class="">Răzvan Mazilu – face to face with the “complete actor”

Răzvan Mazilu – face to face with the “complete actor”

17 July 2014,  Articles

On 18 and 19 July 2014, the National Theater Festival (NTF) will be organizing auditions for the Răzvan Mazilu’s workshop , one of the best known and most appreciated dancers and choreographers in Romania. The auditions will be held in the Small Hall of the National Theatre in Bucharest.

In an exclusive interview for our website www.fnt.ro, Răzvan Mazilu, the initiator of the project, speaks about what he expects from the young participants, about the “complete actors” he admires, and about his favourite musicals.

An article by Adina Scorţescu / Dan Boicea

A new workshop premieres alongside the 24th edition of the NTF (24 October-2 November) ,whose theme will be The Musical. The goal: The Complete Actor / one who performs in drama, choreography, and music. Graduates of acting schools aged up to 35 have registered.

The contestants in the pre-selection will present two choreographic scenes and a monologue (adding up to a total of 15 minutes).

Those who will be admitted will participate in a three-week workshop for dance, acting, drama, and music ,between the 13th of October until 2nd of November . The resulting performances will be presented in the festival as this edition’s very own productions.

For the first time in the National Theater Festival ,the Musical has attracted more than 100 aspiring young performers in the pre- selection organized by UNITER and dancer/choreographer Răzvan Mazilu. The jury will include Marina Constantinescu / NTF Artistic Director, Răzvan Mazilu / project manager, and Adrian George Popescu / music consultant.

In the preselection organized by UNITER for the production of a musical in the National Theater festival, you will pick a few artists out of over 100 aspiring young people. Will you name five traits of a “total actor”, the one you are hoping to discover in this preselection?

Răzvan Mazilu: First of all, one must have acting, musical, and choreographic skills. Then, one must be hard-working, energetic, versatile and possess the willingness and curiosity to try out a number of genres, and thus enrich their expressive capabilities. Last, but not least, they must have charisma, a strong personality.

The autumn workshop will end in an NTF production. Can you tell us more about it? Will it be a famous musical or a more personal dance-theater show?

I would first like to give my most heart-felt congratulations to NTF’s Artistic Director, Marina Constantinescu, for the idea to draw attention to the musical, an important genre in the theatre of our time, even more so as Romanian critics are still prejudiced against the musical, considering it a minor genre.

Such a show is an escape, it’s entertainment, but also a mirror to put in front of the world, of the social issues of this age or any other , a sophisticated, spectacular expression of theatrical syncretism adjusted to the sensibility of today’s audiences.

Răzvan Mazilu, photo by Egyed Ufo Zoltan

I am curiously looking forward to the auditions on 18 and 19 July, and afterwards, depending on the results, we will decide whether the project will take the shape of an original show or a classic, famous title.

Can you give us three examples of artists (from Romania and abroad) that fall under the category of “complete actor” ?

I will limit myself to foreign examples: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Liza Minnelli, Baryshnikov, to name a few very well known ones. Then our contemporaries Raul Esparza, Rachel York (on Broadway), Pina Bausch’s and Joseph Nadj’s artists in Europe. But there are many more…

You started as a dancer, then veered your career towards dance-theater. What novelties does theater bring?

I started my career in dance-theater. My first shows, The Lady of the Camellias and Talk to Me Like the Rain…, even The House of Bernarda Alba – my first exam in choreographic creation – attempted to search, to explore an experiment with the secrets of dance-theater. Then I became a little afraid, thinking that the quality of a dancer is assessed by a different measure, so I focused more on dance and performance.

Even so, almost everything I did in dance was connected to theater, think only of Playing Shakespeare or, beginning with the 2000s, of my collaboration with Odeon Theater.

I have always been attracted by theatricality more than by the abstract side of contemporary dance. Now, following the shows I directed in the past seasons, I’m going back to directing and choreography, and it seems that the musical is the performing genre which suits me best, which I feel best doing.

Have you ever felt that dance limits your possibility of expression?

It’s not a matter of limits, but rather, at some point the means of expression become insufficient. What I felt was that the gesture ends somewhere and that beyond the hand that I extend while dancing was the sound, my own sound which was trying to get out of me naturally. That is why I also spoke in my shows, Julius Caesar, Remember, and Requiem.

In the beginning it wasn’t easy, I admit, because at ballet school all our natural impulses were inhibited, restricted, mutilated.

What is your favorite musical?

There are several. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s, Kander and Ebb’s, Mancini’s Victor/Victoria and Elton John’s. A wonderful discovery was David Yazbek’s music when I staged The Full Monty with the Timişoara National Theater. One of my plans for the future is Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, another David Yazbek score, after Almodovar’s famous movie.

Cabaret, directed and choreographed by Răzvan Mazilu. Timişoara German State Theater. Photo: Ovidiu Ciba

How would you encourage a talented young artist about to give up dancing because of various frustrations (no place to dance, small earnings, slow progress because the system inhibits it) in favor of a job in, say, a multinational company?

I don’t know, I’m not so good at giving advice… I think I would tell him or her that they would be very unhappy if they gave up what they love the most, the thing they are destined for. The truth is that if you work hard you cannot fail, you will have satisfactions.

Which was the most difficult moment in your career and how did you get over it?

I never had such a moment and I hope I never will. I’m thinking, though, that professional dance is a very consuming occupation, you must always start over, and with that comes great exhaustion, a deterioration of the body, and the secret of longevity in dance is perhaps the knowledge to overcome all this.

Is there anything you would never do on stage as a dancer, a thing that would come into conflict with your principles?

I don’t think so. It seems extraordinary to me that on stage you can do anything and everything is forgiven.We can be as crazy as we wish (of course, in an artistic way!) without being judged.
However… I recently saw a show with disabled people whose disabilities were exploited to generate emotion, which is not right, because on-stage emotion must only be artistic.

Scenes from Cabaret, a production of the Timişoara German State Theater, directed and choreographed by Răzvan Mazilu

How can dance, as a cultural phenomenon in Romania, get over its underdog status?

It’s been more than twenty years since myself and my colleagues have been fighting without success… last time we went to an audience with one of the former ministers of culture to support the independence of the Bucharest National Dance Center, we found the subject to be something of a Pandora’s box, which I would not like to open. I prefer to remain in the world of the musical.

Complete the sentence that begins: If I didn’t dance…

… I would do musicals.

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Photo: Dinu Lazăr (the photograph at the beginning of the article shows Răzvan Mazilu in Shadows of Light)

17 July 2014