Think of Africa

"Atelier (Pictură)" Hall

Artistic Direction: Alexandru Boureanu

Assistant Director: Nicolae Vicol & Cătălina Vînătoru

Text: Gordon Dryland

Translation: Raluca COANDĂ

Scenic adaptation text and scenic movement: Raluca Păun

Set design: Vanessa Beca

Technical direction: Sorin Gruia/ Cristi Petec

Master of lights: Dodu Ispas

Prompter: Anca Maria Ilinca

Duration of the show: 115 min

Premiere date: 18 December 2020

Synopsis

While for more than forty years Amelia and her eldest son Arthur have lived in their own universe, the twins' intrusion destabilises the family balance. This unusual double visit - the twins usually come separately - succeeds in arousing the suspicions of the mother, who suspects that there must be an interest at stake. She expresses this concern without the eldest son paying much attention.

 

Frame selection. chronicles Think of Africa

 

  • "The text is Chekhovian in its essence. The reference to Cherry Orchard is clearly required. And not just for the subject of the sale of a plot of land (...) In a way, through the chosen text, through the staging, Alexandru Boureanu brings the audience, especially the young, into the position of discovering that the world does not begin with any generation, that 'Livada ' is disputed with arguments, both in one sense and in another, but, above all, that, above any ideology, everyone's life is written in the most unexpected ways. Relying on Dryland's method, Boureanu weaves a deceptive web. (…) The end of the show, like in antiquity with the gods, disturbs everything, destroys what had been built as in a game of cubes.(…)

Mirela Ciobă comes out on the ramp, with a well-expressed dignity (including unbearable lightness of being) for the earth-shaking confessions, graded as in mythology, in front of the receivers that are difficult to dislodge. The birds invoked in the play, whose sound could be heard sporadically, recalling Chekhov's seagull, announce the original drama. Thanatos and Eros, the night after the catafalque, with mother and son. Gordon Dryland proposes a unique case in a vast history of incest, from Leviticus to his contemporary, Louis Malle, with the film 'Le Souffle au coeur', sealed as a secret of an unrepeated moment and locked in a memory.

Alexandru Boureanu continues his program dedicated to the public, now with a deep, original and lasting drama.

(Marius Dobrin, Mama Africa / SpectActor, nr.1/2021, p.23)

 

 

  • "I noticed this intransigence (which is not at all moralizing, moral, etc., it is simply aesthetic) in most (not to say in all) Alexandru Boureanu's performances - comedies, dramas, tragedies. In any text, he digs until he finds the demonic irreducible, that nimbus from which the story begins. (...) The show is built on the shoulders, around, in the tonality of Mirela Ciobă, without this meaning that the other characters are diluted. The story is woven from the experiences of a mother, of a woman who puts all her hopes in the power of the original, of life in its pure state, untouched by the laws and demands of humanity. And the overwhelming breath of Mirela Ciobă propels the character among contemporary dramaturgical icons. And here the virtuosity of Alexandru Boureanu intervened who understood and followed the artistic personality of Mirela Cioabă.

Artistic personalities balance and unite in a vigorous yet harmonious plea for empathy, for mercy. The four members of the family, over whom the ridiculous and awe-inspiring world rushes, in the unequivocal interpretation of Raluca Păun, are looking for answers to an inexplicable, continuous and irrepressible hunger. The twins share the drama of a continuous exit from themselves, from the matrix: a rejection of the one who raised them, an expulsion to boarding schools, (re)constitution of their own families that they leave in various ways. Costinela Ungureanu accepts the mask of an eerie, vulgar femininity, still letting go now and then, discreetly, controlled, the intuition of energies that have nothing to do with hunger, but with death. Claudiu Mihail brings to the character something of Abel's immanent humanity, of male domestic pacifism and builds a Robert Selby, who could turn his back on the world (modern, social, domineering, devastating, relentless) to reconnect with the essence of the beginnings. The versatility of Nicolae Poghirc is once again highlighted - he is both the bearer of the anathema, of unconditional self-giving, until the end, the source of a love for which his mother wants to return the world to its beginnings."

Xenia Negrea, From pity to disgust is but a line/ Opt motive – nr. 57 / 29 martie, 2021 https://optmotive.ro/2021/57/art7/index.html

Trailer

Calendar

20
Mar
Hour 19:00
Think of Africa
"Atelier (Pictură)" Hall