The Anomaly

Synopsis

"The modern world is changing at an alarming rate. In recent years we are exposed to the uncertain, the unexpected, the unknown. In the world of anomalies, we were forced to leave our comfort zone and adapt regardless of the situation.

The Anomaly is a show about nine different people in moments of crisis and their reactions to unpredictable anomalies that will upend their everyday lives. In this captivating, musical and poetic performance, electronic fragments are combined with polyphonic melodies. The actors dance dynamic choreographies to the rhythm of the poetic text inspired by the theater of the absurd.

This is the universal story of people's exceptional ability to adapt to any circumstances." (Natasza Sołtanowicz)

The creative team

The show The Anomaly is created at the Craiova National by the Polish artistic collective called [in between] and established in 2017. The founders are Natasza Sołtanowicz, Joanna Kowalska, Marianna Syska and Grzegorz Bieńko. They create theater that challenges well-established conventions, with a primary focus on image and music. Metaphorical language and poetic imagery are their hallmarks.

In their poetic texts for the stage, the group gravitates towards topics such as human identity in the uncertain contemporary world, the perception of time and the relationship of humans to the environment. They are heavily inspired by folk tales and various myths.

[in between] produces performances in both institutional and off-stage theaters for children, teenagers and adults. Their most famous performance, Weirdos, was presented at the OFF d'Avignon Festival in France, won the Grand Prize at the PRO-CONTRA festival in Szczecin (Poland) and the International Theater Network Festival in Craiova (Romania).

In the future, they also plan to organize opera performances and concerts.

https://www.facebook.com/inbetweengroup

https://www.instagram.com/in_between_group

Chronicles:

• Natasza Soltanowicz and the artistic group/collective [in betwen] propose an immersive theater, an experience that allows viewers to compose meanings and significances. (…) It takes place in one of the most controlled environments, the corporate one, and the employees behave like characters, they enter the scene with a cheerful tension, they all interpret a role, they compose a social identity, their interactions have nothing spontaneous, they are practiced, repeated and the speech that the Boss delivers is exemplary in this regard being performed/exposed on multiple levels: for subordinates, for herself, for the pleasure of playing, of exercising the role of leader. Ramona Drăgulescu very precise and very sure captures all these nuances and doses the comic effects to the delight of the audience. (…)

A mysterious creature, a terrifying apparition, the Anomaly, is incarnated. The acoustic imaginary created by Monica Ardeleanu, the voice, the amplitude and especially the strange sonorities, all compose the end-of-the-world-beginning atmosphere. It is a pure sound, an unknown language. (…) The set and costumes imagined by Marianna Syska reflect and complete the collaborative process: functional scenography and fluid movement, the neo-Gothic costumes of the Anomaly and especially the parade of new, modified bodies, a visual translation of the transformation, of the adaptation.”

Daniela Firescu, Towards a new model of humanity: are we human or are we dancer?, magazine Ramuri, no. 12/2023, page 19

http://www.revistaramuri.ro/index.php?id=5920&editie=213

• "Anomalia, a show created by Polish director Natasza Sołtanowicz at the National Theatre Craiova because it is an … anomaly. A crazy, fascinatingly creative and refreshingly well-acted, sung, and danced show about the human crisis as the norm of the present and the relationship between man, time, technology, and information. The show has a lyrical-absurd text for 8 corporate characters, a poem in a disintegrated language, with passages articulated by a character – metaphor, Anomalia (Monica Ardeleanu, excellent theatrical-musical performance), a form of life of Gothic expression. Anomaly lives in the nightmares of corporatists obsessed with rules and uniformity. The scene with the corporate crisis around the table has as A highlight is Chrystal Pite's performance, The Statement. The actors play mathematically, (…) in imaginative settings. The costumes are spectacular, including SF masks (Marianna Syska).

The play space is expository, lit mercilessly, like in an office, or unsettlingly dark, with fantastic characters emerging from everywhere like deformed emotions, excrescences of fear and anxiety, human fear, the crisis under the assault of information and technology, life under the pressure of the world that we ourselves build.”

Oana Stoica, What else did I see at the National Theatre Festival, Scena9,

7 nov. 2024 https://www.scena9.ro/article/spectacole-festivalul-national-de-teatru-final

• "Beginning with a scene in which several employees of a company meet at a meeting to find solutions to the created situation, about which no one knows anything, The Anomaly confronts us with an Ionesian universe translated into a corporate note. Ramona Drăgulescu goes through a score with extraordinary meticulousness that highlights her remarkable ability to transpose the text into subtleties, whether gestural, mimic or oratorical. I savored his moment with every word spoken.

(…) Fear, the unknown, the inevitable, the absurd, the incomprehensible. All are gathered in the esoteric character embodied by Monica Ardeleanu, who emerges from the postal package as if from a Pandora's box, unleashing chaos in a hypnotic cry. (…)

The Anomaly it was a revelation. A show in which I saw the actors of the "Marin Sorescu" Theater totally dedicated to a brave, controversial, abysmal stage experiment, proving that they can do anything, from singing, to choreography or domesticating texts that are not easy to give up."

Journey into the Abyss. anomaly, by Anda Simion, Cochilia Andei, 30 oct. 2023 https://cochiliaandei.wordpress.com/2023/10/30/calatorie-in-abis-anomalia/

• "... The anomaly, unfolded on a scenic space in which the upper wall, the ceiling, and the comic and the grotesque are exploited, is a carefully constructed show, with finesse - only it can calibrate the force - and, if I may still a risky word with heart. This is what I felt in the acting of the actors (a Cătălin Miculeasa with a way of looking that I had not discovered until now, an ethereal and precise Petronela Zurba, a delightful Ramona Drăgulescu, a surprising Nicolae Vicol, compared to the roles in which I seen so far, an admirable Cătălin Vieru and he, as well as Iulia Colan, Ștefan Cepoi, Monica Ardeleanu and Costinela Ungureanu), in the collective character he forms and who is constantly present there..."
Mădălina Nica, Et in Anomalia ego, SpectActor no. 3/2023

• "That's what the Polish director Natasza Sołtanowicz managed, the leader of a team that put on a striking show. It's a corollary of technical effects, mainly, plus acting and a bit of text. Put together, they give an intense, detailed, luminous show, a chronicle of the contemporary world and the dangers that beset us. The sci-fi film is taken as believable, there is no lack of irony, especially since there are some common places: the corporation, the gift that awakens the Evil, the escape in the mountains scheme, zombies & company, the inevitable visit to the psychologist, the fight with yourself, the abolition of time, the reorganization the world in an interplanetary cosmopolitanism and art therapy."
Ana Paraschivescu, Anomaly, SpectActor no. 3/2023

• "One of the main elements that formed the basis of the show is time and our relationship with time. We did not want to launch a ready-made theory, but rather to encourage reflection on what time means to us and how it influences our daily lives. We are interested in modern man, who is a captive of clockwise movement. Man has always been the slave of time, but he probably never had to lose himself to follow its rhythm. But time is stable, it has a constant. (…) That is why this vision of the absence of the ticking of a clock, although utopian, is superb. My objective was not to create a new time dimension, but to create space in an existing, well-known dimension over which we could have absolute control."
Natasza Sołtanowicz, interview conducted by Nicolae Coande, SpectActor no. 3/2023

• Natasza Soltanowicz and the artistic group/collective [in betwen] propose an immersive theater, an experience that allows viewers to create meanings and significances. (…) It takes place in one of the most controlled environments, the corporate one, and the employees behave like characters, they enter the scene with a cheerful tension, they all interpret a role, they compose a social identity, their interactions have nothing spontaneous, they are practiced, repeated and the speech that the Boss delivers is exemplary in this regard being performed/exposed on multiple levels: for subordinates, for oneself, for the pleasure of playing, of exercising the role of leader. Ramona Drăgulescu very precise and very sure captures all these nuances and doses the comic effects to the delight of the audience. (…)

A mysterious creature, a terrifying apparition, the Anomaly, is incarnated. The acoustic imaginary created by Monica Ardeleanu, the voice, the amplitude and especially the strange sonorities, all compose the end-of-the-world-beginning atmosphere. It is a pure sound, an unknown language. (…) The set and costumes imagined by Marianna Syska reflect and complete the collaborative process: functional scenography and fluid movement, the neo-Gothic costumes of the Anomaly and especially the parade of new, modified bodies, a visual translation of the transformation, of the adaptation.”