Reconstruction

"Reconstituirea" is inspired by the film of the same name directed by Lucian Pintilie and other works imbued with the spirit of the 1968s.
Young people from different corners of the world question their own identity and the way the world around them works. Love, art and revolution mix in a carousel of emotions and experiences. It could be 1968, or it could be now. Revolt is in the air, revolution is a state of mind, "la vie est plus forte que l'imagination".
The show is part of the #ACuTe project, co-financed by the European Union's Creative Europe Programme, a project that brings together 14 top European organisations in the field of theatre and research, with the aim of developing experimental theatre productions, using innovative digital technologies.
#acuteproject #performingarts #newtechnology #creative.eu #tncms

For me, Reconstituirea is a kind of poetic ars, about the two great loves of my life: theater and revolution. I believe in art that captures the spirit of the era and I feel that this is where humanity pulsates today: we are at a turning point, we all feel the need for change, we are frustrated by authority, politics, we want a new world, but unlike 1968 we do not have a representation of it. And freedom can be a form of constraint, this is the revelation of the 21st century, we have all these temptations on the table, we can live our lives anyway, but the individual does not matter in the grand scheme of things. The world seems to be spinning without us. We lack idealism, vision, utopia. So we made a show about all of this, and about something that I adored in Lucian Pintilie's vision: "the moral electroshock force of art".

Reconstruction is an exercise in consciousness, about how protest, authority, love feel, a journey through time and space that gives us the opportunity to experience how the multi-reality we live in feels, a portal to the consciousness of the other, of others, of others. “A man is free when he decides to be free”– I think we should tell ourselves this every day, we are the creators of the world we live in and that is why creation and revolution are actually the same thing. For me, at least.

I have always been fascinated by Lucian Pintilie, I considered him my chosen mentor. I wrote a PhD about him, I defined my art as a “theater of consciousness” as a reaction to his universe. I return to my debut theater after 12 years and work on perhaps my most personal, most sincere, most acute show. It is a special moment. I work with a fantastic team of creators. I am a happy man – artist. Reconstruction reconstitutes my soul and consciousness. I dedicate it to my grandparents, Mariana and Alexandru Petculescu – from whom I learned that “only dreamers can change the world, only dreamers”. – Catinca Drăgănescu

Debate – Are we ready for the theater of the future?

Starting from the performance Reconstituirea, we launch a necessary debate: how does technology rewrite the perception of living arts?

Are the actors ready to fracture their stage instruments or do they remain trapped in the nostalgia of flesh-mirror? What are the red lines that the audience refuses to cross – is the emotion transmitted through pixels a betrayal or an inevitable border? Is it a generational attitude or is it just the fear of a mandatory mutation?

Is the Romanian theatrical institution – this bureaucratic fortress – capable of absorbing the shock or will it collapse under the weight of its own inertia?

The dialogue we provoke promises no consolations—only uncomfortable truths and possible directions.

Participating: CATINCA Drăgănescu, VLAD Drăgulescu, CIPRIAN Făcăeru, GEORGE ALBERT Costea

Moderated by: CORINA Şuteu

Discussion duration: 60 min., public question & answer session

RECONSTITUTION selection of chronicles 

"The scenes that "reconstruct" images from the filming of "Reconstituirea" in the first part are seductive, with a Raluca Păun who captures so intelligently and acidly and acutely the accents and humor and cynicism and spirit of a Lucian Pintilie, who seems to direct the entire history that will follow. From the filming of scenes in which several young people live, fall in love, go to the beach, interact with strangers, and in which you have the feeling that the 60s with their stories, charm, nostalgia and fever, simply flow before your eyes, mixing with images from the famous film, the line "Why did you give up, my, why did you give up?" resounding premonitorily from the screens of old televisions, everything ends up exploding... And the images become disturbed, "fleas" appear on the screens, time changes, the fever of the Revolution slowly, slowly sets in with all the mixture of fear, madness, courage. The war and its imminence today insinuate themselves in the smell of blood and adrenaline that the images and energy created on stage by Iulia Colan, Romanița Ionescu, Nicolae Vicol, David Drugaru, Robert Ioan and Cătălin-Mihai Miculeasa make you feel in the air. And behind these images that Catinca Drăgănescu creates on stage are the words under which she actually places this show, like a motto: "Only dreamers can change the world..."

Monica Andronescu, Where does freedom begin and end?! The "Reconstitution" of Catincă Drăgănescu, Attitudes/ Oct. 11, 2024

https://artitudini.ro/unde-incepe-si-unde-se-termina-libertatea-reconstituirea-catincai-draganescu/

"This meta-theatrical composition has as its starting point/pretext Reconstituirea, Lucian Pintilie's film, but contemporary theater needs contemporary texts and new dramaturgy implies new languages, Catinca Drăgănescu and Ciprian Făcăeru build a show in the spirit of Pintilie, theater pushed beyond its limits, "theater of consciousness", but also theater as an interactive experience, through the integration of technology. (…)

In the concept imagined by Catinca Drăgănescu and Ciprian Făcăeru, the dialogue is not only between the past and the present, it is also a dialogue with the future, there are three hypostases of the conflict, the one unfolding on stage with Robert as the protagonist, the second one that plays on television, the image of George Mihăiţă, and the last one, the virtual character, as if from a video game, but regardless of the way and the frame in which the story is told, the message is unchanged, a plea for humanity, for the "moral electroshock force of art". The final episode is particularly sensitive, the protagonist Iulia, a directing student, she involuntarily triggers a revolt of the carolers, which anticipates the violent episodes of the 1989 revolution, with the infiltration and intimidation strategies of the Securitate."

Daniela Firescu, The Reconstituirea Project: Theatre, Videocassettes and Virtual Reality, Ramuri magazine, no. 11/2024 http://www.revistaramuri.ro/index.php?id=6209&editie=224

"In a setting that involves a continuous reenactment - the actors represent themselves in a rehearsal - fictional scenes with a real background are presented: 1968 in Romania, France, Czechoslovakia, December 1989 in Romania. These are years in which young generations took to the streets for what each believed to be their own freedom. In August 1968, the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia, putting an end to the Prague Spring, the democratic reform initiated by Alexander Dubcek a few months earlier. The student riots in Paris in May 1968 were based on socialist ideas regarding social equity and workers' rights. The show (concept: Catinca Drăgănescu and Ciprian Făcăeru) imagines fictional personal stories in real revolutionary settings from 1968, connected through a reenactment to Lucian's film Pintilie, Reconstituirea, produced the same year. (…) The show makes a temporal leap and also integrates a story about the 1989 revolution in Romania, opening the door to discussion, without crossing the threshold, about post-communist social uprisings.”

Oana Stoica, Revolutions and Crimes, Dilema / Dec. 18, 2024

https://www.dilema.ro/arte-performative/revolutii-si-crime