlooked Patroclus to the forefront. In the program notes, the playwright emphasizes that his interpretation is neither an adaptation nor a reimagining of Homer's text. Instead, it represents a deeply personal and intimate exploration of a story that has captivated him since his youth. Conejero avoids the usual euphemisms surrounding the relationship between the two warriors and places Patroclus, portrayed by the almost-possessed Rubén de Eguía, squarely in the throes of an intense and genuine love for Achilles. Clad in jeans and a plain t-shirt, Patroclus emerges as a man profoundly devoted to his lover, even in the face of his impending demise. Conejero's poetic text serves as a beautiful ode to unabashed love, which Eguía delivers as though it were an integral part of his being. Eguía's tour de force performance and Conejero's compelling and heart-wrenching text find exquisite balance under the direction of Xavier Albertí. Albertí, who also collaborated on the lighting design with Toni Ubach, effectively utilizes the unconventional space of the upstairs theater at Sala Beckett, an expansive hall with undulating walls, and guides Conejero’s text as if it were an aria, with its peaks and valleys, modulating every phrase as if they were sublime notes on a pentagram. Eguía positions himself squarely in front of the audience, engaging us with gestures and emotions that span from rage and anger to inner fortitude and, occasionally, serenity. He embodies a man teetering on the edge, driven by the need to share his version and have his voice heard, however painful it might be, before Hector enters and kills him. Throughout the play, a clever lighting design casts Eguía's formidable shadow on the worn walls, creating the illusion of a dialogue transpiring on stage—a simple yet highly impactful device. As the monologue delves into the horrors of war, Patroclus does not merely recount his own war experiences; he transcends them to address the perpetual backdrop of warfare in human history. This backdrop always leaves behind countless innocent victims, silenced and unable to share their stories. However, thanks to the effective combination of Conejero's text, Albertí's meticulous direction, and Eguía's compelling performance, Patroclus emerges from the shadows of a secondary character. He takes center stage, becomes the focal point and he is finally able to articulate his side of the story. This extraordinary play is destined to be performed and celebrated for years to come. Ruben de Eguía as Patroclus in En mitad de tanto fuego . Photo: Sala Beckett. Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Anton Pujol is an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He graduated from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and he later earned a Ph.D. at the University of Kansas in Spanish Literature. He also holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, with a focus in economics and international finance. He has recently published articles in Translation Review , Catalan Review, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea and Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, among others. His translation of Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony (National Book Awards 2020 for Poetry) will be published by Raig Verd in 2022. Currently, he serves as dramaturg for the Mabou Mines company opera adaptation of Cunillé’s play Barcelona, mapa d’ombres directed and adapted by Mallory Catlett with a musical score by Mika Karlsson. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Report from London (December 2022) Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 “Regietheater:” two cases The Grec Festival 2023 The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Report from Germany Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

No Visa Productions presents: Fire / Escape Written / Directed / Produced by Michal Gamily Co written by Lizi Sagie Composed and sound designed by John Sully Dramaturg: Begum Inal Performers: Marina Celander, Michal Gamily, Onni Johnson, Valois Mickens, John Sully, Jane Catherine Shaw, Marybeth Ward, George Drance Fire / Escape is a play about hummus, impossible love, and a donkey, using elements of a Greek tragedy such as: a chorus, and three goddesses of faith who are embroidering the narrative — literally and figuratively. It is a story about an emergency, a wakeup call, happening during a global emergency. The play tells the story of M, an actress and single mother, during the first few months of Covid as she is trying to adjust to the new reality in her beloved abandoned city. M starts making homemade hummus, and selling it from her fire escape. Simultaneously, she is trying to find a way to help "Him”, who has gotten stuck far away from his home, just as his health is declining. Her ongoing efforts to help reflect the nature of their troubled, unbalanced relationship throughout the years, and take M on a journey down memory lane, and self reckoning. Sirens are present throughout as a character song cycle to address the nostalgic quality of the story. There are stories within stories and repeating melodies, and rhythms, presented in different musical contexts. There are references throughout the story to classical film and plays. Fire / Escape is a play designated to be performed outdoors on a fire escape of a multi-story building. It was written based on the limitations, obstacles, and advantages of the specific structure. Fire / Escape is presented in association with Rod Rodgers Dance Company, and La MaMa ETC, with support from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Center. Fire / Escape is a part of the Segal Center's Prelude Festival 2023 PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Fire / Escape (Work In Progress) Michal Gamily/ No Visa Production Theater English, Arabic 60 minutes 5:30PM EST Saturday, October 21, 2023 La MaMa ETC 74a E 4th Street New York, NY 10003 United States Register for Free / Donate (Please note this is a work in progress / performed rehearsal) No Visa Productions presents: Fire / Escape Written / Directed / Produced by Michal Gamily Co written by Lizi Sagie Composed and sound designed by John Sully Dramaturg: Begum Inal Performers: Marina Celander, Michal Gamily, Onni Johnson, Valois Mickens, John Sully, Jane Catherine Shaw, Marybeth Ward, George Drance Fire / Escape is a play about hummus, impossible love, and a donkey, using elements of a Greek tragedy such as: a chorus, and three goddesses of faith who are embroidering the narrative — literally and figuratively. It is a story about an emergency, a wakeup call, happening during a global emergency. The play tells the story of M, an actress and single mother, during the first few months of Covid as she is trying to adjust to the new reality in her beloved abandoned city. M starts making homemade hummus, and selling it from her fire escape. Simultaneously, she is trying to find a way to help "Him”, who has gotten stuck far away from his home, just as his health is declining. Her ongoing efforts to help reflect the nature of their troubled, unbalanced relationship throughout the years, and take M on a journey down memory lane, and self reckoning. Sirens are present throughout as a character song cycle to address the nostalgic quality of the story. There are stories within stories and repeating melodies, and rhythms, presented in different musical contexts. There are references throughout the story to classical film and plays. Fire / Escape is a play designated to be performed outdoors on a fire escape of a multi-story building. It was written based on the limitations, obstacles, and advantages of the specific structure. Fire / Escape is presented in association with Rod Rodgers Dance Company, and La MaMa ETC, with support from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Center. Fire / Escape is a part of the Segal Center's Prelude Festival 2023 No Visa Production in association with Rod Rodgers Dance Company and La MaMa ETC. LMCC grant Content / Trigger Description: No Visa Productions presents: Fire / Escape Written / Directed / Produced by Michal Gamily Co written by Lizi Sagie Composed and sound designed by John Sully Dramaturg: Begum Inal Performers: Marina Celander, Michal Gamily, Onni Johnson, Valois Mickens, John Sully, Jane Catherine Shaw, Marybeth Ward, George Drance Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

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I believe in free speech. I believe in harm reduction. This is a true story. A warped confessional. A failed stand-up set. A radically self-critical interrogation of Gen Z's relationship to censorship and AIDS media. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE The Curator James La Bella Theater, Performance Art English 30 Minutes 4:30PM EST Thursday, October 12, 2023 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All I believe in free speech. I believe in harm reduction. This is a true story. A warped confessional. A failed stand-up set. A radically self-critical interrogation of Gen Z's relationship to censorship and AIDS media. Content / Trigger Description: Discussions of violence, grooming, sexual acts, HIV/AIDS James La Bella is a writer and dramaturg who creates text and performance. His writing has recently been seen onstage at Life World, WNYC's Greene Space, The Brick, The Kraine, Art Bar + Cafe and in print in The Washington Square Review. He was a 2023 Lambda Playwriting Fellow and a 2023 Clubbed Thumb producing fellow. James is currently on staff at Playwrights Horizons as a reader and under commission from The Civilians. He'd like to revive The Brady Bunch Variety Hour someday. Jameslabella.com Jameslabella.com, @james.la.bella Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Elevator Repair Service presents an excerpt from their newest piece Ulysses, a staging of James Joyce's epic novel, which premieres at the Fisher Center at Bard College in September 2023. The performance will be followed by a Q&A with Artistic Director John Collins and ERS ensemble members.Elevator Repair Service presents a 25-minute excerpt from their newest piece Ulysses, a staging of James Joyce's epic novel, which premieres at the Fisher Center at Elevator Repair Service presents a 25-minute excerpt from their newest piece Ulysses, a staging of James Joyce's epic novel, which premieres at the Fisher Center at Bard College in September 2023. The performance will be followed by a Q&A with Artistic Director John Collins and ERS ensemble members. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Ulysses (excerpt) Elevator Repair Service Theater English 60 minutes 6:30PM EST Friday, October 13, 2023 Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Elevator Repair Service presents a 25-minute excerpt from their newest piece Ulysses, a staging of James Joyce's epic novel, which will have its world premiere at the Fisher Center at Bard College. The performance will be followed by a Q&A with Artistic Director John Collins and ERS ensemble members. Ulysses was commissioned by and will receive its world premiere at the Fisher Center at Bard. fishercenter.bard.edu Ulysses is co-commissioned by and was developed, in part, at Symphony Space. © 2022 Kevin Yatarola for Symphony Space. Elevator Repair Service (ERS) is a New York City–based company that creates original works for live theater with an ongoing ensemble. The company’s shows are created from a wide range of texts that include found transcripts of trials and debates, literature, classical dramas, and new plays. Founded in 1991, ERS has created an extensive body of work that includes upwards of 20 original pieces. These have earned the company a loyal following and made it one of New York’s most highly acclaimed experimental theater companies. The company is best known for Gatz , its award-winning verbatim staging of the entire text of The Great Gatsby . ERS has received numerous awards and distinctions, including Lortel awards, a Bessie award, and an OBIE award for Sustained Excellence, as well as a Guggengheim Fellowship and Doris Duke Performing Artist Award for Artistic Director John Collins. elevator.org Content / Trigger Description: Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

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European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 19, Fall, 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage A Problematic Classic: Lorca’s Bernarda Alba, at Home and Abroad By Duncan Wheeler Published: November 25, 2024 Download Article as PDF Assassinated by fascist thugs in the opening days of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca is a martyred icon of the left. His final play , The House of Bernarda Alba – part of the so-called rural trilogy, alongside Blood Wedding and Yerma – foreshadows the personal and political conflicts that culminated in a coup against the democratically elected government of the Second Republic. The eponymous protagonist, a maternal tyrant, exploits honor and respectability as a pretext for effectively keeping five unmarried daughters under house arrest. Never performed in Lorca’s lifetime, the play’s global premiere took place in Buenos Aires in 1945. Since then, Bernarda Alba has become his most staged play, largely because it is assumed, somewhat reductively, to be political and naturalistic. Recent productions by the National Theatre in London and the Madrid-based Centro Dramático Nacional/National Dramatic Centre suggest it remains a problematic classic, a play that attracts and wrong-steps practitioners and audiences alike. In Autumn 2023, billboards around London advertised a National Theatre production: the striking image of lead actresses Harriet Walter matched with an iconic catchphrase, “a daughter who disobeys is no longer a daughter”, was pure marketing gold. The combination of a veteran theatre actresses – who achieved late mainstream recognition with her role as the matriarch in the HBO series Succession – with a eulogy for freedom is difficult to beat. Once in the theatre, Merle Hensel’s arresting green dollhouse-like design, occupying almost all of the vast stage of the Littleton, allowed the audience to simultaneously observe the play’s different rooms and characters – the house of Bernarda Alba was as much the star as Walter herself. Geographical and temporal specificity were eschewed by substituting white rooms for pastel colors that evoked images of the deep south of the United States more than Andalusia. Hensel and director Rebecca Frecknall had previously collaborated on a well-received production at of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Almeida Theatre, which later got a West End transfer. Staking a claim to be the most foul-mouthed Bernarda yet, Walter paced the rooms of the house in a manner and style more befitting the faux respectability of a drink- dependant Tennessee Williams protagonist than a rural Andalusian Catholic matriarch. The House of Bernarda Alba . Photo © Marc Brenner Widowed for the second time, Bernarda seeks to enforce eight years of mourning in the all-female household she shares with a dementing mother, five daughters (aged between twenty and thirty-nine) and Poncia, a maid. Angustias, Bernarda’s only child by her first marriage, is rich through inheritance; despite being less physically attractive than her younger sisters, she is courted by local hunk Pepe el Romano. The suggestion (not even implicit in Lorca’s original) was introduced that Angustias had an incestuous relationship with her stepfather. Pepe el Romano, an off-stage presence in Lorca, was present on the Littleton stage, embodied in a balletic non-speaking form by James McHugh attired in a white vest (a nod to Marlon Brando’s iconic performance as Stanely Kowalski?). Alice Birch, best known for her work on television series Normal People and Succession , was credited with producing a play-text “after Federico García Lorca.” The liberal use of the f- word aide, dialogue and narrative didn’t depart as substantially from the original play-text as such an idiosyncratic nomenclature might intimate. The names of the five daughters – each of which are charged with meaning in the original Castilian Spanish – went untranslated, whilst an interpolated reference to a prophecy was indicative of the production privileging politics over poetics. Freknall spoke in interviews about first encountering Lorca’s play-text in her A-Level drama course, where it was chosen to be performed because there were more girls than boys in the class. Given that Freknall and Birch, both born in 1986, are in the same age bracket as Bernarda’s daughters, it is perhaps surprising that more was not made of their different characters. The matriarch’s single-handed dominance over the house and the play is such that I often forget that she has less lines than we might assume. Walter’s near-constant on-stage presence further emphasized such protagonist status, and almost sabotaged the production during previews when the star seemed far-less rehearsed than the rest of the cast – it wasn’t always self-evident if constant hand gesturing was indicative of the nervousness of the character or the actresses In many productions, the maid Poncia steals the show with her caustic humor, but it was indicative that something was not right in the National that the biggest laugh came when Walter picked up a Chekhovian rifle that had been on stage since the outset to shoot Pepe el Romano on discovering he has been two-timing Angustias with her younger daughter, Adela. The audience had little trouble following scenes such as the one in which this Bernarda recited her signature line (“a daughter who disobeys is no longer a daughter”) where there was a clear diametrical opposition between the different forces at play. Elsewhere, they struggled. Overlapping dialogue as the action moved from one room to another did not aid narrative comprehensibility and neither did a score by composer Isobel Waller- Bridge. The music didn’t always chime with the emotional timbre of specific scenes. La Casa de Bernarda Alba Photo. © Dramatico Nacional An adventurous acoustic approach similarly underpinned the vision of Alfredo Sanzol, artistic director of the Madrid-based Centro Dramático Nacional. Various Spanish critics described, generally in non-flattering terms, the production, which premiered in Madrid in February 2024, as an emo-Bernarda. Dance and music with beats and rhythms that brought to mind the songs of twenty-two-year-old US singer-songwriter Billie Eilish combined with jittery dance routines suggest a more radical overhaul than what was in fact the case. The play had not so much been adapted as cut to keep the running time down to just over ninety-minutes. As the curtain raised, the entire cast was dressed in regulation black but, by the end, the five daughters were in white. I wasn’t entirely sure if this was to indicate growing freedom or, rather, that them having been indoors for so long meant they no longer had to make a show of their grief. The former interpretation was reinforced by Blanca Añón’s stage-design: initially characterized by symmetrical enclosed lines, it became later a less-claustrophobic space in which the walls had been removed. If the set initially resembled rooms from the chic but clinical Citizen M hotel chain, a nod to rural tradition was retained through a cobweb curtain, deployed for scene changes, resembling the black lace of a funeral veil. An uneven fusion of tradition with innovation helps explain a lukewarm critical response: the production was too modish for purists, yet too safe for the more adventurous. Sanzol spoke in press conferences of viewing Bernarda as a victim as well as a perpetrator of the symbolic and physical violence required by the rigid social honor codes enforced within the house. Ana Wagener played her as a woman exhausted by keeping up appearances, depleted by doing patriarchy’s dirty work. Bernarda was depicted as being inhibited by conventional funerary ware she couldn’t wait to remove on returning home. The co-dependent struggle between Bernarda Alba and Poncia is at the heart of the play. Here the opposition between the two women was played out in physical terms: Wagener’s body was as rigid as Inma Nieto’s was flexible, the maid intermittently breaking into dance. On the one hand, the two characters’ respective relationships to the body underlined different class roles and contrasting worldviews. Conversely, one does not need to be a dogged defender of conventional realism to sense that a maid from a poor region dancing with the flexibility of a woman who has had the time and means to do yoga stretched credulity to the extent of jeopardizing the audience’s connection with the underlying human drama of Lorca’s work. The Madrid run was a sell-out, but there were plenty of empty seats in the Romea, a traditional nineteenth-century Italianate theatre in Murcia, where the production had a two-night stand as part of a short regional tour. Spectators were far more formally dressed than is the norm in the capital; watching them take their seats, it was difficult to avoid comparisons with Lorca’s pejorative comments about provincial bourgeoise audiences of his time, who he believed understood a night out at the theatre to be more of a social than an artistic act. Many spectators were visibly bored throughout, a number leaving before the curtain call. There was sufficient scenic inventiveness to keep me from switching off, but I rarely felt emotionally engaged. The auditorium responded most positively to the showstopping scenes in which Bernarda Alba’s mother, María Josefa, escapes from her quarters and runs amuck. Spectators howled with laughter as the fifty-nine-year-old actress Ester Bellver (only three years older than Wagener in the role of her daughter) raised her nightdress to express her naked buttocks. Even allowing for the pathos in Lorca’s writing, the use of humor in scenes involving an aging woman with dementia is potentially problematic for twenty-first-century sensibilities. Sanzol’s tactic of underlining as opposed to eschewing physical comedy would have had a better dramatic rationale were it to have been staged after scenes of genuine intensity. If the audience does not require cathartic relief, the result is puerile pantomime. In spite of obvious differences, the Spanish and British productions of Bernarda Alba bear testament to the fascination Lorca continues to hold over practitioners. The ingenious ideas and strategies employed did not, in either case, coalesce into a satisfying whole. Not only did the productions not cultivate a new or greater understanding of the play, but they left some spectators confused and underwhelmed by what is so often assumed to be Lorca’s most accessible work. If part of the problem is the ease with which the play can purportedly be staged, future practitioners might do well to approach Bernarda Alba as a challenging classic. Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Duncan Wheeler is a professor of Spanish Studies and the director of International Activities in University of Leeds. Areas of expertise: Golden Age drama and prose fiction; Hispanic and European cinema(s); translation; popular music; contemporary Spanish culture and politics; Twentieth-Century Spanish theatre; gender and sexuality. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Between Dark Aesthetics and Repetition: Reflections on the Theatre of the Bulgarian Director Veselka Kuncheva and Her Two Newest Productions Hecuba Provokes Catharsis and Compassion in the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus (W)here comes the sun? Avignon 78, 2024. Imagining Possible Worlds and Celebrating Multiple Languages and Cultures Report from Basel International Theatre Festival in Pilsen 2024 or The Human Beings and Their Place in Society SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL … SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL …SHAKESPEARE AS YOU LIKE IT. IN CRAIOVA, ROMANIA, FOR 30 YEARS NOW Fine art in confined spaces 2024 Report from London and Berlin Berlin’s “Ten Remarkable Productions” Take the Stage in the 61st Berliner Theatertreffen. A Problematic Classic: Lorca’s Bernarda Alba, at Home and Abroad Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

When you’re old and you can’t focus and you can’t have it all, maybe you can make a deal with the devil — if you’re special. Inspired by failure, Eric Dyer of Radiohole performs a manic version of the Faust legend, inspired by Goethe, F.W. Mernau, Jan Švankmaje, Joe Frank (and so on and so forth). PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Faust (The Broken Show) Eric Dyer/Radiohole Theater, Performance Art n/a TBD 7:00PM EST Saturday, October 21, 2023 The Collapsable Hole, Bank Street, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All When you’re old and you can’t focus and you can’t have it all, maybe you can make a deal with the devil — if you’re special. Inspired by failure, Eric Dyer of Radiohole performs a manic version of the Faust legend, inspired by Goethe, F.W. Mernau, Jan Švankmaje, Joe Frank (and so on and so forth). Content / Trigger Description: Eric Dyer Eric Dyer is a co-founder of Radiohole, Inc and a carpenter. He has been developing this production on and off since sometime during the pandemic. http://www.radiohole.com Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Watch Acting by Sophie Fiennes; Cheek by Jowl; Lone Star; Amoeba Film at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2025. Sophie Fiennes' richly detailed and immersive film offers privileged access to the vital experience of making theatre with pioneering practitioners Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod of the ground breaking international theatre company Cheek By Jowl. In a derelict Gothic mansion on the outskirts of London, we join eight actors - four Macbeths and four Lady Macbeths - for 11 days with Cheek By Jowl. Working in pairs, they investigate key scenes and soliloquies from Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy. But this film is not about the play. It’s about being offered a different position from which to view acting and theatre - of seeing text newly animated in ways more subtle, surprising, revelatory and various than even the most dedicated theatregoers might have considered possible. Within the labyrinthine remains of the building, we watch with increasing fascination as actors and spaces combine to give Shakespeare’s words seemingly infinite new lives.. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Acting At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2025 A film by Sophie Fiennes; Cheek by Jowl; Lone Star; Amoeba Film Screening Information This film will be screened in-person at The Segal Centre on Friday May 16th at 1:20pm. RSVP Please note there is limited seating available for in-person screenings at The Segal Centre, which are offered on a first-come first-serve basis. You may RSVP above to get a reminder about the Segal Film Festival in your inbox. Country United Kingdom Language English Running Time 144 minutes Year of Release 2024 About The Film About The Retrospective Sophie Fiennes' richly detailed and immersive film offers privileged access to the vital experience of making theatre with pioneering practitioners Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod of the ground breaking international theatre company Cheek By Jowl. In a derelict Gothic mansion on the outskirts of London, we join eight actors - four Macbeths and four Lady Macbeths - for 11 days with Cheek By Jowl. Working in pairs, they investigate key scenes and soliloquies from Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy. But this film is not about the play. It’s about being offered a different position from which to view acting and theatre - of seeing text newly animated in ways more subtle, surprising, revelatory and various than even the most dedicated theatregoers might have considered possible. Within the labyrinthine remains of the building, we watch with increasing fascination as actors and spaces combine to give Shakespeare’s words seemingly infinite new lives. About The Artist(s) Cheek by Jowl is the international theatre company of Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod. Its landmark productions, performed in more than 50 countries in the 44 years since the company was founded, have influenced the creation of theatre and the experience of audiences the world over. Actors including Adrian Lester, Tom Hiddleston, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, David Morrissey, Gwendoline Christie and Matthew Macfadyen all developed their talent working with Cheek by Jowl in their early careers. Get in touch with the artist(s) martin@lonestarproductions.co.uk ; shanihinton@me.com and follow them on social media https://www.cheekbyjowl.com/, https://www.instagram.com/wearecheekbyjowl/, http://www.lonestarproductions.co.uk/, https://www.instagram.com/sophiefiennesofficial/ Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2025 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here His Head was a Sledgehammer Richard Foreman in Retrospect Moi-même Mojo Lorwin/Lee Breuer Benjamim de Oliveira's Open Paths Catappum! Collective Peak Hour in the House Blue Ka Wing Transindigenous Assembly Joulia Strauss Bila Burba Duiren Wagua JJ Pauline L. Boulba, Aminata Labor, Lucie Brux Acting Sophie Fiennes; Cheek by Jowl; Lone Star; Amoeba Film PACI JULIETTE ROUDET Radical Move ANIELA GABRYEL Funambulism, Hanging by a Thread Jean-Baptiste Mathieu This is Ballroom Juru and Vitã Reas Lola Arias The Jacket Mathijs Poppe Pidikwe Caroline Monnet Resilience Juan David Padilla Vega The Brink of Dreams Nada Riyadh, Ayman El Amir Jesus and The Sea Ricarda Alvarenga Grand Theft Hamlet Sam Crane & Pinny Grylls Theater of War Oleh Halaidych Skywalk Above Prague Václav Flegl, Jakub Voves Somber Tides Chantal Caron / Fleuve Espace Danse

Encounter Sidiki Conde and Tokounou Dance Company's work Guinean Environmental Stewardship Traditions in Queens, at this year's edition of the Prelude in the Parks festival by The Segal Centre, presented in collaboration with Hunters Point Park Alliance, Queens. Prelude in the Parks 2024 Festival Guinean Environmental Stewardship Traditions Sidiki Conde and Tokounou Dance Company Music Friday, June 7, 2024 @ 6pm Hunter’s Point South Park, Queens Meet at the Overhang - Enter the park at 56th Ave and Center Blvd. Hunters Point Park Alliance, Queens Presented by Mov!ng Culture Projects and The Segal Center in collaboration with Presented by Mov!ng Culture Projects and The Segal Center View Location Details RSVP To Event NEA Heritage Fellow Sidiki Conde and his Tokounou Ensemble present Guinean environmental stewardship traditions to address the global climate crisis through song. Conde, best known for his remarkable drumming and dancing despite the loss of his legs to polio as a child, is a spiritual authority called a “Sundousou” for his ancestral village, Mancellia in Guinea, West Africa. He is one of this tradition’s last keepers of stories who, to this day, is called upon by village community members to perform baby naming, funeral, and marriage ceremonies. As his mother speaks the language of birds, Conde’s particular spirit familiar (a kind of “spirit animal”) is the “dugah,” or the vulture, whose funeral songs celebrate the passing of great leaders. Sidiki Conde and Tokounou Dance Company Sidiki Conde is a dancer, drummer and singer from Guinea, West Africa. Sidiki lost the use of his legs at the age of 14 but this did not stop him from his dream of becoming a dancer. Sidiki has performed with the premier dance and music ensembles in Africa. He came to America in 1998 and formed Tokounou, whose music and dances chronicle Sidiki's unique journey as an artist and celebrate the traditional arts of Guinea. Dance and music in Africa are community events where everyone participates and no one is excluded. Tokounou offer performances as well as mixed ability workshops in which participants will learn to sing and play African rhythms on djembe drums and other instruments, as well as traditional dances. Visit Artist Website Location Meet at the Overhang - Enter the park at 56th Ave and Center Blvd. Hunters Point Park Alliance, Queens The Hunters Point Parks Conservancy’s mission is to enhance and advocate for the green spaces and waterfront of Long Island City, Queens, and to ensure the parks remain an indispensable asset to the community. Visit Partner Website

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 18, Fall, 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 By Philippa Wehle Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF From the daily chorusing of the ever-present cicadas to the familiar fanfare of Maurice Jarre’s trumpets, which have announced the opening of new shows in Avignon since early festival times, and the black swifts piercing the sky with their loud screams as they fly over the majestic 14th-century walls - - Avignon, the yearly festival I’ve attended since 1968 with a few missed years, is once more on my mind. Avignon, the name always brings forth indelible memories of navigating my way over cobblestones and through jubilant crowds to the many outdoor cloisters and other spaces serving as theatres during the festival. My yearly foray into this remarkable festival was no exception this year. No matter what shows may have disappointed or which ones delighted, Avignon for me is a yearly must despite my advanced age and frailties. I had to be there for the 77 th Avignon festival. I had to discover what the festival’s new director Tiago Rodrigues had in store for us. Seated among some two thousand spectators in the open-air Honor Court of the Popes’ Palace, I was ready and eager to receive Welfare , a new work by Julie Deliquet, director of the Gérard Philippe theatre in St. Denis. She is only the second woman to be invited to present a show in the Honor Court in the seventy-seven-year history of the festival, and I was looking forward to discovering her work even though some were saying that the Honor Court’s forbidding dimensions call for majestic stagings and that Deliquet’s choice of an ordinary school gymnasium was questionable. Welfare . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage. Deliquet’s Welfare , an adaptation of American filmmaker Frederick Wiseman’s 1973 documentary, does indeed take place in a replica of a school gymnasium someplace in New York City in the 1970s. Stagehands are slowly taking down sports equipment and moving other athletic paraphernalia out of the way in preparation for the day’s welfare center, temporarily located in a make-shift venue. They bring out a table for the social workers who are about to begin dealing with the day’s cases while empty bleachers offer seating for the clients. A young man with a guitar provides musical commentary. A policeman strolls by. It is December. Throughout Welfare ’s two and one-half hours a cast of fifteen actors reenact the hardships of the homeless and the poor, single mothers, drug attics and others in desperate need, as well as the beleaguered director of the Welfare Center and his staff as they try to navigate their way through the overwhelming dysfunction of the system. Some clients need immediate attention. Others wait on the bleachers or wander about aimlessly. These are not anonymous people. They have names: Valerie Johnson, Roz Baker, and Larry Rivera. Their complaints are valid and their frustration is tangible as are those of the team trying to help them. Reactions range from angry outbursts to forlorn acceptance. When Valerie Johnson is told “There is no Valerie Johnson in our records. You will have to wait until January 1 st ,” we cannot help but commiserate with her, especially when her anger becomes so loud that she is carried off over the policeman’s shoulder. We also cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of the heavily pregnant woman who is told that she has to get written medical proof of her pregnancy in order to receive her stipend. Of course, we are touched by the gentleman who tells us that his dog is all he has, and we sympathize with the center’s director who is overwhelmed. Still, there is something missing. Deliquet’s theatre is a theatre of testimony. Welfare documents the situation of welfare recipients and those who help them, but the play seemed not to elevate beyond reporting. We are simply witnesses to these case histories dating from the 1970s and the losing battle that clients and staff endure. In an interview, Julie Deliquet shared that she hoped that her show would be received with anger and that her theatre would invite us to rethink the way we create society. Yet, drawing our attention to the flaws of the welfare system as it existed in the United States in the 1970s is puzzling when the system was overhauled twenty years ago and despite its many flaws, it is no longer the portrait that we encounter on Deliquet’s stage. In contrast to the many lives encountered in Welfare, The Confessions , by British author Alexander Zeldin, tells the tale of just one woman, Alice, a child of the working class in Australia, born in 1943. Based on hours of interviews Zeldin conducted with his mother, The Confessions is a portrait of an “ordinary” life with its many stories told in a series of hyper-realistic moments by nine actors playing all of the roles: mother, father, husband, friends, lover. The Confessions . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage. The play begins in the family kitchen in Australia where we meet Alice fighting with her parents who want her to go to university while she wants to break free of her confined life as a child of a conservative, narrow-minded milieu. Multiple scenes follow Alice’s determination to reinvent herself. London in the 1980s, marriage and divorce, jobs as an art history professor and social assistant, even a sexual assault. We follow her into her living room with friends, and back in a kitchen with other friends. Other scenes are set in other kitchens and other living rooms, with other sofas, chairs, sinks and refrigerators. The play’s hyper-realistic dialogue and sets and the many personal moments captured over a lifetime, leave us wishing for something beyond the stark realism of this “ordinary life.” All of it , a trilogy composed of three monologues written for actress Kate Flynn, by Alistair McDowall, co-directed by Vicky Featherstone and Sam Pritchard, and presented in Avignon by the Royal Court Theatre from London, also tells stories of women dealing with “ordinary lives,” but these three female characters escape their everyday lives through sharing their inner worlds with us. All of it . Photo: Manuel Harlan. The first monologue takes place in War time, 1940. Speaking in blank verse, a woman is sitting in her rather shabby dining room in a home she shares with her father. She is trapped at home during an air raid. To protect her against the bombs outside, she has a Morrison shelter, a large wire cage on the dining room floor, into which she crawls and stays until the air raid is over, more confined than before and still talking all the while. In the second monologue, a woman speaks to us in a pre-recorded voice that echoes throughout the theatre. She has become obsessed with a stain on her wall. As she stares at the molding, she starts to see double. Talking to herself in a psychotic rant, she becomes increasingly drawn into to the moldy green wall as it turns into rubble. The third monologue portrays a woman from birth to death. It is composed of half sentences and repeated words, from baby’s babbling to discovering language, school, her first kiss, university, motherhood, and death. She delivers her lines on a microphone, varying rhythms from fast to slow and back, repeating words, noises, and finally the mutterings of old age. Her stunning performance of “a whole life in one breath” was extraordinary. Director and Visual Artist Philippe Quesne’s new creation Le Jardin des Délices (The Garden of Delights) , loosely based on Jerome Bosch’s sixteenth century triptych of fantastical allegories, received its premiere in the Carrière Boulbon, an awe-inspiring quarry 15 kilometers outside of Avignon. The quarry had not been used as a theatre for the past seven years and one could feel a sense of expectancy and excitement in the audience. What magic would Philippe and his Vivarium Studio players conjure up for us? Le Jardin des Délices . Photo: Phiippe Dauphin. Soon, a white tourist bus appears to our left. It is being pushed into the quarry by a group of passengers, two women and six men, stranded in the middle of imposing limestone cliffs. They slowly look around and take in the landscape, barely saying a word to each other. They don’t seem concerned that they are lost and that their bus is broken down, but they do have a plan. The bus driver brings out a shovel and pickaxe and they begin digging in the quarry’s chalky soil in preparation for the arrival of a large stone egg. Le Jardin des Délices . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage. It is time to gather for the first in a series of rituals and performances that compose Le Jardin des délices . Circling around the egg, they pay tribute to this mysterious presence with music provided by a guitar, a tambourine and a recorder and even a piano played by the bus driver inside the bus. When the performance ends, they take their leave with a kiss and a bow to the egg, along with a handful of earth. What secret does the egg hold? The promise of a new life, or a way out of their predicament, perhaps, but they choose not to open it. Other rituals, other performances follow as the travelers explore possible ways to fill their time in this “garden’ where nothing green grows. While folding chairs are placed around in a wide circle, long time Vivarium artist Gaetan Vourc’h, tour guide and master of ceremonies, invites the group to feel free to express themselves in any way they choose. One reads a poem, another balances a chair in his mouth, and others strike poses reminiscent, perhaps, of figures in Bosch’s Triptych, they go about inventing micro-performances and creating “works of art.” Perhaps a stage for individual performances might provide more entertainment. They remove the sides of the bus to reveal an open stage on which one of the travelers, a man in bright red long johns, sings opera in full throat, but here again, this performance does not seem to satisfy them. Magic perhaps might offer some answers. “Do you believe in miracles?” Gaeton asks as he provides a demonstration. “Abra Cadabra” and his bald head is covered with a thick head of hair. This is fun but clearly, they must organize themselves. Perhaps this is the garden of earthly delights but as Gaeton asks, “What is your long-term strategy?” They must come up with a plan. Wearing Medieval costumes and wigs, they make their way to the quarry walls with Gaeton among them dressed as a skeleton. The play’s title lights up against the walls in giant letters with skeletons flying overhead, seeming to beckon to them. The egg is cracked open now but instead of entering it, they try to climb up the quarry walls with ladders that are much too short. Caught in the middle of an impressive lightning and thunderstorm, they seem lost until a shimmering triangle of light appears overhead. Perhaps this offers a better world than the disappointing garden of earthly delights. They seem to disappear into the smoke and loud noises and dogs barking, moving toward a better world, perhaps. They are survivors. Tiago Rodrigues’ Dans la mesure de l’impossible , ( As Far As The Impossible ), a play that Rodrigues created in 2022 at the Comédie de Genève, was a welcome choice to replace Polish director Krystan Lupa’s The Emigrants when it had to be canceled to the regrets of many. Dans la mesure de l’impossible . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage . Based on interviews with thirty some collaborators of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors without Borders who shared their harrowing experiences and first-hand accounts to create this powerful piece, performed at the Avignon Opera House, with just four performers and a percussionist. The show presents a number of questions. How to manage a refugee camp? How to deal with life and death decisions? How to survive when it is clear that one cannot change the world alone? In this world where the impossible is an everyday companion, Tiago Rodrigues offers us a theatre of words which puts us in touch with a reality that is deeply moving. The set is composed of large white sheets floating above the stage at different heights, suggestive of a tent where humanitarian workers retreat to recover from their encounters with disaster and death on a daily basis. These will be pulled up to varying heights and configurations throughout the show. Four actors, two women and two men—the humanitarian workers--deliver their lines in a mix of English, French and Portuguese. They are joined by a musician/ percussionist whose masterful drumming provides running commentary throughout the two-hour show. Thanks to them, we become familiar with the everyday lives of workers in humanitarian aid, those who witness horrors every day, and who are forced to make split-second decisions, as they provide relief from disaster and other emergencies. The geographical areas that they travel to throughout the world are referred to as The Impossible. Back home with family and friends is The Possible. “We work.” they tell us. “It’s a real job, helping to save others.” But they also admit that their work is no more than “a band aid placed on human suffering.” Of course, they are aware that the world cannot be saved and that they must go deeper into the frontier of the impossible. The stories they tell are the real-life stories that the interviewed humanitarian workers had told Tiago and his team, transposed into a form of documented theatre composed of testimonies. The horrors reported are almost too much to bear. Still, these brave humanitarians survive despite all of their scars, comforted by a beautiful rendition of a Portuguese “fado” sung a capella by one of the women. The final moments of the show, a virtuoso drum concert, sends the ear-splitting sounds of war throughout the theatre, as a reminder of the world of the Impossible. Black Lights , by noted choreographer Mathilde Monnier, portrays equally harrowing stories but of a different nature and they exclusively concern women—women who speak in a different voice, a voice between text and dance. Black Lights . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage . Inspired by a TV series, H24, on Arte, based on twenty-four hours in a woman’s life in the form of written texts by well-known women, with a focus on different kinds of violence, Mathilde Monnier chose eight of these texts as the source for her choreography performed at the open-air Carmes cloisters theatre. It was a delight to visit this new dance piece by Mathilde Monnier who had created so many wonderful pieces at the festival, beginning in 1996. Performed by eight dancer/actors of different ages and different nationalities on a stage covered with the gnarled roots of olive trees, we are confronted with the mental and physical impact of different degrees of violence. One tells us how she felt when she had to smile at her old professor when she knew what was really on his mind; another was knocked down and doused with gasoline, another regrets her docile compliancy when receiving a compliment. From uncomfortable moments and regrets to horrifying attacks, the performers of Black Light show us the experience of domination, oppression, violence and defense, legs raised high as if kicking their aggressor, fingers extended in front of a face as if to ward off an unwanted attacker and twisted bodies. Among the many Avignon shows that introduced us to varied and crucial responses to the realities of today’s world, Rebecca Chaillon and her team of Afro-descendant sisters, showed us the reality of their world as black women treated as objects of white fantasy, racism and violence in Carte Noire nommée désir , a remarkable performance piece in which they present their situation head on with urgency, humor and brio. Carte Noire nommée désir . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage . At the Gymnase du Lycée Aubanel, a large indoor theatre in the heart of Avignon, eight black women stand on a white stage in front of us. Themes of black and white play are introduced from the beginning of the performance and even before. There are two separate audiences on either side of the stage. Only women of color were invited to sit on comfortable sofas and enjoy refreshments facing the “white” audience seated on uncomfortable seats across from them. Rebecca Chaillon, her naked body covered with white cream, is scrubbing the floor with Clorox as if her life depended on it. Her friend is sitting at a potter’s wheel, making white clay coffee cups. They exchange a few words. Time drags on as we take in this painful picture of a “devoted” servant on her knees for close to forty-five minutes. In the following scene, Rebecca begins to braid long pieces of white cloth into her black hair. Soon she is joined by her friends who perform a lengthy ritual of hair braiding as if in a beauty parlor for black women. They create a masterpiece of long heavy black and white braids that Rebecca will wear throughout the performance. Seated in the middle of a circle of her sisters, Rebecca seems to enjoy their shared admiration. Later, as Rebecca smokes and thumbs through magazines, she begins to read a number of racist want ads out loud on the order of “White Man, French, looking for his black pearl” to the delight of the audience who enjoys these outrageous ads. The audience is also delighted when invited to play “Questions pour un Champion,” a popular TV game show, with Rebecca and her company feeding them questions. They seem to know all of the answers and enjoy shouting out their response. Carte Noire “plays” with the audience in other ways too. Some are provocative and even dangerous. Performers racing into the audience to “steal” women’s handbags, creates moments of chaos and anger. Others are tongue-in-cheek amusing. A beautiful black performer lying on a table covered in foaming milk, while a group of her black friends raise their coffee cups to her, draws our laughter. One especially powerful and “shocking” tableau features a nanny surrounded by her employer and others. They do not seem to think it odd that her body is pierced front and back with a long spike, as if she has been impaled. On the contrary, they seem to be enjoying themselves, placing little plastic white babies on the pike, one after the other, as the Mother, a lovely lady In Scarlet O’Hara white dress, happily looks on. Thank goodness for other moments of wild twerk dancing and amazing aerial stunts. Carte noire, nommée désir was brave and thrilling and wonderful. A great moment in the 77 th Festival. The official Avignon 77 was a great success, 225,000 audience members and theatres were 94 % full. Tiago Rodrigues’ rich programming gave full weight to the socio-political questions of our time and many new artists were invited for the first time. There was a large presence of English-language shows In keeping with Tiago’s decision to focus on the English language this year. As thrilled as I was with this year’s festival, I admit to being disappointed that American talent was so underrepresented. Only two American companies were invited to the festival, Elevator Repair Service’s Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge , based on their debate in 1965 and Tajal Harell’s choreographed performance The Romeo . The other English language contributions were mostly British, a response to Brexit, it seems. In whatever language, however, Avignon remains the “festival of my dreams.” Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Philippa Wehle is a professor emerita of French, drama studies, and literature at Purchase College. She writes widely on contemporary theatre and performance and has translated numerous contemporary French language plays by Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Philippe Minyana, José Pliya, and others. Her current activities include translating contemporary New York theatre productions into French for supertitles. Professor Wehle is a Chevalier in the French Order of Arts and Letters. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Report from London (December 2022) Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 “Regietheater:” two cases The Grec Festival 2023 The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Report from Germany Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

People This is your Services Page. It's a great opportunity to provide information about the services you provide. Double click on the text box to start editing your content and make sure to add all the relevant details you want to share with site visitors. Whether you're offering multiple services, courses or programs, you can edit this space to fit your website's needs. Simply double click on this section to open the content manager and modify the content. Explain what each item entails and add photos or videos for even more engagement. Staff Members Visiting Scholars Board of Directors Volunteers Staff Members Martin E. Segal Theater Center Frank Hentschker Executive Director & Director of Programs e. fhentschker@gc.cuny.edu Marvin Carlson Director of Publications e. mcarlson@gc.cuny.edu Ann Kreitman PRELUDE 2023 Co-Producer e. ann4prelude@gmail.com Taylor Everts PRELUDE 2023 Co-Producer e. taylor4prelude@gmail.com Gaurav Singh Nijjer Digital & Web Consultant e. gauravnijjer@gmail.com Former staff members Andie Lerner (Co-Producer, 2021-23) Tanvi M. Shah (Co-Producer, 2021-23) Journal for American Drama & Theatre Naomi J. Stubbs Co-Editor e. fhentschker@gc.cuny.edu James Wilson Co-Editor e. mcarlson@gc.cuny.edu David Samran Advisory Editor e. ann4prelude@gmail.com Kiera Bono Managing Editor e. taylor4prelude@gmail.com Ruijiao Dong Assistant Managing Editor e. gauravnijjer@gmail.com Former staff members Names go here Journal: European Stages Naomi J. Stubbs Co-Editor e. fhentschker@gc.cuny.edu James Wilson Co-Editor e. mcarlson@gc.cuny.edu David Samran Advisory Editor e. ann4prelude@gmail.com Kiera Bono Managing Editor e. taylor4prelude@gmail.com Ruijiao Dong Assistant Managing Editor e. gauravnijjer@gmail.com Former staff members Names go here Journal: Arab Stages Naomi J. Stubbs Co-Editor e. fhentschker@gc.cuny.edu James Wilson Co-Editor e. mcarlson@gc.cuny.edu David Samran Advisory Editor e. ann4prelude@gmail.com Kiera Bono Managing Editor e. taylor4prelude@gmail.com Ruijiao Dong Assistant Managing Editor e. gauravnijjer@gmail.com Former staff members Names go here Staff Members Research Scholars Recent Visiting Research Scholars Naomi J. Stubbs Co-Editor e. fhentschker@gc.cuny.edu James Wilson Co-Editor e. mcarlson@gc.cuny.edu David Samran Advisory Editor e. ann4prelude@gmail.com Kiera Bono Managing Editor e. taylor4prelude@gmail.com Ruijiao Dong Assistant Managing Editor e. gauravnijjer@gmail.com See the full list of former visiting research scholars here. Board of Directors Board of Directors Advisory Board Jane Alexander Victoria Bailey Roger Berlind Louise Hirschfeld Cullman Blythe Danner Sharon Dunn John Guare Todd London Marsha Norman Antje Oegel Harold Prince Paul Segal Stephen Sondheim Paula Vogel Robin Wagner Edwin Wilson Robert Wilson Founding Members in Memoriam Cy Coleman Hume Cronyn Tony Randall Roy A. Somlyo Wendy Wasserstein Robert Whitehead August Wilson Editorial Board Marvin Carlson David Savran James Wilson IN MEMORIAM: Martin E. Segal (1916-2012) Daniel Gerould (1928-2012) Executive Director/Director of Programs Frank Hentschker Segal Board Marvin Carlson Seward and Cecelia Johnson William P. Kelly Joseph LoCicero Board of Directors Volunteers If you are interested in helping with Martin E. Segal Theatre Center events and programs, please contact us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu. Past volunteers Names go here

​The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) is an annual event showcasing films drawn from the world of theatre and performance. ​​ The Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) is an annual event showcasing films drawn from the world of theatre and performance. Film Festival 2025 9th edition View Festival Lineup Film Festival 2024 8th edition View Festival Lineup Film Festival 2022 7th edition View Festival Archive About The Festival The festival presents experimental, emerging, and established theatre artists and filmmakers from around the world to audiences and industry professionals. From its inaugural edition in 2015 to its present-day hybrid avatar, The Segal Film Festival for Theatre and Performance (FTP) has served as a platform for recorded works that span the length and breadth of the performing arts. Festival Founder and Executive Director of the Martin E. Segal Theater Center, Frank Hentschker shares his inspiration for creating the festival: “Film and digital media are an integral part of theatre and performance. I am surprised that there is not a film festival out there right now focusing on theatre and performance. I thought ‘why not create one’?” In the time before Corona, the Segal Film Festival had evolved into the premier US event for new film and video work focusing on theatre and performance. Its mission was to invite experimental and established theatre makers to present work created for the screen – not filmed archival recordings – to audiences and industry professionals from around the world. Now, after a year and a half of digital and hybrid theatre offerings, the festival must take on a new meaning. The festival has held on to its mission of being a free and open-to-all event accessible to everyone. The 7th edition of the festival was held digitally in March 2022, and featured 80 films from 30 countries, whilst the 8th edition was held in a hybrid format in May 2024 with in-person screenings in NYC and digital streaming.

The Exponential Festival is beginning its ninth-anniversary season with an intimate evening of artist-on-artist interviews to take place Tuesday, October 17th at 7pm at Brick Aux (628 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211). Founding Artistic Director Theresa Buchheister and Producing Director Nic Adams will introduce the hour-long event, which will feature interviews with David Greenspan, Marissa Joyce Stamps, Ben Holbrook, Lena Engelstein, SB Tennent, Cameron Stuart, Sleth Larson, and Tristan Allen! Join us for an evening of retrospection, artistic conundrums, and a dispatch from the heart of the enduring contemporary performance community. Streamed live on HowlRound (info coming soon) PRELUDE Festival 2023 PANEL Exponential Festival David Greenspan, Marissa Joyce Stamps, Ben Holbrook, SB Tennent, Cameron Stuart, Sleth Larson, Tristan Allen, Lena Engelstein Discussion English 60 minutes 7:00PM EST Tuesday, October 17, 2023 Brick Aux, 628 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All The Exponential Festival is beginning its ninth-anniversary season with an intimate evening of artist-on-artist interviews to take place Tuesday, October 17th at 7pm at Brick Aux (628 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211). Founding Artistic Director Theresa Buchheister and Producing Director Nic Adams will introduce the hour-long event, which will feature interviews with David Greenspan, Marissa Joyce Stamps, Ben Holbrook, Lena Engelstein, SB Tennent, Cameron Stuart, Sleth Larson, and Tristan Allen! Join us for an evening of retrospection, artistic conundrums, and a dispatch from the heart of the enduring contemporary performance community. Streamed live on HowlRound (info coming soon) Content / Trigger Description: Ben Holbrook is a Brooklyn-based (originally from NC) playwright and filmmaker whose works have been produced, developed, or commissioned by: Fundamental Theater Project, Ruddy Productions, The New York International Fringe Festival, The Memphis Fringe Festival, The Motor Company, Voices of the South (TN), Ugly Rhino(LA), Seoul Players (SK), Holiday House, Find the Light (LA), The Irish Arts Council, and Paper Lantern Theatre Company (NC). He’s been awarded the Edward Albee Foundation fellowship, the Drama League Rough Draft Residency (partnering with Sam Underwood), Fresh Ground Pepper’s Playground Playgroup Residency, The New Concepts Theatre Lab at UNC-Greensboro, Magic Time at Judson Church. He is the inaugural recipient of the Peter Shaffer Award for Excellence in Playwriting and a winner of the 47th Samuel French OOB Festival. Cameron Stuart is a writer, composer, and performer. He self-produces his performance art as No-Brow Theater Company, which was formerly known as Saints of an Unnamed Country. With several friends, Cameron opened and managed The Glove, a DIY performance space located in Bushwick. The Glove was a participating venue in the Exponential Festival, which Cameron co-produced from 2017–2022. His plays Police in the Wilderness (published by A Freedom Books) and Germany, 1933 were part of the Exponential Festival in 2017 and 2020, respectively. Other works by Cameron have been presented at diverse venues and institutions, including: MoMA's PS1, JACK, The Brick, Vital Joint, Silent Barn, Secret Project Robot, and Tomato Mouse, among others. Born in Florida, Cameron now lives in Queens, NY. David Greenspan will return to The Brick in February for the remounting of Joey Merlo’s solo play, On Set With Theda Bara - originally presented in The 2023 Exponential Festival. He has appeared in his own plays, performed solo renditions of dramatic and non-dramatic texts and worked with many contemporary playwrights. Honors include a RUTHIE and six OBIES. Lena Engelstein is a Brooklyn based choreographer and performer. Since 2021, she has co-created and performed a series of duets– the first with performance artist Magda San Millan; the second with dancer Jo Warren. She has collaborated with and performed in work by director Lisa Fagan since 2017, and is currently the assistant choreographer/performer in the interdisciplinary performance collective CHILD. Other performance credits include: Third Rail Company’s Then She Fell, Falcon Dance, Brendan Drake, and work by Barnett Cohen, Alexa West, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, and Chafin Seymour. As a movement director, Engelstein has worked with the bands Lou Tides and Pleaser, comedian Sophie Zucker, and dance artist Nora Alami. She has taught at SUNY Brockport, Bard College, The Field Center, and Colorado Mesa University. Lena holds a B.A. in Mathematics and a minor in Dance from Colorado College. Marissa Joyce Stamps is a Black, Haitian-American, NYC-based Afrosurreal artist + educator. She’s the recipient of the 2023 Princess Grace Playwriting Award, a member of Clubbed Thumb 2023-2024 Early-Career Writers’ Group, a Fall 2023 Mercury Store Lead Artist, a New Georges Affiliate Artist, and was named a Finalist for The National Black Theatre's 2023 I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency. Recent: …Twisted Juniper (2022 O’Neill Finalist), Being Up in Here… (Exponential Festival 2024; Princess Grace Award 2023; Brick Aux 2022), Blue Fire… (Exponential Festival 2022; Orchard Project 2021), Letiche… (Bushwick Starr SRS 2023), + deadbodydeadbodydeadbody (Ars Nova ANT Fest 2022). She’s collaborated with The Public, 24 Hour Plays, Fire This Time, Conch Shell Productions, Moxie Arts, The Anthropologists, Keen, BUFU, + more. Marissa serves as Literary Manager at The Workshop Theater. MFA Playwriting: Brooklyn College. Marissajoycestamps.com Sanaz Bita (SB) Tennent is an Iranian-American multidisciplinary artist & director of new works, musicals, and classics. Described as having a “deft directorial touch” (Culturebot), she has developed work with New York Theatre Workshop, Ars Nova, The Drama League, Clubbed Thumb, Civilians, BRIC Arts | Media, Mabou Mines, The TEAM, New Georges, Red House Center for Culture & Debate in Bulgaria, Prague Film & Theater Center, and others. Alumni of the Drama League Directors Project, NYTW 2050 Fellowship, Clubbed Thumb Fellowship, and Mabou Mines SUITE/Space Initiative. Artistic Director of the award-winning collective Built4Collapse with whom they devised NUCLEAR LOVE AFFAIR, which played to sold out houses in NYC, Prague, Rome and Krakow. @sbtennent A hardworking gemini with mischievous but kind eyes, Sleth (he/she) was sliced from the belly of a drowned Texas river horse sometime around June 1990. Sleth is a playwright, PowerPoint artist, projection designer and nightlife performer. She has enlightened audiences all across NYC including House of Yes, Three Dollar Bill, the Brick Theater, NYC Inferno, Club Cumming, Bartschland Follies and Play Now! Tristan Allen is a composer and puppeteer based in Brooklyn, NY. Tristan’s work employs the narrative power of instrumental music and puppetry to create an imaginary world. With a background in piano, bass, electronic music, and marionette theater, Tristan applies an experimental mode of storytelling to create rich works of wordless fantasy. Tristan’s ambitions to combine their music with puppetry is underway, beginning with a shadow puppet symphony named Tin Iso and the Dawn. Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

STANDING ON THE UNSEEN SPIRALS OF THE VORTEX embodies an intricate symphony of eras colliding. In the performance, human operators orchestrate an amalgamation of AI-generated content and analog instruments live onstage. Through the warmth of 16mm film projections, the audience witnesses AI-derived imagery of people who do not exist, engaging in acts that never happened. Under the hauntingly nostalgic hum of reel-to-reel tape players, voices that have been synthesized into existence, speak in familiar tones that are oddly reminiscent of many influential artists of the past and present. Through an equal embrace of bleeding-edge AI technology and outdated analog equipment, the performance partakes in a dialogue between the past, the present, and the specter of our future as creative beings, reminding us that even as technology advances, certain foundational truths persist across time. As the performers navigate this complex convergence in real-time, the stage becomes a canvas where eras seamlessly collide, inviting us to consider the legacy of the past, the potential of the future, and the unchanging core of creative expression that binds them together. STANDING ON THE UNSEEN SPIRALS OF THE VORTEX is a multidimensional experience that invites us to reflect on our own place within the ever-evolving landscape of art and technology. It is a meditation on the cyclical nature of creation, the ever-receding ephemerality of all trends, and the timeless truths that endure. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE STANDING ON THE UNSEEN SPIRALS OF THE VORTEX Temporary Distortion Theater, Discussion, Film, Multimedia, Music, Performance Art, Other English 20 mins 5:30PM EST Friday, October 13, 2023 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All STANDING ON THE UNSEEN SPIRALS OF THE VORTEX embodies an intricate symphony of eras colliding. In the performance, human operators orchestrate an amalgamation of AI-generated content and analog instruments live onstage. Through the warmth of 16mm film projections, the audience witnesses AI-derived imagery of people who do not exist, engaging in acts that never happened. Under the hauntingly nostalgic hum of reel-to-reel tape players, voices that have been synthesized into existence, speak in familiar tones that are oddly reminiscent of many influential artists of the past and present. Through an equal embrace of bleeding-edge AI technology and outdated analog equipment, the performance partakes in a dialogue between the past, the present, and the specter of our future as creative beings, reminding us that even as technology advances, certain foundational truths persist across time. As the performers navigate this complex convergence in real-time, the stage becomes a canvas where eras seamlessly collide, inviting us to consider the legacy of the past, the potential of the future, and the unchanging core of creative expression that binds them together. STANDING ON THE UNSEEN SPIRALS OF THE VORTEX is a multidimensional experience that invites us to reflect on our own place within the ever-evolving landscape of art and technology. It is a meditation on the cyclical nature of creation, the ever-receding ephemerality of all trends, and the timeless truths that endure. This work is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature and is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Content / Trigger Description: Named one of the “Best New York Theater companies” by TimeOut NY Magazine, Temporary Distortion continually work across disciplines to create performances, installations, films, albums, and works for the stage that have been shown in over 25 cities in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States. Their work occupies the gray space between the “black box” of the theatre and the “white cube” of the art gallery, where they explore the tensions and overlaps existing between the practices of theatre, cinema, music, and media art. The company has maintained its roots in the East Village as an invested stakeholder in the local arts community for over 20 years. https://www.temporarydistortion.com Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 18, Fall, 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete By Ion M. Tomuș Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF The poetry recital in the Romanian performing arts landscape holds a special position which needs to be described in its general coordinates. First, before 1990 and the fall of the Iron Curtain, most poetry recitals given by Romanian actors were part of the job description of those with certain visibility. The poetry recital thus became, in most cases, a job obligation and part of the Communist party's propaganda. Of course, this situation meant that the relationship between the audience and those who recited poetry benefited from a special configuration, deeply marked by the social-cultural particularities of the period between 1947 and 1990. The patriotic poems that had to be recited by the Romanian actors were part of the communist propaganda and had nothing in common with real poetry. Socialist realism was expressed in the field of poetry in topics like outstanding crops, comrades who break new records in industrial production, or ones who work on the homeland’s great construction sites and compete with those around them. There was also the category of patriotic poetry in which the image of the supreme leader of the country and of the Communist party were praised. Moreover, during the last fifteen years of the Communist regime, there was a lot of insistence on the glorification of the presidential couple through poetry, a situation that now, almost 50 years later, seems completely ridiculous. Finally, the last major trend in the recitals of patriotic poetry before 1990 was represented by the reinterpretation of some of the great classical Romanian poets in a special key that served the purposes of propaganda. For example, in the work of Mihai Eminescu (the last great European romantic poet), the same propaganda identified certain elements that could be useful for its purposes, thus an important series of themes was diverted towards these ambitions. After 1990, Romanian society and the national artistic environment found themselves in a situation of total freedom of expression, and the transition was very sudden. The situation was similar in the whole of Eastern Europe and this new freedom was rather difficult for coping with not only for the artists but for the whole society. The world of theatre rightly tried to detach itself from the traumas during the Communist regime and establish a safe distance from the unfortunate clichés of the past, from the procedures and means of stage expression so well established during half a century of Communist propaganda. One of the genres that lost substantial ground, though, was exactly that of poetic recital. Most prominent Romanian actors avoided it because they wanted to evade the association with an outdated way of artistic expression which was for so long diverted from the true purpose of art - that of creating stimulating emotion. Of course, there were exceptions: those who understood the importance of poetry and emotion for the general audience. Several actors did not shy away from publicly reciting true poetry (as they did before 1990), insisting on artistic truth, emotion and value: Lucia Mureșan, Ovidiu Iuliu Moldovan, Ion Caramitru, Valeria Seciu, Ilinca Tomoroveanu, Traian Stănescu, Constantin Chiriac, Mircea Albulescu and others. Even more than others, Constantin Chiriac, from the very beginning of his career, understood the importance of “real” poetry in a society that responds to emotion and truth. Addressing the public through poetry and, thus, serving the community – this is the solid foundation on which he built his career as an actor. It is also crucial to note that he is the author of a doctoral thesis focused precisely on the act of interpreting and reciting poetry. His thesis has become a textbook for the poetry recital technique for students and professionals in the field of performing arts. Games, Words, Crickets... Photo: Dragos Dumitru. At Radu Stanca National Theatre in Sibiu, the theatrical autumn of 2022 was marked by the opening of Games, Words, Crickets… , directed by Silviu Purcărete: a performance of poetry by Constantin Chiriac, with the support of more than a dozen of the company’s actors who performed a series of stage exercises that derived from improvisations led by the director. The text of the performance was based on fragments from a diverse and surprising selection of Romanian and international poets: Carl Sandburg, Nazim Hikmet, Serghei Esenin, William Shakespeare, Paul Verlaine, Mihai Eminescu, Marin Sorescu, Radu Stanca, and others. Silviu Purcărete is a director who has made his audience expect to see in his shows a special dynamic involving usually a group of actors on stage who are driven by the energy and emotion instigated by improvisational exercises. Gulliver's Travels, Faust, Metamorphoses and The Scarlet Princess are just a few of the performances staged by him in Sibiu in which a group of actors acquires the consistency of a real character that is in direct relationship with the central performer (or performers). The performance of the group of actors is usually accompanied by music or is itself a music generator, the stage, thus, becoming a space where Silviu Purcărete creates a functional, extremely colorful, and diverse world—a universe that works according to its own special rules where this collective (but also individualized) character evolves and develops organically in their relationship with the main performer and the particularities of the space on stage and the universe in the script. This is also the general context for Games, Words, Crickets... : At the beginning on stage there are the main elements of a naive and picturesque winter universe. The snowmen melt, the carrot used as a nose falls off, the snowbanks also melt, the birds chirp. Then the white and cold nature transforms, and comes back to life, as a sign of a new beginning. It is with this sign that the show begins because we feel a state of expectation and impatience--an emotion like that in childhood at the reawakening of spring. Gradually the group of actors breaks away from the theme of the end of winter and of the new beginning, and start an exercise of balancing several dozen glasses on top of each other, in a scenic expression of fragility and transparency and, of course, of the joy of building a spectacular foundation marked by these coordinates. Constantin Chiriac, in his first moment on stage, makes use of Carl Sandburg (the story about the king and the shah from The People, Yes ) to start a captatio benevolentiae exercise, based on the textual formula specific to telling stories: “Once upon a time...” In this way, he establishes the dramatic convention, opens the story, and initiates the magic of emotion. The script never aims to tell a story, which is a rarity for Silviu Purcărete, a director who has adapted some of the most important stories from world literature and drama: One Thousand and One Nights, Gulliver's Travels, Pantagruel , etc. This time, more than ever before, he uses the text as a pretext and the main intention is to create emotion. The protagonist of the show, Constantin Chiriac, is configured as an ordinary character in a light-colored costume, who stands out in the chromatics and the special configuration of the stage, as implemented by Dragoș Buhagiar, the set designer. Of course, the commonality of the character reciting poems is an element sought out by the director and well assumed and carried out by the actor. Through this artistic approach, the poetic text is emphasized in all its nuances and labyrinthine, deep, extremely differing substrata, both for the performer and the audience. In addition, the stage direction of the performance is extremely attentive to the means of expression of the character who recites the poems: his banality is not pushed into an existentialist zone, as is the one in which, for example, Ionesco's famous Béranger works. On the contrary, Silviu Purcărete places his actor, Constantin Chiriac, in a detached area, where the great questions raised by the text have a welcomed ludic counterpoint, assumed both by the role itself and by the group of actors on stage, who develop and continue their improvisations in parallel with the poetry in the text. Performing arts professionals know very well the fundamental difficulties related to expressing poetic texts on stage. The enunciation that reaches the audience must be precisely distilled by the performer and a truly interdisciplinary approach to the text is needed. Philology, as a field that is tangential to dramaturgy, is particularly useful in this sense, because it may offer a helpful set of theoretical tools that may help in this whole endeavor. The technique of the poetry recital requires the development of an activity that is, to a great extent, similar to that of a detective: good knowledge of all the nuances of the text and the entire work of the poet (for the best possible selection of texts), and also identification of several cores of the poetic text that will later be used by the performer and passed on to the public. In addition to all this, it is essential to establish a possible dialogue in the text that is spoken on stage, which can then be verbalized and delivered with theatrical means. This is, for example, why conceptual poetry is so difficult to recite on stage. Through the main performer and the group of actors who carry out the improvisation exercises, Games, Words, Crickets establishes a dialogue that works in several ways, all of which are suffused with emotion. First of all, the dialogue between the protagonist and the audience should be mentioned. The foundation on which it is built is the poetry recited by Constantin Chiriac, which does not communicate a precise content of ideas or facts, as the audience is used to when going to the theatre, but focuses on the delivery of emotion from the poetic text. The “sender” (the protagonist) may use means that are sometimes theatrically exaggerated and dissolve the fourth wall of the stage. Theatrical convention and the routines of watching a theatrical performance may make the audience see a character in the protagonist. However, the director's stage reality proposes a concept that uses poetry to convey not ideas and facts, but emotion. The script is not made up of a chain of events that link together to build up dramatic tension and reach a climax, but of successive emotions, which are communicated by the protagonist to the audience through often playful means and the goal is the creation and the stage configuration of a whole universe, with its special rules, in which not only those on the stage but the entire audience take refuge. Furthermore, also regarding the decomposition of the poetic text and the identification of dialogue vectors, it is essential to detail one of the most important moments of the performance: two life-size marionettes, copies of the protagonist, appear on stage, manipulated by the actors. The marionettes become part of the mechanism that configures the dialogue: the performer is in a communicative relationship with these marionettes. Questions are answered; answers generate new questions; the poetic text, loaded with deep philosophical meanings, becomes more and more accessible to the general audience, without its universe of meanings being altered. Moreover, for one of Mihai Eminescu’s poems, approaching the possible dialogue with ludic means on a theatre stage implies a happy adaptation to the horizon of expectations of the contemporary spectator. The world is now fast, communication has changed enormously in the last decades, and identifying new nuances and levels in the process of delivering the poetic text to the public through a (re)configuration of the dialogue may be a useful and rewarding approach. Finally, the two marionettes convey extra theatricality and fit perfectly into the characteristics of Silviu Purcărete's theatrical universe: the apparent grotesqueness of the images is augmented by dialogue, emotion, and playfulness. The music of the show is composed by Vasile Şirli and is a complex of sounds that accompany the stage actions and the emotions transmitted by the protagonist to the audience. The sounds are created spontaneously, on stage, under the gaze of the spectators, and in a close relationship with the text, which emphasizes the playfulness mentioned earlier. Furthermore, when the protagonist and the improvisations of the group of actors are accompanied by recorded music, it joins the general tones of an open and bright space. The playfulness that marks the whole show is accentuated by the set design signed by Dragoș Buhagiar: the space is wide open, referring to the universality of poetry, the colors are bright, so that the lights can provide nuances and brilliance, or even texture to all the images. Games, Words, Crickets... Photo: Dragos Dumitru. The group of actors behind the protagonist (seventeen of them) behaves as a parallel mechanism which associates with the poetic text, enhances its potential, and completes it, or ironizes the actions on stage. Their costumes are also light-colored (shirts and shorts with suspenders)—a reference to a possible eternal childhood associated with playfulness. The games primarily belong to the group of actors. This suggests a character that stands out from the crowd or, on the contrary, a comic-grotesque uniformity caused by the masks they wear at a certain point. In Games, Words, Crickets... , the seventeen who accompany the protagonist on stage have the precise role of increasing the playfulness of the whole artistic endeavor. Finally, one last thing to be emphasized: in an artistic and social context marked by a troubled and complex reality, Silviu Purcărete turns to true poetry in order to create a sensitive and emotional show. He has been known as a creator of poetry on stage through the images and energies of his performances. In Games, Words, Crickets... we have the opportunity to see how he uses a selection from the world's great poetry to enhance his own stage emotion. Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Dr. Ion M. Tomuș is a Professor at “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu, the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies, where he teaches courses in History of Romanian Theatre, History of Worldwide Theatre, Text and Stage Image and Drama Theory. He is member of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Field of Performing Arts (Cavas). In 2008 he received his PhD from the National University of Drama and Film, Bucharest, with a doctoral thesis entitled Realist and Naïve Picturesqueness in Vasile Alecsandri’s, I. L. Caragiale’s, and Eugene Ionesco’s Plays and Their Stage Adaptations. In 2013 he finished a postdoctoral study together with the Romanian Academy, focused on the topic of the modern international theatre festival, with case studies on the Edinburgh International Festival, Festival d’Avignon, and Sibiu International Theatre Festival. He has published studies, book reviews, theatre reviews, and essays in prestigious cultural magazines and academic journals in Romania and Europe. Since 2005, he has been co-editor of the annual Text Anthology published by Nemira Publishing House for each edition of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival. Since 2005, Mr. Tomuș is part of the staff at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (SITF is the third performing arts festival in the world, preceded by the ones in Edinburgh and Avignon). Ion M. Tomuș was Head of the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies, in “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu (2011-2019), and now he is the Chair of the PhD School in Theatre and Performing Arts at the same university Since October 2016, Ion M. Tomuș is advising PhD students in the field of Performing Arts at “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu. Email: ion.tomus@ulbsibiu.ro European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Report from London (December 2022) Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 “Regietheater:” two cases The Grec Festival 2023 The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Report from Germany Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Leche Hervida is a Solo Performance created in 2023. The work involves meticulous detail around all objects floor to ceiling. The foam floor is first laid below the meticulously constructed lighting rig by the artist. All of the objects in the work are created by IV Castellanos. The wearables are deconstructed during the production of this performance. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Leche Hervida IV Castellanos Dance, Performance Art English. Spanish, Quechua 20mins 2:30PM EST Friday, October 13, 2023 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Leche Hervida is a Solo Performance created in 2023. The work involves meticulous detail around all objects floor to ceiling. The foam floor is first laid below the meticulously constructed lighting rig by the artist. All of the objects in the work are created by IV Castellanos. The wearables are deconstructed during the production of this performance. Content / Trigger Description: The performance goes to complete darkness at one point. Abstract Performance Artist and Sculptor. I create solo, collaborative and group task vignette performances. The objects in my performances are all constructed/deconstructed by myself and/or the collaborator/s I am working with. In addition, I create stand alone sculptures not meant to be activated by performances. I am a Three Spirit Queer Trans* Bolivian-Indige / American. www.ivcastellanos.com Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

EXPOSURE: A group show of performance works exploring the body. PERFORMANCE BY: Ilan Bachrach Kristel Baldoz Blaze Ferrer Hannah Kallenbach Julia Mounsey Alexander Paris Matt Romein Alex Tatarsky Peter Mills Weiss Kristin Worrall At The Collapsable Hole 155 Bank Street New York, NY 10014 Seating extremely limited. Tickets are first come first served. The Collapsable Hole box office opens at 6pm. Please arrive early to secure your ticket and enjoy free refreshments. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Exposure Radiohole Theater, Performance Art English 90 minutes 7:00PM EST Saturday, October 7, 2023 The Collapsable Hole, Bank Street, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All EXPOSURE: A group show of performance works exploring the body. PERFORMANCE BY: Paris Alexander Kristel Baldoz Blaze Ferrer Hannah Kallenbach Dante Migone-Ojeda Julia Mounsey Matt Romein Alex Tatarsky Peter Mills Weiss Kristin Worrall HOSTED BY: Fantasy Grandma VISUAL ART BY: Robert Bunkin & Jenny Tango At The Collapsable Hole 155 Bank Street New York, NY 10014 Tickets are first come first served. The Collapsable Hole box office opens at 6pm. Please arrive early to secure your ticket and enjoy free refreshments. Radiohole is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Radiohole's work is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Content / Trigger Description: Please email radiohole@gmail.com for information about content and access. https://www.radiohole.com/ https://thehole.site/ Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on