[i]Hey Girl![/i] in Bucarest on 4 and 5 of November The famous Italian stage director will present [i][b]Hey Girl![/b][/i], a production that brought together institutions from France, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Slovenia, Hungary and Italy, in the National Theater Festival in Bucharest. An artist with a unique style, [b]Romeo Castellucci[/b] combines stage directing and fine arts in a visceral way, and the outcome places him among the world’s top stage directors. After studying Fine Arts in Bologna, in 1981 Castellucci set up Societas Raffaello Sanzio, a company he still works with. [b]Castellucci[/b] does not do theater in the classical sense of the word: he does not put up shows for a specific audience, because he does not work in a theater, nor does he pursue an ongoing repertoire; instead, he presents his productions, carried out in months of research, almost exclusively in the international festival circuit, where he was first given a cool reception, and now is assiduously hunted. Considered a trailblazer of the theatrical avant-garde, [b]Castellucci[/b] is renowned as the author of a theater involving “total” perception. He staged shows based on classical works and epics, such as [i]Gilgamesh[/i] (1990), [i]Hamlet: The Vehement Exteriority of the Death of a Mollusk[/i] (1992), [i]Oresteia (An Organic Comedy?)[/i] (1992), [i]Julius Caesar[/i] (1997), [i]Journey to the End of the Night[/i] (1999), [i]Endogonidia Tragedy[/i] (2001-2004). In 2005 he was appointed Director of the theater section of the [b]Venice Biennale[/b], and in 2008 he presented [i]The Divine Comedy[/i] after Dante as Associated Artist of the [b]Avignon Festival[/b]. Rejecting the logic of a written script, refusing the text almost entirely, and using the human voice only at the sound level (on which he worked with the musician Scott Gibbons), and mixing it with other sounds to obtain an audio background that fits the phantasms brought together by this brainy, cynical magician, [b]Castellucci[/b]’s shows haunt their audiences long after they are seen. The images stringed by [b]Castellucci[/b] on the non-epic thread of his shows have the consistency of dreams, and those who see them being put together right before their eyes have the feeling that they participate in a session of collective hypnosis as a result of which they begin to dream the same things as hundreds of other people. On the occasion of the presentation of the three productions inspired by [i]The Divine Comedy[/i], the main event at the 2008 Avignon Festival, [b]Castellucci[/b] said: “We live through the inferno, paradise and purgatory every day. Each of them is inscribed in contemporary man’s mental structure. I am not interested in social aspects, this is not my way of doing theater. What I am interested in is man, but at a different level – I’m interested in man’s hunger for life, for love…” In another interview, he says: “The European stage is having a fertile moment, because the figures of the great masters are vanishing at last. They have vampirized generation after generation, but now the stage is more free, and this freedom is a mental necessity. Many young artists have a completely open approach, which is very important. The audiences are more open too, they have the experience of the visual arts, therefore they are ready to accept the new theatrical languages too.” About [b][i]Hey Girl![/i][/b], staged in 2006 and presented since then in all major international festivals, [b]Castellucci[/b] says it was inspired by the image of teenage girls waiting at a bus stop in front of their school. The result is an essay on the ineffable girl’s passage from the status of a child to that of a woman. The show is a voyage among myths, incorporating aspects of this uncertain age from symbolic characters such as the [i]Virgin Mary[/i], [i]Joan of Arc[/i] and Shakespeare’s [i]Juliet[/i]. Using surrealistic costumes, footage screenings, glass explosions and the ravishing appearance of the two actresses, [i]Hey Girl![/i] builds a world torn between beauty and revulsion. “Hypnotically beautiful [with] a visual resonance that you find all too rarely on stage,” wrote The Financial Times after the show went on tour to London.