class="">When “The nights of painting, The nights of theatre” let light shine through on a cloudy morning

When “The nights of painting, The nights of theatre” let light shine through on a cloudy morning

George Banu’s lectures are, most of the time, true shows in their own right. He organises them in order, perhaps, to imprint upon the memory of the listeners the essence of his beautiful essays, written as a result of his passion for one art or another, following the vast knowledge and experience he’s accumulated over tens of years.

31 October 2014,  Articles

George Banu’s lectures are, most of the time, true shows in their own right. He organises them in order, perhaps, to imprint upon the memory of the listeners the essence of his beautiful essays, written as a result of his passion for one art or another, following the vast knowledge and experience he’s accumulated over tens of years.

an article by Maria Sârbu

The conference of “Nights of painting, nights of theatre” ,held at the Small Hall of the National Theatre in Bucharest, bestowed privacy upon the room, while the audience seemed overcome with the beauty and light which radiated from this event on such a cloudy morning.

Beginning of the day with… a piano, a small table and an album / “Nocturnes”, a screen with images, lights which underlined moments from this beautiful event- a meeting between theatre and painting at night.

Poetry set the tone… “It seemed as if from clouds a gate did open wide / Through which shall pass the dead-pale nightly bride…”.

Actor Ion Caramitru recited “Melancholy” ,by M. Eminescu, set to the music of Rahmaniov, performed at the piano by Ioana Lupaşcu. This intro, a poem in fact, was, as George Banu later remarked, the essence of the conference, explaining that in the history of culture there have been two nights / the classical one, the night of belief in the intervention of a miracle: these are the nights of Rembrandt, of Caravaggio, nights in which the characters are reunited, confronted with the nocturnal mystery, but they are always saved by divine intervention; they are the nights of Shakespeare, nights of excess.

He brought forth countless examples, bestowing images upon his ideas. And so, he spoke of the troubling nights within theatre, about quiet nights, about white nights, in which Man can’t find sleep.

Click here to see the Photo Gallery of the conference.

Trekking through night’s labyrinth, George Banu made references to the profane night, and to night as an opportunity, and night as a curse / when someone invokes divine wrath, such as: “I wish he loses sleep over this!”. The mythical night, a night of losing and finding oneself again, a melancholic night- in painting and in theatre!

The Curtain or the Fissure of the World”

Another NTF event was the presentation of a wholly extraordinary project, which George Banu published in France and which later appeared in Romanian at Humanitas in 2012: “The Curtain or the fissure of the world”. This autumn, the tome has been re-edited. The launch took place at the Cişmigiu Humanitas Bookstore, in a comfortable afternoon for numerous theatre lovers.

Lidia Bodea spoke on behalf of the host, and she remarked that this book is unusual, it’s bold and it wins you over, it is a book on rim, because it is built by risking it all, from the first word to the last one, from the first image to the last, on intertextuality and prerequisite basis of knowledge. In her opinion, the book is so beautiful because of the dialogue between theatre- and all its elements- and painting.

Marina Constantinescu, director of the National Theatre Festival, said: “This evening is extremely vibrant for us, theatre folk, because our world is, sometimes, an Island of Prospero in which we manage to be solidary and friends.”

She remarked that the gathering around George Banu’s personality is a sign that things are still as they should be. About the presentation, Marina Constantinescu said it actually refers to an art album, of extremely elegant texture, in which the meeting of text and image is “valued with a reflection of great quality, such as the content”, that the text and image-driven adventure which George Banu proposes is of high moral standards, of great span and cultural complexity, but also of mystery, that this is a book about the curtain, with all the weight and meaning behind it.

Also present was French editor Adam Biro, who made reference to the satisfaction he enjoyed when he first came in contact with this book , to how he was seduced by George Banu, “by what you see less of and what less explicit”.

George Banu remembered a certain metaphorical continuity which comes from the idea of the show of the world, mentioning the double discourse of text and image. His work was born of passion: the curtain as a metaphor of the fissure of the world. He said: the curtain breaks unity and lets thing be seen just as much as it camouflages them; it divides beings into actors and spectators; the curtain protects the secrete and maintains hope in an ever-possible reveal. The curtain hides and shows! George Banu meditates on the theme of the curtain in the perspective of the great metaphor of theatrum mundi.

According to the editor, the savoury text and the art pieces of different eras exalt the beauty of the curtain, and from within her folds secrets are revealed.

At this event, actress Eliza Păuna read a text fragment.

 

Photo: Maria Ştefănescu / Forin Biolan