NTF 2012 / an almost final evaluation

Dear journalists and partners of the National Theater Festival,

We are pleased to thank you now, when the 22^nd edition is already history of the NTF, for lending a professional, enthusiastic, prompt hand to the organizing team in putting up and mirroring a (hopefully) memorable edition, despite all the obstacles and unpredictable situations we have been facing. We thank you for having understood the importance of carrying through / despite the crisis! / such an encompassing event, for coming in even greater numbers than before, and for maintaining to the end the convivial atmosphere we wished for.

Tuesday evening at UNITER the small team that organized the National Theater Festival got together for an evaluation of one of the most ambitious editions in recent years. An edition that, leaving aside some inherent letdowns, managed to bring to the forefront major names and companies of the Romanian stage today, created a mood for dialogue between theorists and practitioners, generated connections between the local and the international theatrical cultures (one example only: the double presence of two heavyweights, Caragiale and Strindberg, celebrated by both UNESCO and the NTF in 2012, proved to be justified not only by remarkable performances, but also by related events dedicated to them / debates, conferences, workshops and book launches / and animated by prominent guests).

Not least, the 2012 edition meant for us turning into an asset what initially looked like a handicap. Thus, the absence of the stage director Silviu Purcărete from the festival a section of which was dedicated to him was successfully “surmounted” by scheduling the diptych made up of the documentary The Island. In A Tempest: Silviu Purcărete by the filmmaker Laurențiu Damian, an occasion for the audience to discover the creation lab of an otherwise very reclusive artist, and the recording of the dialogue about Theater and the sense of community recently held between George Banu and Silviu Purcărete in Nancy, France, for the National Theater Festival. The two movies aroused major interest, noticeable at Bulandra Theater’s Liviu Ciulei Hall, packed to capacity during the 1 November screenings.

A surprise, and at the same time a gift for the festival came from the International Association of Theater Critics (IATC) in the guise of a proposal to grant the critics’ Young Hopefuls Award in this edition, based on the decision of a three-member jury: Yun-Cheol Kim, Raymond Bertin and Octavian Saiu. Two shows from the Something for everybody and Tomorrow’s theater sections dedicated to emerging artists have made an impression: M House,directed by Luminiţa ŢÎcu, a production of the Coliseum Arts Center in Chişinău, and Ioana Manciu’s double role in Bobi Pricop’s Games in the Backyard by Edna Mazya (ACT Theater).

The evaluation of the National Theater Festival does not stop here. The Critics Café, an already traditional project of cultural debates on current issues, developed in 2008 by its host, the critic Ion Bogdan Lefter, invited the NTF team today, 8 November, between 19.00 and 21.30 to Club A (Str. Blănari nr. 14, between Universitate and Piaţa Unirii, across SfÎntul Gheorghe), this time for a public evaluation. Organizers, journalists, critics, artists and members from the audience are invited to a frank debate on the physiognomy of the edition that ended on Sunday 4 November and / why not / on the current situation of Romanian theater.

As we are planning to complete the press record of NTF 2012 in the near future, we call on the journalists and our media partners’ support. In other words, we kindly ask you to inform us about, or / whenever possible / send us either by email ([email protected]) or regular mail (UNITER, str. George Enescu nr. 2-4, sector 1, cod 010305), materials about the festival that you (will) have created / published / broadcast.

* The opera performance of Artaserse by Leonardo da Vinci, directed by Silviu Purcărete, that premiered at the Opéra Nationale de Lorraine as the NTF was unfolding, will be broadcast live by Mezzo TV channel on Saturday 10 November 2012.