Theatrical and Anti-Theatrical Aesthetics in Romania Today

Miruna Runcan

 

Theatrical and anti-theatrical stage aesthetics in Romania today

 

 

If one wants to really understand the contemporary substance (general horizon, phenomena and/or directions) of the Romanian theatre stage today, a short historical approach is inevitable. As in many other Central and Eastern European cultural spaces, the modern Romanian theatre was dominated not by a performance but by a literary tradition, or even by – one could say – a literary canon. In fact, even the national concepts in political and social life were produced in literary form, by aristocratic and bourgeois intellectuals – more or less writers or journalists all of them - who became politicians and got involved, in the second part of the  century in the complex processes of the country’s modernization. In this respect, theatre was first of all a means – institutional as well as cultural – of some kind of a late illuminist social project, centralism, language, literature and “identity representation” included.

Even the material construction of theatre halls, the most important of which were built in the regionally more significant cities, around 1850, prove that the state and communities interests were not focused, first of all, on harboring a local theatrical movement (even incipient), but in creating an institutional frame for a cultural life “to be”. With a few exceptions (in Iasi and Bucharest, both traditional provincial capitals), Romanian modern “National” theatre was born and meant to express and to symbolize the literary nationalistic ideals which founded both the modern state and society.

Paradoxically, building the theatre halls and filling them up with actors, stage designers, musicians, composers and, of course, theatre performances and shows was simpler than building a dramatic literature. Even if many novelists and poets exercised their skills in adaptations and original drama and vaudeville, the number of really successful and well written plays is not at all impressive (from a historical point of view) at least till 1900. The result is a bunch of social comedies and vaudevilles, some romantic dramas in verse or in prose, all based on historical topics, most of their authors more famous as poets, novelists or even academics than playwrights. But, in fact, the real life of the Romanian theatre still retained a literary base (in cultural policies, productions, as well as in mentalities) a long time after World War I. The National Theatre model (both Bucharest and Iasi theatres were entitled National and had state subvention from the beginning, and after 1918, four other big cities received as a gift from the state their own National institutions) is still alive today.

Why, one could ask, would it be so important to summarize these historical aspects for understanding what’s going on today? First of all because the stage aesthetics of the Romanian performance, in the first decades of the 20th century, depended on the tensions and dynamic contradictions between, on one hand, the literary model and the purely stage tendencies (stage directing, stage design, theatre criticism and/or theory etc.); and on the other hand, on the tensions between the national theatres and the private companies, most of them concentrated in Bucharest’s downtown.

The most important theatre phenomenon in the inter-wars period was, no doubt, the process of “liberation” of stage directing (as a specific theatre form of art) from the dominance of literature. Even since the last decades of the 19th century, the voice of the most important Romanian playwright, I.L. Caragiale, head of the Bucharest National Theatre for a while, had dared to proclaim: “Theatre is not literature!”[1] But, the ample movements of artistic “avanguarde” and the aesthetical synchronizations between the Western European theatrical trends and directions and the Romanian artistic milieu would produce a complete change, in terms of producing, directing, designing and even understanding theatre as an independent and self identifying art, after 1920.

This more or less “silent revolution”, that has its theoretical battle fields, its confrontations, crises and heroes (on both sides, stage directors/stage/set designers and playwrights, sometimes one person embodying both parties of the war, being a writer and also a director, not to speak about theorizing their own work and principles) reached a climax point between 1940 and 1947, and was brutally stopped by the communist regime in the decade after. If we cannot sincerely speak about a specific “Romanian theatre vanguard”, with aesthetic styles and distinct directions, we can highlight instead the profound aesthetical changes made by some really talented stage directors and set designers, influenced by the German, French, Russian or Italian schools and ideas competing on the “international theatre aesthetical market” of their time. Soare Z. Soare, Ion Aurel Maican, G.M Zamfirescu, Camil Petrescu, Victor Ion Popa, Haig Acterian and, most important of all, Ion Sava, are the names of just a few, but extremely active stage artists involved in this struggle.

  But, as profound as these changes were, as bright and dynamic the cultural atmosphere, their source was mainly cultural: one could represent it now by a delicate combination of direct observation of theatre performances (travel in Western Europe and touring companies visiting Romania) and theatre theory absorption (from Craig to Stanislavski, and from Copeau to Mayerhold or Tairov), most of it by mediated (literary) references.

The central concept of the between-wars theatre aesthetics was clouded, the “theatralisation” of theatre[2]: in short, this “artificial/operational word” meant the finding and artistically exploiting the stage images as complex metaphors, with the declared goal of letting theatre to express itself like an artistic action. It looks, more or less, like an effort to invent theatre’s own language, capable to adjust to each literary support. Theatralisation was, on one hand, the flag under which the theatre (seen as the duel art of representation/production) had to fight for its independence from the literary domination, and also had to conceive its distinct strategies into the bloody competition with popular culture, especially film art.

After nearly ten years of imposed silence and far-fetched propaganda, in 1957 a new generation of actors and directors emerged, and a large press debate which lasted for more than a year began. The theatre institutions’ weakness, the lack of professionalism of actors and directors, the inconsistency of theatre education or criticism and even (written between the lines) the stupid interventionism of the officials into theatre’s life became the central issues of this public debate. Their initiators, most of them young stage directors and set designers who eventually become famous (Liviu Ciulei, Radu Stanca, Sorana Coroama, Lucian Giurchescu, Crin Teodorescu, Horea Popescu, Ion Cojar, Geroge Rafael, Mircea Marosin, Tony Gheorghiu, Tedy Constantinescu etc.) not only had the courage to confront directly and systematically both the political and artistic establishments, but also launched, at the same time, a long series of innovatory and beautiful theatre performances, based on Romanian and foreign (even American, which was a brave gesture for this time!) repertoire. Their tremendous success imposed not only a consistent reconsideration of and a natural (re)connection with the “theatralisation” tradition, but also signaled the birth of the new era of theatre.

 

After 1960, theatre life seems to be not only rich and vivid, but also - paradoxically – in a continuous and strange expansion, if one has to compare it with the conditions and general degradation of the social and economical life in Romania. I wouldn’t dare to say theatre didn’t have to suffer the permanent harassment of censorship or economical restrictions (especially after 1977). Still, the healthy competition between theatre institutions of Bucharest and the ones throughout the rest of the country, between artists and their productions, but primarily, the constant recognition and support of theatre critics and audiences (who, in the last decade before 1989, deprived of press, television, foreign movies and even foreign books, used theatre as the last bastion of spiritual resistance to dictatorship) ensured Romanian theatrical productions were of continual interest to the public and held a uniquely prestigious position. Even if many prominent stage directors had to exile in Western European countries and USA (as Liviu Ciulei, Lucian Pintilie, Andrei Şerban or Lucian Giurchescu, among others) in order to find a real freedom of expression and creation, others took their places and continued their work.

Meanwhile, the “theatralisation” processes, even if the term itself was for a long time forgotten, skipped from the theoretical/innovatory phase to a more or less general (aesthetical and also academic) dissemination/absorption in the theatre environment. Favored by the rising and shining star of stage-directing – seen as auteur work – after the ’60s, but also by the special internal audience conditions, which tended to translate into a kind of complicity between public and artists, in order to spiritually confront the boundaries of censorship, the theatre performances become each day more complex, or even baroque[3].

The consequences, in some good part completely unexpected, of this evolution of the theatre aesthetics, could be clearly perceived only sometime after 1989. One of them, and probably the most visible and important, is the lack of interest (shared by both theatre institutions and prominent stage-directors) for contemporary playwriting, either Romanian or foreign. This “muzeification” of the theatre’s repertoire was so obvious up until the beginning of the new millennium (and partially still is) that one could say the entire history of drama suddenly stopped in the ‘60th, on the benefit of ancient Greek classics, Shakespeare, Pirandello, Chekhov and Beckett. Theatre tended to become the equivalent of an “opera practice” for educated audiences and snobbish elites.

Under the surface, even the purpose and use of theatre performance tended to change from its status of artistic communication to a new (and dangerous, I would say) one: a complex hermeneutical - or even nearly religious-initiating practice – in which any relationship with real life or daily problems seems vulgar and, as a result, has to be prohibited. Theatre had to be involved only in general human conditions and issues, and performances had contain a symbolical integrative vision, a complex cultural network of visual references, as a substitute for a philosophical perspective for both the director (auteur) and his audience.

In principle, nothing is wrong with such an attitude, which has its visible roots in an entire theatre thinking evolution, from Craig to Artaud, and from Grotowski to Bob Wilson. The dangerous dimension is given by the lack of competition between this direction and other, more popular, entertaining, commercial or, at least, those more related to the real world. And, perhaps the most dangerous – and still un-assimilated – threat is, in our days, the conscious ignorance towards – and therefore the profound gap – with the substantial transformations of the young audiences’ perspectives in the last decades. To this day, the “director’s cut” continues to be the one and only purpose of theatre’s production, at least on mainstream and in the huge repertoire theatres (even now receiving state or community substantial subventions).

 

No one would dare to pretend that the works of the most prominent and famous stage directors and set-designers[4], from the beginning of the ‘90s till now, were not beautiful, complex, challenging, in short, valuable. At least their most important performances were and still are great successes, are traveling widely abroad and enjoying both national and international recognition. There even were critical voices who said, especially after 1996, that the best of famous Romanian theatre directors tried and succeeded to work for an “international/Western European market”, with classical repertoire like opera singers, focused on the “export value” of their activities, more than on direct and sincere local response. The fact, true or vaguely ironical, would not be a bad thing at all in itself, as an exotic phenomenon, in a more and more globalised culture. But the continuous hegemonic prevalence of the “theatralisation” – parabolic, philosophical – model of conceiving and producing theatre performances, without consistent alternative and challenge, certainly is. In fact, what could a real Romanian theatre be, for an external observer (theatre spectator, critic or academic), deprived of the contemporary playwriting dimension, in adequate stage-directing representations?

 

 

The critical condition of drama writing was well documented even from the first years after 1989. Without any significant cultural policies that could favor its emergence and healthy development, the very few playwrights of the first decade (such as Vlad Zografi, Alina Mungiu, Ştefan Caraman and particularly Radu Macrinici or Alina Nelega) had to work hard to see their plays staged. That may be the reason why some of them, Macrinici and Nelega as perfect examples, involved themselves in a more complex, highly exploratory and managerial effort: they built alternative institutions, festivals and workshops, wrote studies and articles and initiated debates.

But, despite all their and other theatre people’s struggle, the real and substantial changes had to appear only after 2000, foretold in a way by the new generations of novelists and poets and, particularly, filmmakers. The fact is, and it seems as symptomatic as one could predict, that the shift of perspective came not from the literary world, but from theatre’s own life. First of all, the signal was given by the small (and brave) independent companies, invented by young actors bored of waiting for their turn to embody some new Hamlet or Ophelia, in association with directors of their own. Then, nearly an entire promotion of the directing class at the Theatre University of Bucharest not only showed its interests in contemporary drama, but also initiated a long term program dedicated to new playwriting, dramAcum, (a pun on ‘drama’ and ‘now’). They managed to associate with their initiative a bunch of young or elder critics, some independent companies and even a few old theatres, from Bucharest or other big cities, and even built a foundation to run it. At the same time, in Cluj, Tîrgu Mureş and Arad, other independent companies, such as Teatrul Imposibil or Underground, or Teatrul 74, struggled to promote new and significant playwriting, both from Romania and abroad.

A superficial glance at this “return of the expelled playwright” on Romanian stages cannot give the complete and detailed picture of the actual transformation still in progress. The main and most significant characteristic of this new direction is, in fact, the re-linking of theatre with human daily life, individual dilemmas, social conflicts and issues. The narcissistic attitude and the solipsistic aesthetical/philosophical ‘auteur’ positioning are rejected, and theatre’s involvement and participation is now proclaimed. The well-conserved fear of social and political action on stage (due to the propagandistic discrediting of any action-discourse in the communist era) disappeared.

In some way, we could even speak about a healthy and therapeutic movement of “new realism’, even ‘hyperrealism’ sometimes (language and angriness included), with profound critical dimensions. But, even the circumstance that the new generation of stage-directors and actors provoked and gave substance to this movement, by making room for new themes, topics and drama[5], implies that we are not witnessing a simple process of theatre adaptation to new trends and more diversified atmosphere. On the contrary, recent critical analyses, essays and even manifestos[6], not to mention interviews and debates, emphasize the rise of a fresh and complex new aesthetic of the performance itself, in the same time more direct and dynamic, and also more related to the use of new technologies, dedicated to a new public. The anti- and even de-theatralisaton process is at work now, and the audience’s response seem to be really enthusiastic, even if the institutional and ‘specialized’ (one may read ‘critic’s approach’) is still reluctant.

 

 

 

 

 

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