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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 Report from Germany By Marvin Carlson Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF A week or so in Germany in May, Covid years excepted, has long been a high point of my annual theatre-going. Although Berlin has often been my focus, the decentralized nature of the German theatre makes available an even richer selection even if one’s visits are limited to theatres only an hour or two train ride from the capital. Thus I began my 2023 visit with a mini-Shakespeare indulgence, beginning with King Lear in Hamburg, followed by Hamlet in Dessau and Macbeth in Dresden. Such a selection is by no means unusual in Germany, where Shakespeare makes an important contribution to the repertoire of almost every professional theatre. One of the results of this is that in Germany, where the director is often the dominant artist, the variety of interpretation, especially of the more familiar works, is almost beyond imagination (or some might say, reasonable justification). Accordingly I booked these productions expecting to see very little resemblance in any of them to the Shakespeare I might see in London or New York, and this indeed proved to be the case. King Lear . Photo: Armin Smailovic. I began with the Lear at Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre, directed by Jan Bosse, who was in-house director there from 2000 to 2005 and has particularly close ties to Hamburg, though he directs regularly at most of the leading German-language theatres. Bosse is now in his mid-50s, the generation of Thomas Ostermeier and Michael Thalheimer. In the fairly predictable cycle of directorial reputations in Germany, leading directors like these, once considered revolutionary, are now generally considered respectable but very much a part of the establishment. In another decade or so, if they are still active, they will probably be considered hopelessly dated by at least the younger generation, as Peter Stein and Claus Peymann were in their time. In the meantime, Bosse is considered a major if somewhat conservative director although his work would appear quite radical in the Anglo-Saxon world. His production begins not in Lear’s palace but in a glittering disco ballroom, where instead of a throne, a shiny musicians’ platform is the focus. Above it a huge half globe with reflecting mirror surfaces provides a visual element that will be ingeniously used in various forms throughout the evening. Lear is the master of ceremonies, making a rather awkward entrance below the globe through a curtain of sequins to seize the microphone. Although he is dressed in full drag, with a brilliant glittering low-cut black gown with a sweeping train, and with deep black fingernails, there is nothing effeminate about him—an aging but still strongly virile figure. The actor is Wolfram Koch, a leading figure in contemporary Germany who recently played a magnificent Prospero directed also by Bosse at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, and the colorful, but gender fluid costumes are the work of Kathrin Plath. The scene is developed as a TV spectacle, with Lear calling up his daughters from their seats in the front row (where they smile and wave as the audience applauds) to present their clearly scripted testimonies on stage. Goneril and Reagan (Anna Blomeier and Tioni Ruhnke) are perfect properties for Lear’s production—elegant model types, with splendidly glittering ball gowns, perfectly coiffed silver hair and of course long black fingernails and striking but subtle makeup. Poor Cordelia (Pauline Renevier, who also plays Edgar) lacks their visual elegance as well as the expected verbal display. She has not even the consolation of a volunteer husband, since Bosse has removed from this production many of the lesser characters, leaving only the three sisters, Lear and the Fool, Kent, Gloucester, Edgar and Edmund (Johannes Hegemann, who also plays Oswald). After the glittering opening scenes, the elegant disco back curtain disappears, and the remainder of the production takes place in a cold black void, the central feature of which is the glittering half dome, which appears in an impressive variety of configurations. Still hanging in the air, it sometimes reveals its back side, essentially as assemblage of wooden supports, forming a kind of rough retreat where the villain Edmund can weave his plots, or the imprisoned King can be kept. Sometimes it sits dome-like on the floor as various characters climb up and down it to gain better positions. On the heath, tilted slightly upward, it becomes the sheltering hovel containing the outcast Edgar. In some scenes this central element is surrounded by a cloud of individual lights hanging from the flies. During the tempest scene, it is pelted by countless small white balls, which suggest a crushing hail, or much more ominously but more metaphorically appropriate, a rain of detached eyeballs. The imaginative and constantly changing design is by Stéphane Laimé. The reduced cast size leaves only leading actors, each of whom turns in a bravura performance. Perhaps especially notable is the flamboyant Edmund, a consummate villain in his flowing black hair, black petal sweater, shiny gold sports pants and cowboy boots. The ethereal Fool (Christiane von Poelnitz) in a yellow jumpsuit layered with gauzy wisps of fabric, hovers about Lear like a bedraggled and ineffective guardian angel, reduced to making ironic comments on a darkening situation. The production is dominated however, by the powerful visual images of Laimé and by the fading ruin of Koch’s Lear, a major addition to his already impressive creations of other monumental figures of the Western theatre. The next two evenings were devoted to other major Shakespearian tragedies, and although quite different from each other, both clearly demonstrated the general stylistic difference that exists between a “conventional” German director like Bosse and many members of the upcoming generation Bosse himself has jokingly referred to as the “pseudo-young savages.” This is not simply a matter of age. Both Phillip Preuss, director of the Dessau Hamlet , and Christian Friedal, director of the Dresden Macbeth , are only five years younger than Bosse, but both are clearly among the “young savages,” firmly on the other side of a distinct stylistic divide in contemporary German directing. This difference has many variations and has been described in many ways, but many German critics would use the term popularized by the theorists Hans-Thies Lehmann in his 1999 book, Postdramatic Theatre . Although the term has been much discussed and debated, the Preuss and Friedal productions would surely be characterized as postdramatic, in opposition to Bosse, despite his radical changes to the play. The central difference is that Bosse still essentially follows the plot and action of the original, respecting its overall narrative construction, while the others assemble and arrange images and motifs from the original or related sources and present these as a visual and oral collage which bears the name of its grounding text, but accepts no responsibility to the narrative contained in that text. The approach is clear from the moment when the audience enters the Dessau Theatre to see the Preuss Hamlet . We see two similar male figures (Niklas Herzberg and Felix Axel Preißler) in dark military garb with sparkling accents, seated downstage at a table. The audience assumption is surely that these are Marcellus and Bernardo, the watchmen whose dialogue has opened Shakespeare’s drama for centuries. In fact as they begin to speak, their lines are not the familiar opening of the play, but a series of unrelated exchanges of apparently free association, in which can be recognized fragments of the play, including parts of Hamlet’s soliloquies. Gradually we come to realize that these are not the guards but a divided Hamlet, out of joint with both his world and himself. In his (their) constant repetitions, false starts and recirclings, he (they) resemble less Shakespeare’s character than such postdramatic protagonists as the couples in Beckett or Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The cast, in addition to these, consists of Stephan Korves, a loud, grotesque, insecure Claudius, Boris Malré as a fawning and servile Polonius, Cara Maria Nagler, who slips back and forth disturbingly but convincingly between Gertrude and Ophelia, and two “utility” men—Sebastian Graf, who plays Horatio, Rosencrantz, an actor and a gravedigger, and his “double” Roman Welzien, who plays Laertes, Guildenstern, another actor and another gravedigger. Lines from the Ghost are spoken by the entire company, often over the heavy booted tread of the unseen spirit. The stage, designed by Ramallah Sara Aubrecht, is in some ways extremely simple, in others highly complex. At the opening the table at the end of which the two Hamlets sit, is a long narrow one, running upstage and disappearing in the folds of a large curtain. On the curtain appears a live video showing a closeup of Claudius, carousing at his wedding banquet, and surrounded by everyone but Hamlet (the video is designed by Konny Keller). This scene actually takes place at the upper end of the long narrow table running down from far upstage, which is the main element of the set, although at this point it cannot be scene in its entirety. The offstage video then follows Gertrude/Ophelia as she leaves the King, climbs onto the table and walks slowly down it to where the Hamlets are sitting. As she comes through the curtains they part and for the first time we see her physically present, as the entire stage, and table is revealed. The effect is increased by a large mirror far upstage behind Claudius. We also for the first time see several other figures, dressed as courtiers, seated along the sides of the table, but soon realize they are actually dummies, somewhat reminiscent of the dead figures in a Kantor production. Most of the action takes place on or (thanks to the tracking live video, beneath this table, which serves as most of the settings of the production. A section in the center can be opened to suggest a grave, which from time to time welcomes the bodies of various actors, who climb in, are covered with dirt, and then climb out again to resume their eternal and repetitive dance of life and death. The other major scenic element is a variety of full stage curtains, of widely varying styles and set at different depths, suggesting a constant play of somewhat arbitrary beginnings and endings. Upon each curtain plays a continuing live video image of the apparently never-ending wedding banquet. Now and then a fleeting image suggests a particular scene –the player king and queen embracing Ophelia lowered into her grave, but these are merely passing images, sometimes repeated, never contextualized, and always embedded in a sea of contentious language. Like all three of the Shakespearian productions I saw, this was accompanied by the almost continuous contributions of a small onstage band with keyboard, strings, and percussion (music by Cornelius Heidebrecht). The continual repetitions and opening and closings of curtains calculatedly gave little indication of an approaching conclusion. On the contrary every effort was made to suggest something of a never-ending dream—perhaps that suggested in Hamlet’s central soliloquy, fragments of which are constantly repeated. Before the production begins, as the audience assembles in the lobby, confused noises are heard from behind the closed doors into the theatre. When the auditorium doors open, the audience enters to find the two seated figures in place on the stage, and projected behind them the live video of the loud and unruly wedding party, which has been going on for some time, and which we heard from outside. Like many post-dramatic creations, the production ends where it began, suggesting that there is in fact no ending. The two Hamlets resume their positions and conversation downstage and the video of the celebration continues on the closed curtain behind them. Eventually, their conversation ceases but the video continues. Perhaps ten minutes passed before the audience decided the performance was over and there was scattered applause, but nothing changed on stage. After another rather long wait a few audience members left, then others. When the house was perhaps half empty I went to the door and waited as others left. It was now about twenty minutes since the last words or live action on the stage, though perhaps a hundred determined spectators remained to watch the unmoving Hamlets and the continuing video projection. Out in the lobby I recognized that the sounds I heard there from inside the theatre were much the same as I had heard before the theatre opened, and I realized that the effect was to suggest that the display within presumably never ended, like the waiting for Godot. One might wonder if so extreme a version of this well-known drama would be well received, and the answer is that although naturally the performance had its critics, this Hamlet was selected by a jury of leading German critics and theorists as one of the ten outstanding productions of the year, and invited to participate in the annual Theatertreffen held later this same month in Berlin. Macbeth . Photo: Sebastian Hoppé. My third Shakespeare, the Dresden Macbeth , was as unconventional as the Dessau Hamlet , but developed from a very different set of assumptions and circumstances. In 2011, Christan Friedel, an actor at the Dresden State Theatre, joined the four members of the pop rock band Arctic Circle 18 to form a new group, dedicated to working in theatre and film as well as on the concert stage. They significantly took their name from Shakespeare, the Woods of Birnam. The first major undertaking of the new group was in providing the onstage live musical accompaniment for a production of Hamlet in Dresden in 2012, directed by Roger Vontobel. Friedel played the title role, for which he created and performed several songs. The group’s second theatrical venture was a collection of dramatic and musical works inspired by various Shakespearian texts and presented in Dresden under the title Searching for William in 2016. As the group’s reputation grew through a series of album releases, tours throughout Germany and Austria, and as far as Elsinore and major concerts, a production of Macbeth itself became inevitable. Like major and minor theatre projects all over the world, however, it fell victim to Covid. Just a week before its scheduled opening in Dresden in 2020 the theatre was closed, and although a much reduced concert version, Searching for Macbeth , was presented later that year for a limited audience, the full production could not be mounted for another two years. At that time it ran for over three hours, as compared to the seventy minutes of Searching for Macbeth and the approximately two and a half hours of both the Bosse Lear and the Preuss Hamlet , both based on much longer texts. Hamlet. Photo: Claudie Heysel. Although more of the original in terms of lines and scenes could be perceived in this production than in the Dessau Hamlet , the Dresden Macbeth was essentially not so much a theatrical production as a no-holds-barred rock concert, with the emphasis not on the music, and even less on the text, but largely on the spectacular visual effects, stunning even for a m ajor German theatre. The witch’s realm was represented by a large open metallic box, filled with a writhing figure, that from time to time rose up out of the stage floor, the first time under the feet of Macbeth and Banquo. The menacing Birnam Woods formed an ever-present threat, both visually and aurally, appearing in countless and ever shifting forms—using video projections, beams of light, and massive moving screens, among other devices. Often hovering over the action was what seemed like a skeletal craft out of Star Wars , lined with machines that engulfed the stage with billowing clouds of smoke and powerful spotlights that could pick out particular actors, usually Macbeth, or in different combinations send down shafts of light that could suggest the walls of an insubstantial room. Certain images, like the bleeding hands, were developed into complex visual sequences, partly live and partly filmic. A striking example was the witches’ prophecy that Banquo would produce many royal descendants—a brief passage in the play—which was elaborated into a complex visual spectacle lasting several minutes and primarily created by film and video technology using the image of an adolescent boy in crown and royal robes splitting, multiplying, and creating increasingly complex visual patterns rather like a kaleidoscope or the dancers in the climax of a Busby Berkley musical. Hamlet. Photo: Claudie Heysel. With all this spectacle the acting contributions of individual performers (there were over fifty of them) made a distinctly lesser impact. Indeed in terms of acting, critics regularly referred to this as a one-man show, not only because Friedel directed, created the music and acted and sang the title role, but also because spots and mikes often picked him out as the only distinct character amid a background of dark and constantly shifting configurations of characters. Like all the rest, however, he remained rather upstaged by the physical production, and his Macbeth was generally considered adequate, though rather conventional and even old-fashioned, considering the competition from the production as a whole. Aside from Friedel, the real stars of the show were the designer, Alexander Wolf, the lighting designer Johannes Zinc, and the video designers Clemens Walter and Jonas Dahl. By and large, the critics considered the production as a success in terms of its technical spectacle and far less impressive as an interpretation of Shakespeare’s play. For audiences, however, the production was a major event, and the show is playing to continuously sold-out houses and standing ovations. Although all the productions I attended in Germany had good audiences, only in Dresden did I have real difficulty in obtaining a seat. Antigone . Photo: David Baltzer. The remainder of my trip was spent in Berlin, where my choices became much more varied. I began with one more major world classic, Antigone , at the Gorki Theatre, which once again demonstrated the liberties taken with such texts in many contemporary productions. The setting, designed by Zahava Rodrigo, was composed of dark billowing cloud-like forms, suggesting perhaps Antigone’s fatal cave or perhaps, given the feminist orientation of the work, a sheltering womb. In it, four Antigone figures (Lea Draeger, Eva Löbau, Julia Riedler, and Ҁiǧdem Teke) and an accompanying musician on an electronic keyboard (Fritzi Ernst) presented what might be described as a highly emotional group therapy session lasting about an hour and 45 minutes. Director Leonie Böhm is well known for her radical revisions of the classics, particularly for her 2019 feminist version of Schiller’s The Robbers , performed, like this Antigone, by four women. Of the Sophocles text, little is left but fragments of the famous choric ode on the wonder of man. The text and actions have been instead developed from the ensemble’s improvisations on the themes of shame, exposure, personal loyalties, physicality and death. Some of the material is clearly improvised, especially when one or another actor directly addresses members of the audience. It is not an easy production to watch, especially the first ten minutes, when not a word is spoken, but the four actresses collect their saliva, play with it rather like chewing gum and mix and smear it on the faces and in the mouths of their partners. In a theatre just recovering from Covid, this sequence provided the audience with a serious initial challenge, and not a few departed. After saliva came shit, the central image of shame, and clearly the most often repeated word in the text. A large pool of the appropriate color and texture provided material throughout the evening for the actresses to smear themselves and each other, and each of them, some nude, at least once immersed herself completely and emerged dripping to continue the performance. Certainly, the audience could sympathize with the often stated feelings of shame and embarrassment expressed by the actresses, but it seemed to me that these feelings were on the whole shared by the audience, and not in a positive way. The Broken Jug . Photo: Arno Declair. My last three evenings were scarcely more conventional, but on the whole more enjoyable. All were at the Deutsches Theater, which on the whole remains the most distinguished of the many major theatres in the capital. On my first night there I saw a German classic, rarely done abroad, Kleist’s The Broken Jug , generally considered among the few major German comedies. The plot concerns a provincial Dutch judge, Adam, who gains access to the bedroom of a local young woman, Eve, falsely claiming that for the proper favors he can rescue Eve’s fiance Ruprecht from military service. Surprised in the bedroom by the fiance, Adam escapes through the window, smashing an heirloom jug prized by Eve’s mother. The play consists of an investigation brought by the mother to reveal the intruder’s identity, a trial in which Adam serves as judge. His increasingly desperate attempts to avoid exposure are finally thwarted by a visiting external official who insists on seeing justice done. Interestingly, this was the only production of the seven I saw that related to its grounding text in a conventional way. Kleist’s sprawling text was cut, and in a few cases slightly updated, but generally faithfully followed, with careful attention to psychological and linguistic nuance. Still, it was definitely a contemporary interpretation. Perhaps most notably, the visiting magistrate who ensures the moral order is no longer a man, but a shrewd, thoughtful, authoritative, and clearly pregnant young woman (Lorena Handschin). Director Anne Lenk has presented a series of popular classic revivals at the Deutsches, and is known for her general faithfulness to the text, with moderate, usually feminist updating. The Broken Jug shows this clearly, with justice at last established by a female judge, despite the best efforts of a corrupt patriarchy (led of course by Adam) to cast all blame on the female victim. The sleazy Adam, his face still revealingly scarred by his encounter with the jug, is beautifully played by Urich Mattius, one of Germany’s most revered actors, and although he dominates the stage, he is ably supported by leading members of the theatre’s famed ensemble, including Lisa Hrdina as the abused Eve, Tamer Tahan as the wronged fiancé, Franziska Machens as Eve’s ranting mother, more concerned with her jug then her daughter, and Jeremy Mockridge as Adam’s faithful but rather dull clerk. Aside from its excellent acting, the production is a visual feast. Scene designer Judith Oswald has created a narrow stage, containing only a row of 14 chairs, facing the audience and close to the footlights. The actors move ingeniously among these chairs such a way as to constantly suggest the shifting relationships among them (Eve and Ruprecht for example, are placed at opposite ends of the row for much of the early action, and gradually coming together as they are reconciled). Immediately behind these chairs is a magnificent still painting filling the entire stage space—a 17 th- century Dutch still life showing a lavishly furnished table, with goblet and play, oysters and ham, peaches, pomegranates and grapes, and even a huge parrot. No such opulence would be found in the home of a Dutch village judge like Adam, but costume designer Sibylle Wallum has created a set of somewhat anachronistic but richly imaginative costumes in the pink, orange coral range which combine beautifully with the opulent background. The following evening I returned to the Deutsches Theatre, to its smaller venue, the Kammerspiele, or more precisely to the stage of the Kammerspiele where seventy or eight chairs had been set up in rows on the revolving turntable in the middle of the stage. Here the audience was turned to different positions where various backstage areas (and occasionally the auditorium itself and the walkways above the stage over our heads) became temporary performance spaces. The production was of special interest to me, Ibsen’s very rarely performed early work, The Pretenders , one of the few Ibsen plays I had never seen. The young director Sarah Kunze argues that Ibsen’s historical drama has been unjustly neglected, but this so-called “limited edition” does not really offer enough of the original to make a strong case. Ibsen’s play owes much to Shakespeare, with a huge sprawling plot and dozens of characters. Everything in this adaptation is vastly reduced—the length, the complex plot, and most striking of all, the characters, reduced to only three actors, who primarily appear as the three central characters—rather like reducing Henry IV to the Prince, Hotspur, and Falstaff. Granted, these characters anchor the action: the two rivals for the crown, the attractive and gifted Haakon (Lorena Handschin), and the dark and manipulative Skule (Natalia Seelig) and the Machiavellian Bishop Nikolas who feeds off of their rivalry (Elias Arens). This distinctly melodramatic edge was even more clearly evident in Arens’ Bishop Nikolas, whose flamboyant delivery, especially in his death scene and his return as a minister from hell, were high points of the production, as they are of the original play. I was pleased to see this theatrical rarity in any form, but the staging, cutting, and presentation in fact left so little of the original that I doubt it many audience members will accept the director’s assertion that she has rediscovered a forgotten gem. Leonce and Lena . Photo: Arno Declair. My final production, back on the mainstage of the Deutsches Theatre, was a new interpretation by Ulrich Rasche of George Büchner’s Leonce and Lena , a popular revival piece in Germany, but almost unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world. Since his groundbreaking innovative production of Schiller’s The Robbers in 2018 Rasche has been hailed as one of the most powerful and original of young German directors, with his highly technological, powerfully lit, and perpetually and obsessively acted reworkings of classic texts. Büchner’s grotesque fantasy/comedy seems far removed from Rasche’s usual dark material, but he brings it unquestionably into his distinctive dramatic world through a striking directorial choice. Very little of the actual text of Leonce and Lena remains in Rasche’s production. It is replaced by extensive passages from other Büchner writings, including his letters, his revolutionary play Danton’s Death, and most significantly a good deal of an eight page call for political revolution, the 1834 Hessicher Landbote , for which the author was charged with treason and forced to seek asylum in France. The stage, designed by Rasche, is typical of his work, a vast essentially dark and empty space, here largely occupied by a massive, constantly revolving turntable, and a striking abstract element, here a huge, steadily shifting monumental lattice screen composed of color-changing fluorescent tubes (lighting by Cornelia Gloth). A chorus of ten actors, all clad in black with only their faces and hands dimly visible in a wash of blue light. Occasionally a chorus member will briefly emerge from the group to deliver a line, but the main body of the chorus remains steadily trudging onward, upon the constantly turning treadmill, slowly chanting the litany of oppressions and injustice making up the notorious pamphlet. Four musicians, placed in the front boxes with synthesizers, provide an appropriately crushing and continuous techno beat to accompany the unrelenting treading and chanting of the company. The effect is undoubtedly a powerful one, but at two and a half hours with no intermission, I found myself as much stunned as energized. This is an impression I often get from Rasche’s work, despite the unquestionable power of his visual imagination. In summary, I found the German theatre as always far more daring, more innovative, and more open to works (especially often neglected historical ones) than the Anglo-Saxon stage, which expands most of its creative energy on musical theatre and otherwise is satisfied as best with formulaic revivals of a handful of mostly English language plays. The German interest in pushing the boundaries certainly does not always work for me, but equally offers new insights into traditional works and into the potential of theatre to relate in new ways to the world around it to make this theatrical culture, so different from my own, continually fascinating. Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Marvin Carlson is Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre, Comparative Literature, and Middle Eastern Studies at the Graduate Centre, CUNY. He earned a PhD in Drama and Theatre from Cornell University (1961), where he also taught for a number of years. Marvin has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens, Greece, the ATHE Career Achievement Award, the ASTR Distinguished Scholarship Award, the Bernard Hewitt prize, the George Jean Nathan Award, the Calloway Prize, the George Freedley Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is the founding editor of the journal Western European Stages and the author of over two hundred scholarly articles and fifteen books that have been translated into fourteen languages. His most recent books are Ten Thousand Nights: Highlights from 50 Years of Theatre-Going (2017) and Hamlet's Shattered Mirror: Theatre and the Real (2016). 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.

Watch The Books of Jacob by Krzysztof Garbaczewski at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. La MaMa and CultureHub in association with the Polish Cultural Institute New York present The Books of Jacob by Dream Adoption Society, a digital laboratory led by Krzysztof Garbaczewski. The Books of Jacob is inspired by Olga Tokarczuk's Nobel prize-winning novel of the same name which explores the historical events surrounding Jacob Frank, a man who claimed to be the reincarnation of Sabbatai Zevi. In front of a live audience, Garbaczewski creates a hybrid theatre and virtual reality experience that delves into the ideas and relevance of Jacob's transformative religious movement in 18th Century Europe. The Books of Jacob is produced within CultureHub and La MaMa’s Experiments in Digital Storytelling program, which incubates story-driven artworks that push the boundaries of artistic forms. Experiments in Digital Storytelling is made possible by generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Radio Drama Network. Additional support for Krzysztof Garbaczewski’s fellowship in Experiments in Digital Storytelling is provided by TMU and Polish Cultural Institute New York. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents The Books of Jacob At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Krzysztof Garbaczewski Theater, Film, Multimedia, Performance Art This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks. About The Film Country United States Language English Running Time 54 minutes Year of Release 2023 La MaMa and CultureHub in association with the Polish Cultural Institute New York present The Books of Jacob by Dream Adoption Society, a digital laboratory led by Krzysztof Garbaczewski. The Books of Jacob is inspired by Olga Tokarczuk's Nobel prize-winning novel of the same name which explores the historical events surrounding Jacob Frank, a man who claimed to be the reincarnation of Sabbatai Zevi. In front of a live audience, Garbaczewski creates a hybrid theatre and virtual reality experience that delves into the ideas and relevance of Jacob's transformative religious movement in 18th Century Europe. The Books of Jacob is produced within CultureHub and La MaMa’s Experiments in Digital Storytelling program, which incubates story-driven artworks that push the boundaries of artistic forms. Experiments in Digital Storytelling is made possible by generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Radio Drama Network. Additional support for Krzysztof Garbaczewski’s fellowship in Experiments in Digital Storytelling is provided by TMU and Polish Cultural Institute New York. CREATIVE TEAM Performers – Danusia Trevino, Anna Podolak, Ola Rudnicka Adaptation – Rébecca Pierrot Costume Design – Monika Palikot, Sławomir Blaszewski Music: Jan Duszyński Avatars – Anastasiia Vorobiova Set Design – Bettina Katja Lange, Krzysztof Garbaczewski Set Coordinator – Piotr Gawelko Director, VR Design – Krzysztof Garbaczewski CULTUREHUB DeAndra Anthony – Technical Director Mattie Barber-Bockelman – Producing Director Sangmin Chae – Creative Technologist Billy Clark – Artistic Director Evan Anderson – Lighting Consultant Live Park NY – Audio About The Artist(s) Krzysztof Garbaczewski (born February 24, 1983 in Bialystok, Poland) is a Polish theatre director, stage designer and digital artist. He creates interdisciplinary performances, theatrical installations combining performance, visual arts and virtual reality. Get in touch with the artist(s) krzysztof.garbaczewski@gmail.com and follow them on social media https://www.culturehub.org/the-books-of-jacob dreamadoptionsociety.com Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

Watch Living Objects in Black by Jacqueline Wade at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. Living Objects in Black Written and Directed by Jacqueline Wade "Living Objects in Black" is a moving spiritual documentary film about various Black puppeteers/fabricators and Black puppets who took part in the historical Living Objects: African American Puppetry exhibit at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at UCONN. Watch some of the puppets come to life in this fascinating magical film that explores puppetry through a Black lens. If you are interested in screening this film, please contact Jacqueline Wade at jwade1091@gmail.com and call 917-856-1844. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Living Objects in Black At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Jacqueline Wade Documentary, Performance Art, Puppetry This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks. About The Film Country United States Language English Running Time 60 minutes Year of Release 2024 Living Objects in Black Written and Directed by Jacqueline Wade "Living Objects in Black" is a moving spiritual documentary film about various Black puppeteers/fabricators and Black puppets who took part in the historical Living Objects: African American Puppetry exhibit at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at UCONN. Watch some of the puppets come to life in this fascinating magical film that explores puppetry through a Black lens. If you are interested in screening this film, please contact Jacqueline Wade at jwade1091@gmail.com and call 917-856-1844. Written and Directed by Jacqueline Wade and various subjects. Nehprii Amenii, Brad Brewer, Ashley Bryan, Edna Bland, Garland Farwell, Susan Fulcher, Cedwan Hooks, Akbar Imhotep, Dirk Joseph, Tarish Pipkins, Papel Machete, and Yolanda Sampson. Co-curated by Dr. Paulette Richard About The Artist(s) Jacqueline Wade, holds an MFA Degree from the City College of New York in Film. She holds a second MFA for Integrated Media Arts Program at Hunter. She worked as an adjunct professor at Hunter City University of New York in the Media and Film Department. Jacqueline’ goal is to create works of art dealing with social justice issues and history. She combines theater with documentary-film, animation and puppetry. Jacqueline has performed at regional theaters throughout the country, including Wilma Theater, LaMaMa E.T.C., Classical Theater of Harlem and Bread and Puppet. She has also written over 20 plays, Jacqueline was a recipient of the Walt Disney Pride Rock Grant. She received a Ralph Chesse Scholarship to attend the National Puppetry Conference. Jacqueline’s puppet film “Osage”, was part of DOC NYC Festival in November 2021. She recently created a 20ft Mother Earth Puppet and her 18 foot Giant puppet Mumia Abu-Jamal. Jacqueline was awarded in 2022 from New York Women in Film & Television 2022 Scholarship for exceptional work at Hunter in film. 2022-2023 Chicago International Puppet Theatre Festival-Puppet- Lab where Jacqueline created, “Consuewella:Triptych in MOVE”. Consuwella Triptych in MOVE was accepted in the New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival 2024. Jacqueline was awarded the Creative Puppetry in the Classroom Grant from the Jane Henson Foundation. Get in touch with the artist(s) jwade1091@gmail.com and follow them on social media jacquelinewadesprojects.com Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

Two friends in the after hours entertain ghosts in the kitchen and the bedroom. One friend takes a long walk to the grocery store. One young woman waits for her. This is a short play about locating and accessing one’s will when the will has begun to drift away. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE ANALOG INTIMACY Jess Barbagallo / Half Straddle Theater English 30 Minutes 6:00PM EST Tuesday, October 10, 2023 Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Two friends in the after hours entertain ghosts in the kitchen and the bedroom. One friend takes a long walk to the grocery store. One young woman waits for her. This is a short play about locating and accessing one’s will when the will has begun to drift away. Content / Trigger Description: Jess Barbagallo is an American writer, director, and performer based in New York City. He has toured internationally and domestically with Big Dance Theater, the Builders Association, Theater of a Two-Headed Calf (and its Dyke Division) and Half Straddle. Barbagallo has originated roles in plays by Joshua Conkel, Casey Llewellyn, Normandy Sherwood, Trish Harnetiaux and many others. He appeared as Yann Fredericks in the original cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway. His playwrighting credits include Grey-Eyed Dogs (Dixon Place), Saturn Nights (Incubator Arts Center), Good Year for Hunters (New Ohio Theatre), Karen Davis Does … (Brooklyn Arts Exchange), Joe Ranono’s Yuletide Log and Other Fruitcakes (Dixon Place), Sentence Fetish (Brick Theater), Melissa, So Far(Andy’s Playhouse) and My Old Man (and Other Stories) (Dixon Place). His writing has been published by Artforum, Howlround, Bomb Blog, New York Live Arts Blog: Context Notes, Brooklyn Rail and 53rd State Press. He is a 2009 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab alum, a 2012 Queer Arts Mentorship mentee, and a 2013 MacDowell Colony Fellow. Barbagallo has taught theater and writing as a guest artist and adjunct lecturer at Duke University, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, Brooklyn College, the Vermont Young Playwright’s Festival and The O’Neill Center. Kristina "Tina" Satter is an American filmmaker, playwright, and director based in New York City. She is the founder and artistic director of the theater company Half Straddle, which formed in 2008 and received an Obie Award grant in 2013. Satter won a Guggenheim in 2020. Satter was described by Ben Brantley of the New York Times as "a genre-and-gender-bending, visually exacting stage artist who has developed an ardent following among downtown aesthetes with a taste for acidic eye candy and erotic enigmas." Her work often deals with subjects of gender, sexual identity, adolescence, and sports. She won a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2016), and a Doris Doris Duke Artist Impact Award in 2014. In 2019, she received a Pew Fellowship. Satter has created 10 shows with Half Straddle, and the company's shows and videos have toured to over 20 countries in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Asia. She made her Off Broadway debut as a conceiver and director in fall 2019 with Is This a Room at the Vineyard Theatre. A collection of three of her plays, Seagull (Thinking of You), with Away Uniform and Family was published in 2014. The text for her show Ghost Rings was published in 2017 by 53rd State Press along with a vinyl album of the show's songs. 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 19, Fall, 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Avignon 78, 2024. Imagining Possible Worlds and Celebrating Multiple Languages and Cultures By Philippa Wehle Published: November 25, 2024 Download Article as PDF The Seventy-Eighth Avignon Festival, June 29th to July 21st, 2024, provided audiences with a glorious opportunity to revel in the diversity and blending of artistic languages from Spanish-speaking countries along with a variety of responses - political, social and verbal - to this terrifying moment we all live in. Not just Spanish – this year’s focus language - but many other languages were heard throughout the festival, languages that were translated and projected on walls and screens in the festival venues. “Words” are everywhere as Festival director, Tiago Rodrigues, reminds us. “Words,” along with sounds, gestures, and images to help us live in this world. From Mohamed El Katib’s fascinating La Vie secrète des vieux (The Secret Life of Old People) to Angélica Liddel’s disturbing Dämon, El funeral de Bergman (Dämon, Bergman ’ s funeral), with its chorus of infirm people in wheelchairs, images of aging and references to the end of life seemed present in a number of this year’s official offerings, at least so it seemed to me. Perhaps I was especially tuned into them given my own stage of life, and the mobility issues with which I deal on a daily basis. Dämon . Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage For example, my attempt to attend Katib’s piece was unexpectedly grueling. The Chartreuse in Villeneuve lez Avignon, across the Rhone River from Avignon, is not an easy venue to get to but I wanted to see Mohamed’s latest work. (I had translated and written about his fascinating piece Stadium , about the soccer fans of Lens, France and I was determined to catch his latest documentary theatre work no matter what.) On arrival, I discovered that there were many stairs to climb in order to enter the theatre. This was not going to be possible for me. Finally, someone showed up and claimed he would get me to the theatre. “No problem,” he seemed to say and he took me and my rollator on a lengthy trip to discover some way to enter the theatre. After about 45 minutes of circling the many cloisters and empty halls of the Chartreuse, leading nowhere, another man appeared who said there was no choice but to climb some stairs to get into the theatre! He had to practically pick me up to manage those stairs, but I made it and I was delighted to attend Mohamed’s new play. I tell this story because of what it took an elderly person to finally see this show about old people who welcome end of life’s challenges with humor and gusto. It was inspiring and it was worth it. To create La Vie secrète , Mohamed interviewed a hundred elderly residents in a French nursing home and asked them to openly share their thoughts about and experiences of love, specifically physical, erotic love at their stage of life. He chose seven of these residents to perform on stage. His show takes place in a community room in a nursing home with its parquet floors and parquet-covered blocks of wood. Mohamed is on stage throughout the show, adding comments, helping when needed, and orchestrating as is his want in other documentary theatre pieces. The seven performers - “Senior Citizens” from ages 75 to 102, along with their lovely care giver, Yasmine - 35-years-old - were all perfect. As the play begins, an announcement is made that captures the irreverent sense of humor of the piece: “Given their age, these people might die on the stage. Stay calm. It is better to die on stage than at the Nursing Home.” La Vie secrète des vieux. Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage Jacqueline, in her wheelchair - 91 years old and a former Radio/TV anchor - is the first to engage our interest with her feisty delivery and her honesty about the reality of a life without love, physical or otherwise. “I feel like making love every day,” she confesses, covering her mouth as if embarrassed to admit this. She misses the thrill of kissing someone you love on the lips, and the kind of relationship where you truly exist for someone else. The others follow suit. Micheline, Martine, Chille, Jean-Pierre, Annie, et al, openly share their feelings. One confides that she has the same desires as when she was 20. Another charmingly admits that she has had a love/physical relationship with another woman, after having been married to a man, but she insists she is not a lesbian, but “On the other hand …” Along with their stories are sweet moments of sharing and closeness. At one point the stage becomes a ballroom, its walls lit with colored lights and the traditional disco ball hanging from the ceiling, inviting the residents to join in the dance. We watch couples enjoying dancing together and holding each other closely. Photos are taken, as well, not selfies but a group photo of smiling residents. Unfortunately, Georges who was supposed to be part of this group, died during rehearsals at age 101. His urn is touchingly present and tributes are paid to him by the remaining members of La Vie. Spanish artist Angélica Lidell whose controversial, unconventional and scandalous work has been shown to acclaim numerous times at the Avignon Festival, was invited this year to create a new piece in the venerable Cour d’honneur of the papal palace. Dämon, El funeral de Bergman ( Dämon, Bergman’s Funeral ), an imaginary dialogue between herself and Ingmar Bergman and a scathing commentary on the indignities of aging, opened this year’s festival. For Dämon, the entire stage floor is blood-red and the only set pieces are a urinal, a bidet, and a toilet leaning up against the south wall of the Honor Court. Wearing a gauzy, see-through gown, Angélica makes her appearance stage right and strides across the stage to deliver an extraordinary rant against French theater critics seated in the audience who have dared to write negative reviews of her work. An incredible verbal assault, her “humiliations” as she calls them are stinging, to say the least. Calling them out by name and quoting from their reviews, she is alone on stage but for a false pope figure who seems a bit lost as he wanders about. She is joined eventually by a bevy of other performers among them a chorus of twelve old people, singers in wheelchairs or standing behind them in a line. “Today my mirror is the elderly,” Angélica proclaims. “And the image they reflect back to me is terrifying.” The pace picks us as several handsome young men dressed in evening black as if to attend a fancy party, grab the empty wheelchairs and run a frantic race across the stage, pushing the empty chairs as if they have to pick up more elderly before it is too late. They are joined by Angélica, who finds herself on a stretcher, against her will, it seems, but unable to stop them from pushing her across the stage. Equally absorbing but in an entirely different vein, Hécube, pas Hécube ( Hecuba, not Hecuba ) in French with English surtitles, written and directed by Avignon Festival director Tiago Rodrigues, and faultlessly performed by a splendid cast of actors from the Comédie-Française, offered audiences an extraordinary evening at the Boulbon Quarry [Later, this production was performed at a very different but equally spectacular setting, the ancient theatre of Epidauros in Greece. A report on that production appears elsewhere in this issue, as well as a report on a production at the Pilsen Festival]. Hecuba, Not Hecuba. Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage For this modern adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy, the set is mostly bare. Forefront, a long table with chairs, another to the rear and a monumental statue of a Dog (or perhaps a She-Wolf) on the left. As the play begins, actors enter carrying their scripts and sit around the table to rehearse for an upcoming performance of Hecuba. They only have two weeks before it opens, but they are in a good mood. They laugh at their mistakes and tease each other. Suddenly the mood changes. The actress playing Hecuba gets up from her chair, puts on her coat and starts to leave the rehearsal. No longer Hecuba, Queen of Troy, whose son was killed by Polymestor, she becomes Nádia, a contemporary mother whose twelve-year old son Otis has run away from the state-run facility for autistic children where he and others have been sorely mistreated. She has only recently learned that these children have been bruised, undernourished and uncared for and the day of the rehearsal is the same day she is due to appear in court to demand justice for her son. As she leaves, the other actors pick up their scripts and move to the table in the rear to continue rehearsing. Soon, however, they begin to join Nádia, playing different roles in her contemporary drama. Her lawyer, Wadia, for example, who helps her prepare to confront the judge, is one of the actresses we met in the rehearsal. Another becomes the Judge and so on, as the time frame between past and present becomes increasingly blurred. There are many thrilling moments in Hecuba, pas Hecuba , but perhaps the most extraordinary features Nádia (Hecuba), seated on the ground on a flowing dark piece of silk, smoke pouring out of the statue, stares into space as she holds the giant paw of the Dog which has broken off from the statue. In this moment, her pain is so unbearable that she is ready to howl like a dog. She is both a contemporary mother mourning the loss of her son and Hecuba grieving the tragic loss of her child. It is a searing image of tragedy, contemporary and ancient. Seven Lessons. Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage Sea of silence, by Tamara Cubas from Uruguay introduced audiences to seven women from “the four corners of the world,” seven different regions where the languages spoken are exotic to our ears - Edo, Arabic, Mapuche, Malay, Didxazá, Borum, and many more. They have come together to present a haunting ritual dedicated to the migration of women throughout history. Wearing gossamer, beige-colored tunics, they perform their stories on a stage covered with crystals of salt. As the performance begins, they are sisters huddled together on the ground. The piercing screams and cries they emit as they slowly rise up and stand before us are almost unbearable. Through movement, song, ritual and words they create a series of tableaux. Strange voices and dark shadows accompany them as they march slowly forward, advancing and retreating through the salt. One sings as she moves backwards, wailing at times, in despair, perhaps, that she has not been able to leave her country or her family, for surprisingly these women are not exiles, but potential migrants. At times they stop their relentless march and seated on the ground they share a moment of respite before renewing their extraordinary journey. Wayqeycuna . Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage Wayqeycuna , by Tiziano Cruz, from northern Argentina, master of “scenic narratives,” invites us into his special world of performative protest and makes us feel welcome. “Wayqeycuna,” a word meaning “My brothers” in Tiziano’s native language Quechua, is the final part of a trilogy he has dedicated to his family and to all those who have known the injustices of poverty and political machinations. First his sister, who died of neglect in a hospital in Argentina at the age of 18, the second to his mother who also died, and now the final part to his father, Don Manuel Cruz whom he hasn’t seen in twenty-seven years and to his indigenous community in a remote village in the province of Jujuy. For me this was one of the most captivating pieces in the festival. In one of the festival’s smaller venues, on a small stage and for just a little over an hour, Tiziano holds our attention from the moment he rises up out of the dark wearing a pristine white outfit - white top and white trousers - and ringing a bell, to the final moments of rejoicing with him on the stage. His journey is fascinating and beautifully narrated with the help of superb video images projected against the back curtain. Finally, it is time to return home, he tells us, time to explore the notion of reconciliation. We follow Tiziano on an airplane, a train, a bus, walking and in a car as he reaches his village. The place “that holds the murmurs of my childhood.” Home is his indigenous community where he recalls the pain and injustices he has shared with his people. We walk with him and his father up the steep hills. We share the natural beauty of the area and feel the freshness of the air, as they stop to take in the view. A herd of sheep running down the steep mountain in the misty clouds, catches their attention. Father and son, wearing richly appointed serapes in royal blue and deep purple, are caught for a moment in a stunning video. They soon return to a colorful village parade, where the community is raising a glass, and enjoying each other’s company. As if to invite us to the party, Tiziano covers a large table with plates of freshly baked breads in the shapes of animals he and audience members had produced in a 3-hour workshop prior to the show. As Wayqueycuna drew to a close, Tiziano made sure that we all received one of the breads as a farewell gift from the community we had briefly become. The Days Outside. Photo © David Seldes Los dias afuera ( The Days Outside ), a documentary musical by Lola Arias from Argentina, introduces us to an amazing group of cisgender women and transgender people who have been freed from an Argentinian prison and now gather to tell us about their past behind bars and their current struggles to find ways to survive in the outside world. Composed of original songs and dance numbers, the play opens on a multi-purpose set built of scaffolding suggestive perhaps of prison walls that are now open. The actors’ energy is admirable, and their spirit gives us hope, but their freedom seems precarious. How are they surviving? What does the future hold for them? Nacho drives a taxi. His car in full view stage left speaks of possible prosperity. Noelia has become a sex worker, and she advocates for the rights of transpeople while Paula has found a job at an illegal textile factory and another in the group is a care giver. They open with a strong number. Wearing evening gowns, they sing of the terrible conditions they lived with in prison. Other Cumbia songs and catchy dance moves, especially voguing, complete their presentations, enhanced of course by strobe lighting, explosions of color and blasts of bright green, reds and blues, smoke, and a series of tableaux and video images projected on a screen above the set. At times, the stage is overflowing with multiple activities. Every space is used to create scenes of their current lives. Along with a swimming pool on the right, where three of them in bathing suits sip pina coladas; there is a concert performed by an improvised band on a table in the middle of the set, they reconstruct the challenges of life after prison and claim a future. Elizabeth Costello, Sept leçons et cinq contes moraux ( Elizabeth Costello, Seven Lectures and Five Moral Tales), based on the work of J. M. Coetzee, was created and directed by esteemed Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski, who is a well-known figure in the history of the festival. His fascinating play was the final piece in this year’s Honor Court offerings. Elizabeth Costello is a fictional literary character created by Nobel Prize winner and novelist J.M. Coetzee who appears in a number of his writings. She is clearly his alter ego. Polish theater director Krzysztof Warlikowski finds her equally fascinating and has made her the central protagonist of his play. During her fictional life, she gave a number of lectures, attended conferences and was a featured guest at many universities and other important venues. To tell her life’s story and follow her travels, Warikowski has created a set composed of a back wall extending the entire length of the stage which serves as the screen against which magnificent video images are projected throughout the show. Far right is a large bathroom and directly across, stage left, a revolving glass-enclosed structure rather like an exhibit case in a museum. “Rugs” of various colors, patterns and sizes delineate the playing areas where thirteen superb actors embody the key moments in Elizabeth’s long journey. The four-hour play is composed of a series of lectures, conferences and other moments of Costello’s academic life, along with private moments and musings as she moves towards retirement and death. As the play begins, an actor playing Coetzee is answering questions about his character Elizabeth Costello, who is played by different performers as we follow her through her life. One moment, she is lecturing on the impossibility of realism in the modern era and at another discussing a Kafka short story about an ape who learns to behave like a human. Her lectures are static at times, and not always easy to follow but one can’t help but appreciate that the ape she has evoked in her talk about Kafka becomes an important figure in the play. Wearing an ape mask and dressed as a human, he follows Elizabeth around as if to prove her theory. One feels as though one gets to know and appreciate this fictitious woman as one might a colleague in our own lives. Yes, she can be officious at times and her theories are sometimes questionable but her humanity is real. She too has had her share of pain and disappointment. Her relationship with her son John is strong as is her friendship with her friend Paul who has lost a leg in an accident. Thanks to the remarkable video scenes, we follow her closely as if we were there ourselves, especially when she is on a cruise ship in the Antarctic where she has been invited to give talks to the passengers. Her ship is enclosed by icebergs that are collapsing around her and one can only surmise that the experience of lecturing to this company is perhaps a step down from earlier times. In the final scenes of Elizabeth’s life, we find her sitting in the glass cage with her family. She is nearing the end of her life, her grandchildren (adults wearing masks) are seated outside, and her companion, the ape, is there as well. Qui som? Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage Who could resist Qui som? (Who are we?), created and performed by artists from the worlds of circus, dance, clowning, music and even ceramics? Who are they? They are the fabulous Franco-Catalan Baro d’evel company and it is their first time at the festival. From start to finish, we are amazed and delighted by their work. Even before the “actual” show starts, we are treated to some whimsical stage business that hints at great things to come. The set is delineated by rows of ceramic clay vases. It seems clear that they are not just décor. They are critical to the show. Even though they are tended by a man who is making sure that they remain pristine, one of them breaks, and this is clearly an accident that must be dealt with. The man brings out clay and the wherewithal to make a new vase on the spot and of course we have to wait for it to dry before we can meet the rest of this wondrous company of twelve, along with their children and a dog. Their stage curtain, if one can call it that, is made of multiple strips of colored plastic that move like shimmering ribbons, forming a movable wall. It moves menacingly forward and back like a huge wave threatening at times to engulf the players, and even the audience. Qui som? is truly “a chaos of perpetual movement,” to quote one of the company members, a non-stop two and one half hours of near-misses, pratfalls and “messy” scenarios that could not be more delightful. One particularly memorable scene takes place on a stage increasingly covered with piles and piles of crushed empty plastic bottles through which the players have to make their way, slipping and sliding and falling again on their way. Mothers . Photo © Marta Gornika Clearly, Avignon 87 was noted for its variety of opportunities to discover new work and new ways of celebrating. Mothers, A Song for Wartime , by Marta Goroneckas from Poland, a Choral work, sung and performed by a choir of Ukrainian, Belarussian and Polish women in the venerable Cour d’honneur, for example, introduced audiences to a community of activist mothers who have known destruction and death, and who show us their strength and commitment. Forever, Immersion dans Café Müller de Pina Bausch , created by the festival’s new “artiste accomplice” Boris Charmatz (recently appointed director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal), offered multiple opportunities for festival goers to attend new choreographic readings of Pina’s mythical show from 1 pm to 8 pm. To come and go as they pleased. With such diverse and compelling pieces as I have described, and there were many more, it seems clear that Avignon 78, was a great success for all. 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 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.

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 Report from London (December 2022) By Dan Venning Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF My last theatre-going trips to London were in 2018 and 2019, before the COVID pandemic swept across the globe, shuttered theatres, and transformed theatre-going after the world began to reopen. In the reports I wrote for European Stages after those trips, I identified several major trends that ran through many of the productions I saw. In 2018, numerous productions engaged, in one way or another, with the global #MeToo movement, acknowledging the assaults and microaggressions faced by women and AFAB (assigned-female-at-birth) people. At the end of 2019, only a few months before the pandemic struck, Britain was gearing up for a national snap election that was, in some respects, a sort of second referendum on Brexit. In this particular moment, many of the productions I saw dealt with Britain’s place (often as a former imperial power) in global politics, or the marginalized people within British society. In December 2022, I once again spent nearly a month in London, taking twenty students from Union College in Schenectady, NY to see shows across the city. As in my previous trip, I selected shows eclectically to show my students just some of the many sorts of theatrical productions available in London: West End musicals ( Cabaret ), works at the National ( Hex and Othello ), shows in Shakespeare’s Globe’s indoor candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse ( Hakawatis and Henry V ), new works ( My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican, Baghdaddy at the Royal Court, The Doctor and Orlando on the West End), and long-running mainstays ( The Woman in Black and Heathers ). In addition to the productions I saw with my students, I separately attended As You Like It at the new @sohoplace theatre; my first West End panto, Mother Goose ; the long-running & Juliet on the West End in advance of its Broadway transfer; and A Streetcar Named Desire at the Almeida, which had sold tickets so quickly that I could not book for my large student group. While my previous London reports consisted of similarly diverse shows, in this iteration, I found few thematic links running through the content or staging of these works. If there was a link between these shows, it was the truism that artists and audiences are rediscovering how to engage with theatre in the post-COVID landscape. Indeed, COVID continued (and continues) to affect how theatre is made and seen. About half of the audience members were masked at every performance (I was always masked). Several members of my term abroad contracted COVID while in London and had to quarantine for five days and miss performances. I had booked tickets to Tammy Faye at the Almeida, a new musical (with music by Elton John, lyrics by Jake Shears, and book by James Graham, featuring superstar Andrew Rannels among others, based on the life of evangelist Tammy Faye Messner), but several performances, including ours, were cancelled due to illnesses in the cast. I booked another show to make up for the cancellation: the solo piece One Night Stand with E.V. Crowe and friends at the Royal Court… and then that was also cancelled due to illness (thankfully Orlando , which I booked at that point, was not cancelled!). And yet throughout the theatres, there was palpable joy—even in the grimmest productions—that artists and audiences were once again able to come together in the same space. Because I found few concrete links beyond the ways COVID continues to inflect theatre-going, I discuss the productions irrespective of the order in which I saw them, but in ways that allow me to draw links between particular shows. Both the first ( Cabaret , 1 December 2022) and final ( A Streetcar Named Desire , 23 December 2022) productions I saw were directed by Rebecca Frecknall, Associate Director for the Almeida Theatre. Frecknall is an unabashedly feminist director who reimagines classic dramatic works—often American—for the contemporary stage and her work desperately needs to be seen on major stages in the United States. Her Summer and Smoke in 2018 was haunting in its simplicity and Patsy Ferran justifiably won the Olivier for her luminous performance; unfortunately Frecknall’s 2019 The Duchess of Malfi featuring Lydia Wilson was less so, sapping the play of its disturbing power in a bland, ultramodern staging that seemed to focus more on the men than the titular Dutchess. I’m glad to say that both of her productions I saw in 2022 were stellar. Cabaret was staged at the Playhouse Theatre on the West End, which was rechristened The Kit Kat Club. Audience members entered through the stage door and wound their way through the basement halls of the theatre, as if we were entering the venue depicted in the show. Stickers were placed over our cell phone lenses to prevent photographs and everyone was given a shot of vodka. Cast members of various genders dressed in vaguely BDSM sexual garb made eyes with us and danced provocatively. Three separate bars were set up in each lobby level and a half hour before curtain an elaborately staged dance number by the “boys and girls” of the Kit Kat Club was executed on the bar of the main lobby (Julia Cheng’s choreography was impressive throughout the show, but particularly here). The show had swept the 2022 Olivier Awards but by the time I saw it all the stars who had won acting awards had rotated out. The Emcee was played by understudy Matthew Gent at this performance and Sally Bowles by swing/alternate Emily Benjamin (both of whom would take over the roles as main cast in 2023), yet this cast was spectacular. Of particular note were Michelle Bishop as Frӓulein Kost (and the Kit Kat girl Fritzie), Vivien Parry as Frӓulein Schneider, and Benjamin as Sally Bowles. Parry seemed to channel the spirit of Lotte Lenya with her rendition of “So What” and Bishop, under Frecknall’s direction, brought genuine pathos to the role of Kost. As a prostitute at the bottom of the social hierarchy, we could understand how Kost would embrace Naziism to find anyone she could denigrate in response to the way society had rejected her. At the end of the show, Benjamin’s rendition of “Cabaret” was among the strongest musical numbers I’ve seen live, surpassing, to my mind, recordings of Liza Minelli: the upbeat lyrics paired with her personal despair had much of the audience in tears. Sid Sagar as Cliff Bradshaw was less successful, but this may be because he seemed to have been directed to be emotionless throughout, preventing any sort of audience empathy with the character who was the analogue of Christopher Isherwood, the queer author of the stories on which the musical is based. Tom Scutt’s stage was almost in the round and his costumes implicated the audience in the rise of fascism that Kander, Ebb, and Masteroff’s show depicts. The Emcee rose from the stage gleefully with a tiny party hat for “Wilkommen” as everyone reveled together in the celebration we were attending; by “Money” he was dressed in a neo-fascist demonic outfit, and at the end of the show he and the boys and girls of the Kit Kat Club wore simple, sexless brown outfits, evoking Hitler’s brownshirts a century ago in the 1920s. Yet in the final moments as they marched in a circle carrying suitcases, Isabella Byrd’s lighting turned the set to a stark gray, making them look like photos of men and women with suitcases on their way to trains to concentration camps. Collaboration would save no one. Thankfully, Frecknall’s production (with original star Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee) is transferring to Broadway in 2024, when the August Wilson Theatre will temporarily become the Kit Kat Club. Cabaret . Photo: Marc Brenner. Of all the shows I saw in London, Frecknall’s version of A Streetcar Named Desire was the strongest—easily the best Tennessee Williams I have ever seen—despite the fact that it was in previews with the actor playing Blanche holding her script throughout. The production sold out within hours of tickets going on sale, but Lydia Wilson, who had been cast as Blanche, dropped out of the production for health reasons two weeks before performances began. The first week of performances were cancelled and Wilson was replaced by Patsy Ferran, who had been such a revelation as Alma in Summer and Smoke four years earlier. On the preview I attended, after barely two weeks of rehearsal, Ferran carried her script, occasionally glancing quickly at it at the beginning of each scene, but never looking at it again. Also at the performance I attended on 23 December, Frecknall herself stepped into the role of Eunice (without a script). Seeing her onstage in her own production was a marvelous experience. Madeleine Girling’s set was a nearly bare square with a few scattered props (and periodic rain effects) and Frecknall’s production raced through the words at the beginning of Williams’s script at lightning pace so that the action could effectively open with Blanche’s arrival in New Orleans. Yet this production was less about the conflict between Blanche and Stanley than about toxic masculinity and patriarchal abuse. Blanche was certainly traumatized, but never for a moment portrayed as “crazy,” and Stanley’s violence towards her throughout the play had little to do with any hatred for her per se. Instead, Stanley wanted complete control over his victimized wife Stella—and his clearest path to getting this, as for any abuser, was to isolate Stella from anyone with whom she could find mutual love or care, particularly her sister. The actor who played Stanley, Paul Mescal, was not a hulking brute but appeared to be an attractive, soulful, young husband with a somewhat silly mullet. Yet in spite of this physical attractiveness, Mescal played Stanley as a profoundly ugly man on the inside: consumed with jealousy, self-pity, and white male rage, taking out his anger most clearly on his abused wife, her sister, and his supposed “friend” Mitch. In this color-conscious production, Stella was played by the British-Indian-Singaporean actor Anjana Vasan (so she and Blanche were clearly not full biological siblings, but loved one another no less) and Mitch by Black actor Dwane Walcott. Walcott’s scenes with Blanche and Stanley took on particular resonances—as Stanley viciously notes that Mitch will never achieve his own career successes, or when Blanche asks Mitch if he has been on the titular streetcar and Mitch does not respond. One of many revelations was that Frecknall’s production made it seem as if Mitch must have always been written for a Black actor. Her feminist version of A Streetcar Named Desire (which won an Olivier for Best Revival, and for which Vasan and Mescal also took home Oliviers), even in previews and with Ferran holding her book-in-hand, will make it hard for me to read or see Williams’s play in the same light again. A Streetcar Named Desire . Photo: Marc Brenner. Nearly as successful were two new adaptations of older works: Robert Icke’s The Doctor and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s My Neighbour Totoro . Icke, the former Associate Director for the Almeida (the position Frecknall now holds) created this production at that theatre before it transferred to the West End where I saw it on 8 December 2022. Like his earlier revelatory adaptations Oresteia and Hamlet , The Doctor has since been presented at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The Doctor is Icke’s loose adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play Professor Bernhardi , a work about anti-Semitism in early twentieth-century Europe. While holding fast to most of the events in Schnitzler’s plot—which hinges on a leading doctor’s refusal to admit a priest to deliver last rights to a young girl dying of a botched abortion and the ways in which that Jewish doctor is punished by society—Icke’s adaptation is strikingly contemporary, engaging with identity and perception in today’s world. His script notes that “Actors’ identities should be carefully considered in the casting of the play. In all sections except for [an onstage debate], each actor’s identity should be directly dissonant with their character’s in at least one way […] the acting should hold the mystery until the play reveals it. The idea is that the audience are made to re-consider characters (and events) as they learn more about who the characters are” (viii). For example, when a priest (who we later learn is Black) enters in Act I, the stage direction reads “ The FATHER is played by a white actor .” Hardiman, a particularly chauvinistic white male doctor, was played by the female Afro-Jamaican actor Naomi Wirthner. The central character, Dr. Ruth Wolff, was played by Juliet Stevenson, an actress who does not “look Jewish” at all. Wolff claims to see only talent and facts, never race or sex, and the audience is forced to engage with what actually not seeing these palpable facts about identity would feel like. In one particularly affecting moment, Ruth’s neighbor Sami, played by cis woman actor Matilda Tucker, is revealed to be a trans girl who appears masculine to most people who can see her within the world of the play. We periodically see flashbacks to Ruth’s conversations with her deceased partner Charlie, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, the disease Ruth seeks to cure. Charlie was played by the Black woman actor Juliet Garricks, but Icke never lets us learn Charlie's “actual” gender or race within the world of the play. Hildegard Bechtler’s simple and evocative set and costumes (the set was simply a slowly rotating white room) contributed to all these effects. Icke’s challenging production forced audiences to engage with what they can, cannot, or will not see. The Doctor . Photo: Manuel Harlan. The RSC’s My Neighbour Totoro (7 December 2022) was another stellar adaptation. It won Olivier awards for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play as well as for Phelim McDermott’s direction, Joe Hisaishi’s music as orchestrated and arranged by Will Stuart, Jessica Hung and Han Yun’s lighting design, Tony Gayle’s sound design, Tom Pye’s set design, and Kimie Nakano’s costume design. Also certainly deserving of an award—although an Olivier category does not exist—were Bail Twist’s puppet designs, which were created by the Jim Henson Creature Shop, Significant Object, and Twist’s own Tandem Otter Productions. The production was a faithful adaptation by Tom Morton-Smith of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 Studio Ghibli animated film My Neighbor Totoro , about two sisters who move with their father to the rural Japanese countryside in 1955 so that they can be closer to their mother who is in a specialized hospital. In the countryside, the sisters—Mei, aged four, and Satsuki, aged ten—discover mythical creatures from Japanese folklore, including soot spirits, “Totoros” (kind and intelligent furry forest creatures varying in size from tiny to immense), and a giant cat that is also a bus in which the creatures ride. The sisters see tiny sprouts grow into giant trees overnight. Miyazaki’s masterful animated film is a paean to childhood, Japanese folk culture, and imagination, made even more powerful through Hisaishi’s unforgettable score. A cartoon, with all its impossible magic and music, was brought to life onstage through astounding performances by an entirely Asian cast, including twenty puppeteers in Bunraku-style black outfits, singer Ai Ninomiya, and the award-winning designers. Adult actors Mei Mac (Mei), Ami Okumura Jones (Satsuki), and Nino Furuhata (Kanta, a young neighbor boy) empathetically played young children in a way that contributed to the affective power of the production. During the curtain call, the puppeteers swiftly demonstrated how they had manipulated some of the puppets, from the hand-and-rod chickens to the immense King Totoro and Cat-Bus. Notably, production press photos never show the Totoros; they have to be seen to be believed (the production is being revived in 2023 in London and I have no doubt it will tour worldwide considering its success there). My Neighbour Totoro . Photo: Manuel Harlan. Coincidentally, another production I attended was also an adaptation of a film released in 1988: Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe’s Heathers , based on the cult film written by Daniel Waters and directed by Michael Lehmann (13 December 2022). The musical adaptation of Heathers has similarly achieved cult status with young musical theatre aficionados, despite never having been staged on Broadway. It opened off-Broadway in 2014 at New World Stages, then premiered in the UK (with a few rewritten songs) at the off-West End venue The Other Palace in 2018, transferred to the West End later that year, transferred back to The Other Palace after the pandemic in 2021, and closed in 2023. All of these productions were directed by Andy Fickman. Heathers is set in Westerberg High School in the 1980s and centers on Veronica, a girl who manages to gain acceptance from the popular clique of Heather Chandler, Heather McNamara, and Heather Duke, at the cost of her friendship with the unpopular Martha Dunnstock. Veronica begins a relationship with a new boy at school, the soulful outsider J.D., who reveals himself as a full-fledged sociopath, poisoning the lead Heather and murdering two jocks who try to sexually assault Veronica. Veronica goes along at first—penning a fake suicide note from Heather Chandler that takes the school by storm and later helping to stage the killings of Ram and Kurt as a murder-suicide as if the two were closeted gay lovers. But when J.D. decides to blow up the entire school, Veronica finally takes the initiative and stops his murderous rampage. At the off-West End Other Palace, Fickman’s production as designed by David Shields lacked any technical spectacle but the energetic performances by young actors Erin Caldwell (Veronica), Nathanael Landskroner (J.D.) and Maddison Firth (Heather Chandler) brought the mostly young audience to their feet. O’Keefe and Murphy’s songs from the show are superb, particularly Veronica’s joyously sexual “Dead Girl Walking,” Kurt and Ram’s Dads’ “My Dead Gay Son,” J.D.’s “Our Love is God,” the Heathers’ show stopping poppy “Candy Store,” and the eleven o’clock number “Seventeen,” an ode to high school life. While Heathers had a significant run on- and off- the West End, it pales in comparison to The Woman in Black , which opened in London in 1989 (only one year after the original films of Heathers and My Neighbor Totoro were released), closing in March 2023 after running thirty-three years on the West End. Scores of actors have played the roles of Arthur Kipps and the young unnamed Actor who endeavors to bring Kipps to life (as well as the uncredited ghost role) and playwright Stephen Mallatratt died in 2004 less than halfway through the show’s immensely long run (Dame Susan Hill, from whose 1983 novel Mallatratt adapted the play, is still alive and still writing). I was especially glad to see the show on 6 December 2022 only months before it ended its historic run. It has made its way into numerous British school curriculums and part of the audience was filled with teenagers in school uniforms who had been bussed in to see the show on the West End. Robin Herford’s production, simply designed by Michael Holt, takes place “in this Theatre in the early 1950s” and begins when Arthur Kipps (Julian Forsyth, when I saw it) attempts, poorly, to tell his haunted ghost story for the stage. With a few simple props, the young Actor (Matthew Spencer) takes on the role of the young Kipps, while Kipps himself plays every other character (save the ghost) from his past. Through the power of the imagination, affecting performances, one uncredited woman actor, and a few carefully placed jump scares facilitated by Kevin Sleep’s lighting design and Sebastian Frost’s sound design, the audience is transported from a bare stage into a small seaside town and its haunted house on the moors. Rumors abound of ghosts in London’s theatres—including the murdered actor William Terriss at the Adelphi and the 18 th Century “Man in Gray” at Drury Lane—and if such ghosts do exist, I expect the Fortune Theatre will be a stage haunted by The Woman in Black for some time to come. The Woman in Black . Photo: Mark Douet. In contrast to the simplistic power of imagination celebrated in that show, Hex at the National Theatre (5 December 2022) demonstrated the ways in which spectacle—and powerful performances—cannot save a thoroughly misconceived production. Staged in the National’s massive Olivier Theatre, with its marvelous gigantic drum revolve stage, Hex , a musical adaptation of the Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, is obviously a pet project for Rufus Norris, the artistic director and chief executive of the National. Norris, who directed the production, also wrote the lyrics and developed the concept along with Katrina Lindsay. The convoluted book for Hex is by Tanya Ronder and music is by Jim Fortune. Lindsay’s set and costume designs are spectacular, including a castle that descends from the upstage wall, three flying fairies who deliver their performances while suspended midair, and numerous other delightfully staged creations, including bumblingly misogynistic princes who wish to wake the sleeping beauty, a chorus of poisonous thorns, and many more fantastical effects. The plot centers on the “low” Fairy (the marvelous singer Lisa Lambe), who loses her powers after accidentally “hexing” the young princess Rose (Rosie Graham) and putting her into a sleep until she can find a true love’s kiss. Fairy wants to regain her powers and join the effervescent “High Fairies” (Kate Parr, Olivia Saunders, and Rumi Sutton), so seeks a prince to undo the curse; she finds him in Bert (Michael Elcock), the half-human son of Queenie (another superb singer, Victoria Hamilton-Barritt), an ogress who has turned vegetarian in order to resist her urges to consume human flesh. After a convoluted plot that also involves generations of stewards named Smith and Smith-Smith (Michael Matus), Fairy sneakily preventing Queenie from eating her grandchildren (Rose and Bert’s children Duncan and Dyllis), and much more, Fairy succeeds and is elevated to “high fairy” status—renouncing her lifelong goal only seconds later to rejoin her earthbound friends. Tone shifts abound—the show was billed for ages eight and up, but in addition to fairy-tale hijinks it includes a baby-eating ogress, graphic descriptions of animal slaughter, and a “comic” song from the princes about sexual coercion. Even worse is the music: Fortune’s tunes and Norris’s lyrics are sometimes earworms precisely because of their banality (Bert cannot stop singing about his name in “Prince Bert,” impressively and athletically choreographed by Jade Hackett; Rose and Bert’s romantic duet “Hello” consists mainly of the words “Hi, Hi, Hello”). Of the twenty-eight songs, eight are reprises (with one song reprised twice). Hex aspired to be a creative retelling of fairy tales along the lines of Sondheim’s Into the Woods , instead it demonstrated what happens when an artistic director of a major theatre is too enamored of his own project. Hex . Photo: Johan Persson. The other production I saw at the National, Clint Dyer’s staging of Othello (16 December 2022), was far more successful. Othello is a deeply troubling play, written by a white man over four hundred years ago but engaging with the charged issues of racism and spousal abuse and murder. Probably my favorite analyses of this play come from the Black British actor Hugh Quarshie (see “Is Othello a Racist Play on YouTube).and Ayanna Thompson’s new intersectional feminist introduction to Arden revised edition (2016)both of which acknowledge the ways in which the play remains strikingly painful today, especially for Black or woman/AFAB readers and audiences. Dyer’s production, in the National’s smaller proscenium Lyttelton Theatre, with a set designed by Chloe Lamford that looked like some sort of public forum, began with a stagehand sweeping the stage as images were projected on the upstage wall showing the long and troubling production history of this play. In Dyer’s production, almost every character, from ensemble members to Cassio (Rory Fleck Byrne), Bianca (Kirsty J Curtis), Montano (Garteth Kennerley), or the Duke of Venice (Martin Marquez) was also credited as “System”—in other words, these people were part of a system of oppression that would lead to Othello and Desdemona’s deaths. Only three characters were not also listed as “System”: Othello (Giles Terera), the Black man oppressed by systemic racism, Desdemona (Rosy McEwen), his white wife who rejects the system to love a Black man, and Iago (Paul Hilton, who was as superb in this as he had been in the benevolent roles of Walter and Morgan in The Inheritance ), who manipulated the system to destroy Othello and Desdemona. Notably, during the trial in Act I, Iago sat to the side alongside Roderigo/System (Jack Bardoe), making a noose out of a long rope. Iago and Roderigo assumed that the trial would be perfunctory and Othello would be executed—and they might have been right, had the Turkish invasion of Cyprus not required Othello’s military leadership. But perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the production was how Dyer conceived of the role of Emilia/System (Tanya Franks): throughout the production, one of her arms was in a cast and she had a massive black eye. She was obviously being abused by her husband Iago, yet no one commented or even subtly acknowledged this fact. Dyer effectively communicated that systems encourage horrific cruelties (towards women by men, towards Black people by white society) and react violently not to abuse but instead to those who dare to oppose these oppressions. Othello . Photo: Myah Jeffers. Another successful and contemporary staging of a Shakespearean play was Josie Rourke’s gorgeous intersectional production of As You Like It (15 December 2022), the second play to be staged at the new @sohoplace theatre, an ultramodern complex that is London’s first purpose-built West End theatre to open in fifty years. Staged in the round, Robert Jones’s set consisted mainly of a large piano center stage where Michael Bruce played underscoring for the action and accompaniment to the songs (Bruce also composed all the music) throughout the show. When the characters entered Arden, leaves fell from above, covering the stage in an autumnal tapestry. At that point, Jones and Poppy Hall’s Elizabethan-style costumes gave way to more contemporary, rustic attire. Particularly noteworthy was the casting: Leah Harvey (a Black nonbinary female-presenting actor who uses they/them pronouns) played Rosalind—and Harvey was not the only nonbinary actor in the cast: Cal Watson (they/them) played Le Beau and the second de Bois brother. Several of the actors and their characters were deaf, including Rose Ayling-Ellis, who played Celia, and Gabriella Leon, who played Audrey. These identities mattered in the play: Celia and Audrey communicated using a mixture of British Sign Language (BSL) and sign-mime, and most of the characters communicated with them in this way. But the vicious Duke Frederick (Tom Edden) refused to communicate with his daughter in sign, forcing her to lip read and to speak orally to him. Duke Frederick also used his daughter’s disability against her: turning his back to her as he spoke in anger, so that she could not read his lips and understand what he was saying. The play’s scenes of reconciliation and love at the end were particularly moving because of these intersectional identities. Instead of returning in “women’s weeds,” Harvey’s Rosalind simply walked offstage and back on, and then Alfred Enoch’s Orlando recognized them. Ben Wiggins’s Oliver demonstrated his reformation by struggling to learn BSL so that he could communicate with Celia, with whom he had fallen in love. In fact, the American actor Martha Plimpton, always excellent in Shakespeare, despite a solid performance as a female Jacques, with the famous “All the world’s a stage” speech, was one of the least compelling parts of the production. Rourke’s staging demonstrated that Shakespeare’s fictionalized Forest of Arden can allow us to imagine and visualize a world where everyone can be celebrated, no matter their race, gender identity or expression, or disabilities. As You Like It . Photo: Manuel Harlan. The same day I saw Othello at the National in the evening (16 December 2022), I had also attended a matinee of Henry V at the nearby Shakespeare’s Globe, meaning that I saw three Shakespearean productions in London within two days. Unfortunately, Holly Race Roughan’s staging of Henry V was the least inspiring of any of the productions I saw during my time in London, including the misconceived Hex . Roughan had a clear concept: that war and power could corrupt even the most well-intentioned leader and that brutally violent men can come to be revered as heroes. Over the course of the play, her Henry (Oliver Johnstone) transformed from an optimistic, well-intentioned ruler to a dangerous psychopath, raging at his people, ordering executions without a second thought, and killing the Dauphin at Agincourt in retribution for the insult that helped spark his war. Henry’s scene with Katherine had not a single spark of romance, but was the culmination of his violence as he demanded her hand in an overtly political marriage, and then the play ended with the scene (usually much earlier in the play; Act 3, scene 4) between Katherine and Alice (Eleanor Henderson) as Katherine began to learn English in preparation for her forced marriage. Perplexingly, this was followed by an epilogue where the actress who had played Katherine, Joséphine Callies, transformed into a modern immigrant, responding to a British naturalization exam; perhaps a comment, albeit unrelated to the earlier action of this production, on the fact that England, which had once had imperialist dreams of conquering foreign lands, after Brexit now places major barriers against Europeans who wish to become British citizens. While Roughan’s concept was clear, everyone spoke Shakespeare’s verse excellently, and the production was one of the best lit I’ve seen in the indoor Wanamaker Playhouse (designer Moi Tran’s metallic upstage wall reflected the candlelight that serves to light productions at this indoor recreation of Shakespeare’s Blackfriars playhouse), little else made sense. Except for Johnstone as Henry, the nine remaining cast members played all the other roles in the play, often with only the smallest costume or accent change meant to indicate a change in character. However, sometimes this convention wasn’t followed: an actor removing a coat might mean a change in character, or simply that character removing their coat. Even for a Shakespeare scholar, it was often unclear to whom Henry was speaking; I could tell that my fellow audience members were totally befuddled. This is the sort of misconceived production that sadly leads modern audiences to feel that they “just don’t understand” (or like) Shakespeare. Henry V . Photo: Johan Persson. Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights , a new play by Shakespeare’s Globe writer-in-residence Hannah Khalil, which I had seen two days earlier at the Wanamaker (14 December 2022) was far more successful. A testament to women’s empowerment, storytelling, and collaborative creation, the play follows five women (Wahida the Dancer, played by Houda Echouafini; Fatah the Young, played by Alaa Habib; Zuya the Warrior, played by Laura Hanna; Akila the Writer, played by Nadi Kemp-Sayfi; and Naha the Wise, played by Roann Hassani McCloskey) who are imprisoned and awaiting their marriage to, sexual assault by, and subsequent execution at the orders of the unseen King, who is currently married to (the also unseen) Scheherazade. In contrast to the original version of the tale, it is not Scheherazade but these women who come up with the stories that Scheherazade will tell her husband, saving all their lives. The play includes riffs on classic stories from the 1001 Nights along with new tales, as if they are stories from these women’s lives, or ones told to them by their mothers, sisters, cousins, or female friends. At one point, they argue about a story that Zuya tells, which metaphorically depicts male violence and women cleverly overcoming it: Akila realizes that it will enrage the King and might lead to everyone’s death, and that this is not the moment to share that particular tale. The women argue about self-censoring, but ultimately agree with Akila that “there is a power in words. Stories. They must be told in the right way and at the right time” (61). The five very different women, placed in the same dire situation, forge close relationships, and earn their freedom, but, as they leave after 1001 nights, they vow to find some way to free Scheherazade (who had shared their stories) from her vicious husband. The moving play, presented with an Arab cast, was aided by the material conditions of the Wanamaker playhouse, where the candlelight (actors had to hold light sources at the same time as playing their roles) enhanced the sense that Rosa Maggiora’s set was indeed a dank prison room, one of the many sorts of cages (metaphorical or literal) throughout history from which women have had to escape. Hakawatis . Photo: Ellie Kurttz. Like Hakawatis, Baghdaddy at the Royal Court (8 December 2022) was a new feminist Arab play—but in every other respect the works could not have been more different. Written by Jasmine Naziha Jones, who also performed the central character, Darlee, a second-generation British-Iraqi girl from age eight to twenty, the play, which is dedicated to Jones’s father, delves into the relationship between Darlee and her Iraqi Dad as the girl comes of age during wars between the West and Iraq. The expressionist play was staged by Milli Bhatia on a set of stairs designed by Moi Tran—similar in some respects to Chloe Lamford’s set for Othello —and also featured a chorus of “Quareens”—“spiritual companions from another dimension,” two female and one male, helping Darlee “reconcile her childhood memories with Dad’s story” as an immigrant (2). Part clown show and part fictionalized reconstruction of a traumatic childhood, the show built up to two monologues: Darlee’s railing against a so-called democratic Western society that has never fully accepted her and Dad’s lament for his family who died in the Iraq war after he came to the UK. The play—and Jones’s performance as a fictionalized version of her younger self—was deeply painful but felt only half-formed, perhaps as do any of our half-remembered recollections of childhood. Baghdaddy . Photo: Helen Murray. Orlando (17 December 2022), as adapted by Neil Bartlett from Virginia Woolf’s novel and staged by Michael Grandage at the Garrick Theatre on the West End, featuring the nonbinary actor Emma Corrin as its titular immortal gender-defying character, was another sort of coming-of-age story. Of course, Orlando comes into his/her/their own over the course of centuries (and also it’s no coincidence that Orlando shares the same name as one of the romantic leads in the gender-bending As You Like It ). Excepting Corrin and Deborah Findlay, who played Mrs Grimditch, a very long-serving confidant to Orlando and the audience, the remaining cast (consisting of one man and eight women or nonbinary performers) all played both a chorus of Virginia Woolfs and Orlando’s many, many loves. When Orlando appears, the audience briefly sees him frontally naked (Corrin wore a prosthetic penis for this moment) and when Orlando transforms into a woman, she is once again naked (although this time only seen from the waist up). The play was a celebration of transformation and potentiality, ending by acknowledging that Orlando might thrive in the world today (or an approaching future, signified by an intensely bright door at the top of Peter McKintosh’s set that Orlando passed through at the end of the play) in a more accepting world that Woolf herself, who committed suicide in 1941, could only dimly imagine. The play was especially moving to my students on the mini-term, several of whom are trans and/or nonbinary; one said she was going to get a tattoo of that bright door that signified the possibilities of the future if we are willing to “try courage” (78). Orlando . Photo: Marc Brenner. Less successful in its feminism but still a delightful spectacle onstage was the jukebox musical & Juliet (20 December 2022), directed by Luke Sheppard with a book by David West Read and featuring over two decades of pop songs written by Max Martin. It’s hard to believe that Martin wrote so many of the best-known hits for artists including Bon Jovi, The Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Robyn, Kelly Clarkson, Kesha, Justin Timberlake, Demi Lovato, Katy Perry, The Weeknd, and more. The show bills itself as a feminist revision of Romeo and Juliet , in which Anne Hathaway, in a frame story, accuses Shakespeare of not giving his doomed heroine enough of a voice or agency and imagines a new ending in which Juliet doesn’t kill herself after awakening to find Romeo poisoned. Taking off from that premise, Juliet (still played, when I saw it years after it opened on the West End, by Olivier-winning Miriam-Teak Lee) goes on an adventure across Europe, along with her friends including the trans character May (now played by nonbinary actor Joe Foster). The show is raucously self-aware (a jukebox sat visibly near the center of Soutra Gilmour’s set and the spectacularly lit titles that descended from the flyspace at the opening, interval, and close resembled nothing more than a West End/Broadway marquee) and builds to Juliet’s rendition of Katy Perry’s “Roar,” which indeed stopped the show for at least a minute of applause after Lee’s performance of the song. The show has since transferred to Broadway, where Justin David Sullivan, the nonbinary actor who played May, declined to be considered for Tonys since the awards continue to require actors be nominated in binary gender categories for men and women. Thankfully, the production has fixed its original gaffe of casting a cis man as a trans character (Arun Blair-Mangat originated the role of May on the West End), but the supposed feminism continues to ring a bit hollow even as Anne, Juliet, and her friends sing about women’s empowerment. Perhaps this is because all of the authors and the director of the show were men: as noted in Hamilton (another musical created almost entirely by men that was intended to reimagine the past more inclusively), “who tells your story” matters and it’s too bad that the producers of & Juliet didn’t find a woman to write the book or direct. Just as much frothy fun, but with a lot less pretense, were two holiday shows I saw towards the end of my trip. Who’s Holiday! at the tiny Southwark Playhouse (19 December 2022) was a solo holiday drag show which was the final work to which I brought my students. Written in 2017 by Matthew Lombardo in the comic verse of Dr. Seuss, the play imagines Cindy Lou Who from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! all grown up, bleached blonde, hard drinking, foul mouthed in rhyme, having escaped a relationship with the Grinch, and planning a Christmas celebration despite constant cancellations from her friends. The play is thoroughly dirty and definitely not for the young children who might still read Dr. Seuss. But, as directed by Kirk Jameson, it is perfect for camp as performed by Miz Cracker, an American drag queen who gained fame on the television show Ru Paul’s Drag Race , and in the end Who’s Holiday! still celebrates the joy and spirit of Christmas every bit as much as its less transgressive source material. Who’s Holiday!. Photo: Mark Senior. My first West End panto was equally delightful, if far more spectacular. Jonathan Harvey’s Mother Goose , directed by Cal McCrystal at the Duke of York’s Theatre (20 December 2022), the same theatre where I had seen The Doctor a few weeks earlier, featured stand-up comedian John Bishop as Vic Goose and the legendary Sir Ian McKellen in drag as Mother Goose (the panto Dame), using wit and constant references to contemporary British politics to facing down holiday financial struggles from exorbitant energy bills. Their struggles are abated by the arrival of a goose (Anna-Jane Casey) who starts laying golden eggs and gives Mother Goose the chance to achieve her dreams of stardom. The songs, dances, and audience participation were all delightful—when one nearby audience member heard that Mother Goose was my first panto, she let me know she had been to hundreds and that this was among the very best she’d ever seen. Yet no one was enjoying themselves more than Sir Ian, obviously gleeful at the chance to ham it up in the sort of work he had adored in his youth. As he delivered key lines from Gandalf in Lord of the Rings or Portia’s “The quality of mercy” speech in the tenor of Mother Goose, his wry smile was infectious and had the audience grinning just as much as he was. On our feet at the end, we were all celebrating the holiday spirit together again, in the theatre. Mother Goose . Photo: Manuel Harlan. The holiday spirit that suffused Mother Goose and Who’s Holiday! in some ways ran through all these productions, even the darkest like Othello, Henry V, The Doctor , and A Streetcar Named Desire , since we were, once again, able to be in London’s excellent theatres together. COVID will remain part of our world for some time to come: many audience members remain masked, theatres have to cancel performances and hire more understudies (or even have the director go on for a role in a pinch!), and more. This is probably a good thing: it has led to conversations about how the arts can be safer and more equitable for everyone. I expect to return to London at the end of 2025 and I am excited to discover what will suffuse the city’s theatrical scene then, when it will have been half a decade since the height of the pandemic. Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Dan Venning is an associate professor in the department of Theatre & Dance at Union College (Schenectady, NY), where he also teaches in the English department and the interdisciplinary programs in American Studies and Gender, Sexuality, & Women's Studies. He has published numerous chapters in scholarly edited collections, book reviews, and performance reviews in a broad range of scholarly journals, including several overviews of theatre in London for European Stages . He is currently working on a book about Shakespearean performance and nation-building. 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.

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

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 20, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 20 By Steve Earnest Published: July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Editor’s Statement I am very grateful for the opportunity to continue the great work begun by Marvin Carlson with his foundation of EUROPEAN STAGES (formerly WESTERN EUROPEAN STAGES) in 1969. Devoted to the analysis and review of theatre in both eastern and western Europe, EUROPEAN STAGES remains one of the USA’s most important storehouses of European theatre history. Because of the emphasis on unique performances, directors, actors and styles of production, this publication focuses directly on the art of performance itself, with less emphasis on theoretical or external issues. It’s a great honor to take over this role from Dr. Carlson who has been, arguably, America’s most prominent theatre scholar for many decades. This edition, the first issue of EUROPEAN STAGES published in Spring/Summer since the period of COVID, includes articles that discuss productions and artists from Italy, France, Germany, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, and Spain. Just as WESTERN EUROPEAN STAGES featured many of my early publications, I also hope to feature new and early career writers in addition to established writers from major world institutions in order to consider work that is produced or presented in Europe. To that end, this edition features work by both previously unpublished artist/writers in addition to other individuals who have regularly contributed to the journal. The Segal Center views it’s many journal publications as important centers for the preservation of knowledge about world performance. Many of these records of plays, musicals, operas, dance works, and other uncharacterized works of performance are not recorded in any other medium, therefore these records of works serve as primary information about the history of performance in our world. Commissioning, obtaining and maintaining these precious records of performance is central to the Center’s mission and I am excited to be a part of the continuation of this great task. It's wonderful to feature two works by outgoing Editor, Dr. Carlson in this issue and we look forward to publishing many of his works in the years to come. I am looking forward to creating two issues each year in the future and we are working to create an even greater profile for the journal as we move forward. Steve Earnest, Professor of Theatre Coastal Carolina University Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Steve Earnest is a Professor of Theatre at Coastal Carolina University . He was a Fulbright Scholar in Nanjing, China during the 2019 – 2020 academic year where he taught and directed works in Shakespeare and Musical Theatre. A member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA, he has worked professionally as an actor with Performance Riverside, The Burt Reynolds Theatre, The Jupiter Theatre, Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Birmingham Summerfest and the Riverside Theatre of Vero Beach, among others. Film credits include Bloody Homecoming , Suicide Note and Miami Vice . His professional directing credits include Big River , Singin’ in the Rain and Meet Me in St. Louis at the Palm Canyon Theatre in Palm Springs, Musicale at Whitehall 06 at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach and Much Ado About Nothing with the Mountain Brook Shakespeare Festival. Numer ous publications include a book, The State Acting Academy of East Berlin , published in 1999 by Mellen Press, a book chapter in Performer Training, published by Harwood Press, and a number of articles and reviews in academic journals and periodicals including Theatre Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, Western European Stages, The Journal of Beckett Studies and Backstage West . He has taught Acting, Movement, Dance, and Theatre History/Literature at California State University, San Bernardino, the University of West Georgia , the University of Montevallo and Palm Beach Atlantic University. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an M.F.A. in Musical Theatre from the University of Miami, FL. 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 The 2025 Festival International New Drama (FIND) at Berlin Schaubühne Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 20 Willem Dafoe in conversation with Theater der Zeit The Puzzle: A new musical in the Spoleto Festival, Italy presented by La MaMa Umbria Varna Summer International Theatre Festival Mary Said What She Said The 62nd Berliner Theatertreffen: Stories and Theatrical Spaces That Realize the Past, Present and Future. Interview with Walter Bart (Artistic Leader, Wunderbaum Collective & Director, Die Hundekot-Attacke) from the 2024 Berliner Theatertreffen Duende and Showbiz: A Theatrical Odyssey Through Spain’s Soul Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

This is a reading of an excerpt of the play, "Please Do Not Touch the Indians." This is a play about the history of what happened to all Indians. Two wooden Indians sit on a bench in front of a gift shop and have their picture taken by a tourist. Characters appear as images of a child lost and they share their tragic journey of historical wrongs. In the end, we see that what we have seen is what the 2 Indians see every day as they come there to remember their lost child. It is a simple tale of lost love for a child, of a lost people, joined by their memories. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Please Do Not Touch the Indians Eagle Project 60 minutes 3:00PM EST Wednesday, October 11, 2023 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All This is a reading of an excerpt of the play, "Please Do Not Touch the Indians." This is a play about the history of what happened to all Indians. Two wooden Indians sit on a bench in front of a gift shop and have their picture taken by a tourist. Characters appear as images of a child lost and they share their tragic journey of historical wrongs. In the end, we see that what we have seen is what the 2 Indians see every day as they come there to remember their lost child. It is a simple tale of lost love for a child, of a lost people, joined by their memories. Content / Trigger Description: Joseph A. Dandurand is a member of Kwantlen First Nation located on the Fraser River about 20 minutes east of Vancouver. He resides there with his 3 children Danessa, Marlysse, and Jace. Joseph is the Director of the Kwantlen Cultural Center. Joseph received a Diploma in Performing Arts from Algonquin College and studied Theatre and Direction at the University of Ottawa. He has been the Storyteller in Residence at the Vancouver Public Library. He has published 13 books of poetry and the latest are: I WANT by Leaf Press (2015) and HEAR AND FORETELL by BookLand Press (2015) The Rumour (2018) by BookLand Press in (2018) SH:LAM (the doctor) Mawenzi Press (2019) The Corrupted by Guernica Press (2020) his children’s play: Th’owixiya: the hungry Feast dish by Playwrights Press Canada (2019) his children’s books: The Sasquatch, the fire, and the cedar basket (2020) and The Magical Sturgeon (2022) published by Nightwood Press along with his poetry manuscript: The Punishment (2022) He also is very busy Storytelling at many events and Schools. Opalanietet is a member of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribal nation of New Jersey. He is currently a PhD student at The Graduate Center at the City of University of New York (CUNY), and the Founder and Artistic Director of Eagle Project, www.eagleprojectarts.org . Upon graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Opalanietet has performed in workshops and productions at such renown New York theatrical institutions as the Public Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, New York City Opera, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In November of 2020, Opalanietet made history by giving the first-ever Lenape Land Acknowledgement at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. Founded by Opalanietet (Ryan Victor Pierce) in 2012, Eagle Project is the only Lenape-led performing arts company in New York City. Its mission is to explore the American identity through the performing arts and our Native American heritage, deciphering what exactly it means to be American while using the Native American experience as the primary means for which to conduct its investigation. Since its inception, Eagle Project has produced six full productions, numerous readings and workshops, and has collaborated with the Public Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, Rattlestick Theater, and Ashtar Theater in Palestine. For more information, visit www.eagleprojectarts.org . https://www.eagleprojectarts.org/ 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

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.

I make performances for different media: film, video, the written word, the street, the stage, museums, closets, in and out of a movie screen. Today I feel overwhelmed by all the movies that are out there. "We're supposed to spend more time with each other not watching screens. Why should I make more screen-things?" More about Fritz Donnelly: http://www.tothehills.com. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE FRITZ: Play Time Fritz Donnelly English 5:30PM EST Tuesday, October 17, 2023 137 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Play Time! A Participatory Performance by Fritz Donnelly 5:30pm at Anita’s Way 137 W 42nd Street Followed by Q and A with Frank Hentschker, Sophi Kravitz, Anita Durst, and @Funwithfritz Content / Trigger Description: About Fritz: I make performances for different media: film, video, the written word, the street, the stage, museums, closets, in and out of a movie screen. Today I feel overwhelmed by all the movies that are out there. "We're supposed to spend more time with each other not watching screens. Why should I make more screen-things?" More about Fritz Donnelly: http://www.tothehills.com . About Anita’s Way: This permanent public plaza accommodates artists and audiences in the center of New York City. The passageway between the Condè Nast building on 4 Times Square and Bank of America located at One Bryant Park was named after founder and principal of chashama, Anita Durst. Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on