The Russian stage director Kama Ginkas provokes Romanian theater!

Between 1-10 November, the famous Lithuanian-born Russian stage director, Kama Ginkas, will be present at the National Theater Festival in Bucharest. Two shows directed by Kama Ginkas and produced by the New Generation Theater in Moscow, whose manager he is, were scheduled in the International Voices section: The Black Monk by A.P. Chekhov and A Ridiculous Poem after F.M. Dostoevsky. In addition, Kama Ginkas will deliver a lecture entitled Provoking Theater, hosted by NUTCA, and at Carturesti bookstore a book by Kama Ginkas and John Freedman will be launched: Provoking Theatre: Kama Ginkas Directs, published in the new RNTF collection with the support of UNITEXT publishers (Romanian version by Andrei-Luca Popescu and Marian Popescu).

The two shows invited to the National Theater Festival represent different stages in Kama Ginkas’s theatrical career. The Black Monk, mounted nine years ago, is an amazing performance in terms of visual impact, and has a unique form: it is played in an auditorium balcony alone. It brought the director world renown and it traveled to many international festivals. The leading actor, Sergei Makovetsky, is one of Nikita Mikhalkov’s favorites and the cast leader of the famous director’s most recent film, 12, an award winner of the Karlovy Vary Festival and Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film.

In 2006 Kama Ginkas mounted A Ridiculous Poem, inspired by the “Grand Inquisitor” passage in F.M. Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. In 2007, the show was nominated for the Best Production of the Year award of the Golden Mask Prizes in Moscow, and in March 2008 it was successfully presented at the 11th edition of the Bogota International Theater Festival in Colombia. The show was described as “two hours of white-hot theater” by The Moscow Times, which added: “Old Greeks called this catharsis, and Kama Ginkas knows how to generate it.”

The Black Monk by A.P. Chekhov will be performed at Ion Creanga Theater Saturday, November 1, at 18.00, Sunday, November 2, at 21.00, and Monday, November 3, at 18.00.

A Ridiculous Poem after F.M. Dostoevsky will be performed in the Great Hall of Bucharest National Theater Wednesday, November 5, at 18.00 and Thursday, November 6, at 18.00.

The book Provoking Theater: Kama Ginkas Directs by Kama Ginkas and John Freedman will be launched Tuesday, November 4, at 16.30 at Carturesti bookstore. The book is published in the RNTF collection of UNITEXT publishers and was translated by Andrei-Luca Popescu and Marian Popescu. The book will be presented by Marian Popescu.

Kama Ginkas will deliver a lecture entitled Provoking Theater Thursday, November 6, at 11.00, at NUTCA.

About Kama Ginkas:
Although he graduated in 1967 from the Theater, Music and Cinema Institute of Leningrad (one of his professors was the great director Georgy Tovstonogov), he could not adjust to the requirements of Soviet socialism and as a result was prevented from working until the last half of the 1970s. His talent flourished almost 20 years after the professional debut in the context of the dramatic changes that swept Russia in the last half of the 1980s.

His trademark consists of dramatic adaptations of prose writings. Kama Ginkas’ shows were invited to festivals in Germany, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Finland, Holland, France and former Yugoslavia. In the last ten years he worked in Europe where, among others, he produced The Idiot in Germany and Macbeth in Finland. Kama Ginkas is a professor at the Swedish Theater Academy in Helsinki.