Despite the crisis!

The National Theater Festival, the most important recapitulation of the performances produced in Romania during one season, has reached its 22^nd edition. This edition, organized as usual by UNITER, the Theaters’ Union of Romania, and co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and Bucharest City Hall through ArCuB, will be hosted by our capital city between 26 October and 4 November. Again, the Festival has chosen a central thematic axis: the directing work of Silviu Purcărete, one of the most famous Romanian artists today. At the same time, it unfolds under the sign of two authors for which UNESCO has dedicated the year 2012: the Swede August Strindberg, who died a century ago, and our fellow national I.L. Caragiale, 160 years after his birthday and 100 since his death.

Besides the three sections that specifically reflect the works of the two important playwrights, the Festival includes a number of shows that are relevant for the 2011-2012 season: whether based on works by Shakespeare, Molière, Calderón de la Barca, Albert Camus, Gellu Naum or Herta Müller, directed by Andrei Şerban, Gábor Tompa, Alexandru Dabija, Victor Ioan Frunză, László Bocsárdi, Radu Afrim or young rookies, or grouped under generic titles such as Something for Everybody, Actors Downstage, or Tomorrow’s Theater, they all make for a significant image of our (theatrical, but not only!) lives, which have been marked by a seemingly endless crisis for some time / “Such a terrible crisis, mon cher!”, in Caragiale’s words. In fact, his exclamation could have been chosen as the motto of the NTF in A.D. 2012. Instead, the organizers / the team from the Theaters’ Union of Romania, headed by the artistic director Alice Georgescu and the executive director Aura Corbeanu, vice-president of UNITER / have placed a more promising catchphrase, by the same illustrious fellow countryman, on the frontispiece of the event: “Gingerbread, panoramas, comedies…”

We all hope that this scene will be admired by many in the audience. Despite the crisis!

Alice Georgescu