class="">Antoaneta Cojocaru, in Search of Lost Catharsis

She was always disappointed when her performances were not selected for the festival. This year, things changed. She was selected with her staging of Strindberg’s “The Stronger”, at the Comedy Theatre. As always, Anto, as all friends and even some of the spectators call her, put her entire soul in it.

Andrei Crăciun: The National Theatre Festival is due very soon. You will be performing in Strindberg’s “The Stronger”. What is this performance?

Antoaneta Cojocaru: For me, it’s my fourth laboratory- performance. I never imagined I’d get here. I did two at the Bulandra, one at the Comic Opera and this one, at the Comedy Theatre.

How did it happen?

I’m in a phase of my life when I find classical texts extremely valuable. I don’t know why it seems we do not need them any longer, or we don’t know how to do them. There are so many opportunities in a classical text: first of all, to cultivate yourself, as an actor and then to make new discoveries. This time it’s Strindberg (n.r. / August Strindberg, Swedish playwright) and it’s again a research laboratory on the means of the actor. We tried to have two very distinct levels- a tangible one and one in which things that the two characters would only want to experience happen.

Who plays the two parts?

Mihaela Teleoacă and myself.

And who’s „The Stronger”?

To me, it’s Mihaela Teleoacă’s character. To my surprise, other people say: „None of them!” or „Your character!”, and I think it’s all right this way. Probably each person sees the performance differently, according the sensibility and background. My choice was Mihaela’s character.

Why is she “the stronger”?

She owes it to love.

HER HEROES COME FROM HER FAMILY

Convince me to come see this performance, as if you would talk to someone you see on the street. Why should I come to see “The Stronger”, during the festival? 

It’s a performance like a poem, a very, very beautiful one.

Are you searching for this kind of purity and of beauty in theatre?

Yes, even more than that.

Are you in search of beauty, Antoaneta Cojocaru?

Yes, I’d like that. I know people have a lot of beauty inside them, as well as in their action, in their lives, in their feelings, in their nature. It’s a pity not to be aware of it. People do heroic things.

Who are your heroes?

My heroes aren’t famous. One of my heroes is my father. Then my grandfather.

May I ask why? I may… I did ask.

My father was a tenor, he knew how to preserve his naivety and his purity. At the moment of the post- revolutionary changes, a moment not at all favorable for the arts, especially in my hometown, Constanța, he was- at least to me- a pillar to hold the theatre together. He was the best possible defendant of culture- both in his professional and in his personal achievements. 

My father was a very poor man, he came from a family with seven children and he managed to become a singer and travel the world with his art. He made this extraordinary step forward, wholeheartedly, he was so devoted to his profession, he lived through art, he did not abandon, even if our town had been invaded by all kind of harbor merchants. He was standing for something that merely existed.

And your grandfather? Why?

He was from another world.

What world?

He was an aristocrat.

Your mother’s father…

Yes. What can I say? I never heard him swearing…his way of looking at things, at education…The fact that my mother is what she is…they were aristocrats, had had property and lost it all.

What happened in communism? Was he imprisoned?

No, he was not. He was an engineer in the harbor. Their world had collapsed, but…in a way…I remember going visiting people with my mother. I don’t want to forget and I want to have it clear in my mind who those people were…what they did…It was incredible. My sister (who’s a painter, in Constanța) and I were very young. They met at anniversaries. There was hardly anything on the table, but they kept speaking French, German…

He and his friends.

Yes. They had this way of regarding the world, the way in which they did not protest, their education, the fact that they were all playing the piano, that they all spoke several languages, that they had such clear minds and memories, the fact that they resisted.

Did you spend your childhood at your grandparents?

Yes, in Constanța. Apparently my grandmother had been the most beautiful woman in Constanța.

Had she?

Yes, probably.

You haven’t met?

Yes, I did. Just that not when she was the most beautiful woman in Constanța; but I’m sure she was. My mother said she was extremely delicate. I haven’t seen her at her best, but, yes, she was delicate.

What have you learned from them? What is it you are trying to continue?

I’m too little to say I learned. I certainly could have learned many things, but, you know, you never realize on time. But I hope that I gained this type of education and apprehension of the world, of the things that happen to me, of life. It might be that it isn’t of great immediate use, but it helps a lot on the long run.

ANTO AND AN OFFER: HIGH PERFORMANCE

Your other performances have been playing for a long time…

„Arlechino Dies?” is three seasons old already, „The Seagull”… two seasons in January.

A lot, isn’t it? It’s a proof of longevity.

Yes. The very good thing is that we now have an extraordinary audience at the „Laboratory” (n.r. /The Night Laboratory at the Bulandra Theatre), there are people who know where they are coming, they feel an urge, they’re not an amorphous group. It took a while before the people understood and started frequenting us.

What is there on offer, what’s special?

It’s the high performance.

High performance meaning excellence?

Yes. And vision…if I’d say new, it would sound like a cliché, but let’s say fresh and…

…different?

Yes, even if we didn’t start at the thought that we have to do something different, we didn’t say: „let’s do something to break this!“ We didn’t start like that. „The Seagull” is a classical performance, I think. I heard people say: „experiment”…What is there experimental in it? No, we didn’t start there. Things evolved, they went in that direction. Then there was my desire to improve the means of the actor. I think an actor needs to know a little bit of everything, he needs to excel. I’ve seen such actors in performances coming from abroad. It would be a pity not to have a place where to evolve and to improve your skills: I feel it’s insufficient…it’s a wave, it will pass. We have I don’t know what funny show. Ok, so what? If I ever wished something, that was to live that one evening when you don’t just go home and forget everything in half an hour, when there is something that stays with the spectator, that moves him, when catharsis happens, that so much talked about and lost somewhere, nobody knows where, catharsis.

ANTO IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME

Do you experience catharsis during other performances?

You mean, as a spectator?

Yes. And on stage?

Sometimes yes. We had extraordinary nights at the „Laboratory”, I remember an audience we once had for „Arlechino dies?”- such extraordinary people, I could feel that they understood everything I had in my mind. They understood even before I managed to say a line or make a gesture. You could see it was a miracle, and it is today and will never be again, but today it is fantastic. And at some point (I have this line: „I’m very unhappy”, it’s a moment when I break the convention and I look at the audience) I looked and I saw such beautiful people watching, I just said…

Would you have liked to be a spectator at that very moment?,

Just a second. I said: „Who else is unhappy?” And they all raised their hands. I could see the hands…a couple; they both raised their hands, holding them. A little blond guy, so merry and solar and supportive- he raised both hands! That was an extraordinary moment. I cried. Adrian and Ela (n.r. / Adrian Ciobanu and Ela Ionescu, playing Arlechino and Colombina), were in a sort of freeze frame and they were crying too. And I said to myself: how am I going to get out of this? I found myself saying: “If you are unhappy, that’s it!” They all started laughing and applauding. There were all sorts of evenings. One night, after “The Seagull”, someone gave me a pair of wings!

Of a living bird?

No, not of a living bird. And what I find very cool, is that they stay to talk after the show. And since we go out for a beer anyway, we invite them to join us…there was a couple once, in their fifties, they told us they hadn’t been at the theatre for seventeen years- they had been disappointed and didn’t want to go any more. They had heard people speaking about “The Seagull” and were afraid to be disappointed again, but some friend insisted a lot, so they came and they liked it. I tried to encourage them. It’s not that bad, I’m sorry you’ve been disappointed, I know how that feels like, but it’s not lost forever”.

ANTO IS BRAVE ENOUGH TO SAY WE  DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH DIRECTORS

Do you go often to the theatre, as a spectator?

Yes, I do. Not so much recently, I’m afraid not to get disappointed.

Have you been disappointed?

Many times.

Why?

First of all, the absence of the director. That’s from both sides, spectator, actor.

Absence of the directors?

Yes.

But why?

First of all, I think it’s a very difficult profession, and there is rather a deficit of teachers or a deficit of people interested to follow the path.

So, when you see a performance, you don’t feel the mark of the director?

I don’t have the feeling that things mean something. There is no vision, we don’t look for something particular, we are interested in immediate things, that have no value at all and no meaning at all- and we know that, people in the audience know it, everyone knows it.

So then, why are we there? The auditoriums are packed.

Everybody hopes. But I think that beyond this immediateness…Well you can’t put it in general, of course. I just finished working on a performance with one of the great directors, Alexandru Darie, and I was looking at the huge differences in approach and understanding, in working with the actor and in generosity. So, we cannot generalize, but, as an actor in this country at this moment in time, I can say that one of the problems of theatre now is the lack of well trained directors. I don’t know how and why, it’s very easy to say that it’s because of this and that- but, on the other hand it’s even easier not to say it’s because of this and that. It’s one of the problems.

 

Together with Mihaela Teleoacă, in „The Stronger “

Getting back to our previous topic, the festival, you have been present at the National Theatre Festival before; was it an important moment, did you look forward to it? At earlier editions, that is.

It was. And I don’t think it’s not important any longer.

Is it still setting a mark?

Of course. Well you know how things work- when they’re not selected, people get angry and gossip around: “No worries, the NFT doesn’t mean anything anyway.”

Have you been angry when not selected?

I was, but I never said it was meaningless. And angry is not the good word.

Disappointed.

Yes, and…not at the entire festival, there’s no reason for that. In my opinion it’s still important: you can’t say it doesn’t matter. Maybe some people are confuse or blind and do enormous blunders and then things get to a point where a festival or an award doesn’t matter as much as it should, but you can’t say it doesn’t matter at all. Impossible, there are so many festivals in this country, how could the NFT not matter? There was a moment when it was really very important- if I remember well in Marina’s (n.r. / Marina Constantinescu) previous mandate as a festival director- when it was really important, there were shows from abroad, extraordinary performances that nurtured me and made me grow. And the Romanian performances from outside Bucharest- you don’t get to see them otherwise; I love going to see them, I’m interested to see what is being done in province theatres, it’s often much better, more profound what they are doing there.

Do they have more time, or why?

I think they think differently about their profession. Here we try to “bargain”. Indeed, at first sight, they do have more time. But maybe that’s not it. They too can’t make a living from what they earn as salaries. They also do other things, they teach, they provide voice talent…I just think they look at their profession from a different angle.

ANTO RECALLS THE NTF AS A GREAT CELEBRATION

Tell me again about your first festival experiences. Do you remember the first one?

In ‘97, the year when I started drama school. I don’t think we realized then where we were. We were so overwhelmed with the idea that we were about to become actors, I don’t think we realized we were at the NTF and what that meant.

What was the name of the performance?

”Before Breakfast”. Later on, I participated with Radu Afrim’s „Electric Angel”, then Dostojevski / „The Notes of an Unknown”, Ducu Darie’s performance / there were many of them. And ”Hell” (n.r. /directed by Chris Simion), the other cast.

So it was just you to stay after the recast?

Me and  Ela (n.r. / Ela Ionescu). It was a real celebration. I do remember the time when the NTF was a celebration: performances from abroad, from all over Romania…

Now, given there are so many festivals everywhere, do you think this celebration has lost some of its scope?

No. Not for that reason.

Or maybe you’re all busier than before? Why?

No. No.

But why? Tell me why.

It lost a bit. There were years with…not wrong, but mediocre selections.

Along the years.

Along the years.  .

And it lost some of the aura.

Yes.

As a future direction, where do you think this collective effort of the National Theatre Festival will lead?

I do hope that there are people who once were very young but who grew in the meantime and have the same needs as I have, see things in a similar way and realize this need for more, realize that theatre cannot be a collection of jokes and pokes, that we need to be responsible, to make theatre into something better, to make things evolve. This is of course something that has to happen in steps, each of us gets to feel it at a certain moment, but I hope that many of us will get to feel it in the future. I’d like us to stop and ask ourselves: “where do we go to?”, “does THAT theatre still exist?” And I hope this will be invigorating, to the NTF, but also to theatre overall. I think it’s needed. Ok, we are confused, confused, confused, confused, but let us get out of this confusion at some point!

You got some awards?

I did.

Many?

Quite.

What are you proud of? Well, it’s a bit cliché to ask this.

The High Patronage of the Romania’s Royal House, granted to the “Night Laboratorium”.

And individual ones?

I got enough. And each of them meant something at a certain moment, a crowning of a part I played, or of a moment, or…Well, not…usually…I think all are clichés, everything I say is a cliché! But, indeed, you don’t take the time to rejoice. So if you ask about recognition, the High Patronage really means something.

And beyond this title, what does it mean? Is there some support coming from the Royal House?

Moneywise…

No, I don’t mean money. I mean support. Who supports you?

It’s another opening, it’s closeness, recognition of value, of valuable things that happen there.

So do you get easier to open doors?

Yes, I don’t know, I hope.

Since when do you have it?

Just a few months ago.

Bravo!

Yes. I think one also needs things that don’t mean I don’t know what, immediately

Rather symbolical.

Yes, and it’s another phase, you set yourself other goals. It’s something else. You’re in the story.

ANTO WHISHES THE FESTIVAL SOMETHING OVERWHELMING

The festival we’ve been talking about celebrates its 25^th edition this year. Would you like to transmit a message, at this beautiful age?

I would like to say that I will not forget some editions that meant so much to us all and I’d like to wish the festival to find the wisdom, the power, the money, the interest, the honesty, especially the honesty of returning to editions that have the power to change something and mean something. Let aside friendships and select good performances (I completely trust Marina Constantinescu, the selector of the festival at present), because this means a lot to those who are not part of the good ones, it means a lot to the spectators, I am sure it would conquer new spectators, it would educate, it would take care that theatre doesn’t die. This is my wish. That theatre to stay alive.

Thank you, Antoaneta Cojocaru. May the Good Lord keep you healthy!

Thank you too, Andrei Crăciun!

“As an actor of this country at this moment, I can say that one of the problems theatre has to deal with is the lack of well trained directors.”

Antoaneta Cojocaru, actress

Photo credit: Mihai Zgondoiu

September 17^th 2015