Romanian National Theater Festival
21st Edition

For ten days Bucharest has been not just a capital city, but a theatrical capital too. This was possible due to a marathon of events both on stage and off it that engaged guest theaters from Romania and abroad and, in addition to the National Opera, the National Operetta Theater, the National University of Theatrical and Cinematographic Art, ArCuB, the Löwendal Foundation and the Act Theater Teahouse, almost all the theaters of Bucharest, acting as guests and hosts.

Cultural personalities, theater managers and major national and international festival directors, Romanian and foreign critics and journalists were introduced to the 2010-2011 season’s best shows in Romanian theater and more.

Shakespeare, Chekhov, Garcia Lorca, Hašek, Sanaev are major authors in world literature. We are invited to reflect by the thought-provoking theatrical visions of Andrei Şerban, Yuri Kordonsky, Alexandru Dabija, László Bocsárdi, Victor Ioan Frunză, Alexander Hausvater, László Béres. On the last two days of the NTF we are again awaited in theaters by masters, prestigious artists and remarkable newcomers.

Saturday, 5 November, at the Liviu Ciulei (Izvor) Hall of Bulandra Theater, at 11.00, 18.00 and 21.00, the story of the merchant of Venice occasions a new meeting with the company of Tamási Áron Theater of Sfântu Gheorghe in a stirring show by the unmistakable László Bocsárdi.

National Theater Festival continues to bring important directors’ productions on stage for its audience.

At the Grand Hall of Bucharest National Theater, Thursday, 3 November, at 18.00, the reputable stage director Radu Penciulescu, who had a significant contribution to the re-theatralization of theater in Romania in 1960-1975, invites us to an experimental show: Macbeth (A Study) by William Shakespeare. Produced by the Ion Sava Center for Theater Research and Creation of the Bucharest National Theater, the show is an open reading of the Shakespearean text in a workshop form. This formula was embraced with great mental flexibility and professional rigor by two sacred monsters of Romanian theater: Valeria Seciu and Ion Caramitru. They are joined by a cast that brings together important actors of the Bucharest National Theater and student actors. In Radu Penciulescu’s theatrical vision, the actors go through the successive stages in the close reading of the Shakespearean text, focusing on several key moments. Macbeth (A Study) is also scheduled Friday, 4 November, at 18.00.

The protagonist of the Focus section of NTF 2011, the stage director Andrei Şerban, invites us on Friday, 4 November, 10.30 to Bulandra Theater’s Toma Caragiu Hall for an extraordinary conference with an enigmatic, thought-provoking title: What it means to play a role.

In theater, as in life, we play various roles, which we do not understand, yet play, willy-nilly, with or without success. What does it mean to play a role? It is a useful thing to ask ourselves, in particular these days, when the confusion between who we are and what role we are playing is growing. Theater is everywhere, in the streets, on TV, and we all are actors, but we don’t know what roles we are playing. Even after we have learned the text, we repeat it mechanically, passively, without conviction. What is to be done? - Andrei Şerban

The next two festival days mean new meetings with great Romanian stage directors and their works: Andrei Şerban, Gábor Tompa, Alexandru Darie, Alexandru Dabija, Victor Ioan Frunză.

Saturday at 18.00 at Bulandra Theater’s Toma Caragiu Hall we can watch a show dedicated by the stage director Alexandru Darie to the late director Ion Cojar, who dramatized Notes of a Stranger after F.M. Dostoyevsky’s short novel The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants. The cast of the Bulandra Theater production includes Mihai Constantin, Tamara Buciuceanu-Botez, Virgil Ogăşanu, Ion Besoiu, Marian Râlea, Ana Ioana Macaria and other major names in the company, in a show in which fun and seriousness alternate in probing the mysteries of the human soul.