NTF / a festival for all senses

Less than a month is left until the start of the National Theater Festival that will take place in Bucharest between 25 October and 3 November. This year, under the sign of “otherwise”, comes with an innovative program: besides the selected theatrical productions, the NTF organizes a series of dialogues between the performing arts, between makers and viewers, between classical and modern. Through its related events / concerts, film screenings, exhibitions, book launches, workshops, symposia, artistic meetings / the 23^rd edition of the Festival addresses all the senses.

This year the NTF Divans will again be hosted by the warm, intimate Serendipity Teahouse, where among sweet treats and coffee aromas theater people will chat about serious issues in a laidback atmosphere, one increasingly rare in our public dialogue. Successful recipes in dialogue is the title of these meetings that attempt to puzzle out the saying “the right man in the right place” at the wrong time.

Also under the sign of novelty, the Focus section will give The Actor’s Art the place reserved until this year for stage directors. In the limelight: the remarkable actress Mariana Mihuţ, the protagonist of no fewer than four shows, old and new, selected for the Festival, as well as of a public meeting in the place that she considers her “second home”: Bulandra Theater.

In recent years, the muses of Romanian theater have given music its due respect. On Maria Tănase’s centenary, on Wednesday 30 October, at 21:00, the NTF presents at Godot Café-Theater a tribute concert to the “magic bird” of popular song. Hai iu iu nu Hey you you is a modern remix of her songs, a musical work by the composer Vlaicu Golcea, conducted by the stage director Radu Afrim. Under the same auspices, on Tuesday, 29 October, at 21:30, in the Studio Hall of Odeon Theater, the NTF presents the concert show The Music of Theater, featuring the composer Tibor Cári & Theater Fleas Orchestra, an itinerant artistic project that blends several musical genres: classical, hip-hop, blues, rock, café-concert.

There will be also exhibitions, book launches, workshops for young theater artists and critics, as well as other related events. The Löwendal Foundation will host the exhibition of the set designer Helmut Stürmer, and cinema will complete the dialogue of the arts by a series of screenings at Cinemateca Union throughout the Festival. Friday, 25 October, at 17:00, in the opening of the NTF, Aleksander Sokurov’s film Faust will be launched in Romania. In the following days, there will be other productions distributed by Transilvania Film too: Somewhere in Palilula, directed by Silviu Purcărete, and Silent Wedding, directed by Horaţiu Mălăele.

Less than a month is left until the start of the National Theater Festival. But what is a month when, in Shakespeare’s words, days will quickly steep themselves in nights, and nights will quickly dream away the time? A beautiful dream of a theatrical autumn, in Bucharest.