class="">Radu Afrim, director: „First of all, our productions are must sees”

For the last ten years, Radu Afrim’s performances are a  constant presence at the National Theatre Festival. Free- spirited Afrim comes to the 2015 NFT with “Tranquility” after Attila Bartis (a production of the  National Theatre Târgu-Mureş, “Tompa Miklos” Company) and with “Buffalos – Urban Fable #2” after Pau Miró (production of the  “Radu Stanca” Theatre, Sibiu).

Radu Afrim speaks about his performances, about what it means to be different and about „quest” in the art of theatre.

Florina Tecuceanu: You have been present at the NTF every year, over the last decade; you have turned into a “must have”. Did you get used to it? Does it still please you?

Radu Afrim: It pleases us, it pleases us! Not only financially speaking, it’s a unique opportunity for the companies from around the country to be seen in Bucharest. I share this joy with the teams I work on these shows with. After “distributing” the joy, there is still enough left for me. Joy and emotion! I might be a “must have”, but, first of all, our productions are “must sees”.

Generally, the performances are aesthetically different from what is being done in Bucharest. They are a lot about searching, they’re not entertainment, even if most of them contain a good share of pure humor. And even if they do not create the type of scandal a director can call forth, the way I did with “Three Sisters”, at the NFT in 2003, I do my best to not disappoint my spectators. And this means my performances will not please the ROC (Romanian Orthodox Church) or some precariously educated female theatre theoreticians. Last year, a gal wrote on her blog that my performance “Devil’s Casting” was a theatrical blasphemy. That was the title of her review. I so intensely enjoyed this title, that I didn’t read the review at all, fearing it might not be as clever as the title.

You’ve been selected for two performances this year, “Tranquility” and “Buffalos – Urban Fable #2”. Two of your “children” are in competition. What has each of them to give?

Ooo, what is there not to give! I have invested a lot in both. They’re in my personal top! I just won’t mention that there were two other shows of mine that could have been selected (laughs). Both bring an overdose of professionalism with them: the Hungarian ensemble in Mureş, a fabulous group of people, in my opinion, they’re better than Tompa’s company in Cluj. And the Sibiu gang comes with young energy, physical theatre, a difficult text, overfilled with emotion! I don’t recall any such performance in Bucharest. Maybe Andreea Gavriliu’s “ZicZac”, but that’s a very humorous one. For the Bufallos I worked together with this very special choreographer.

The novel “Tranquility” is fantastic and it’s a bestseller. I adapted it together with the Hungarians in Mureş. Both shows are based on violent and tender texts, about decomposing families. They are social- because there is no non-social theatre. The Mureş show also has a wild eroticism- this might please the Bucharest audiences. There are so many things written about this show, and much better than I could write.

“Buffalos” is a volet of a dyptich; I hope it will make the spectators want to see the other Sibiu performance, “Giraffes”. The Catalan author wrote a fable about frailty, using the buffalos as a symbol. It’s a very poetic text, maybe not necessarily a pleaser of the Bucharest audience- I don’t really know, although I did stage three poetic plays in Bucharest, and they were successful, against the odds.

Did these ten years of participation at the National Theatre Festival matter for the way in which you were received by the audiences, the critics, the actors, your fellow- directors? And for you, personally?

Yes! Especially the audience. And I do change my perception of the audience every year as well. But I have the same fears each year, the audiences change, taste changes more rapidly than in the 2000s. Regarding the critics, well, many of them are blocked at the level of the 90s, they’d like to see those performances replicated again and again and again (they are lucky in fact, because there is this series of directors who know they will be rewarded/awarded if they work according to that kind of directorial model). Then, a part of the critics have grown together with me, are part of my generation and have an impeccable critical discourse. Then, there is this other group of female theatre critics who for some reason just missed the train to the nunnery- they’re not my spectators, I hope!

And my fellow- directors…we don’t know each other too well! Maybe when we’ll retire, maybe if we go play dice in the park together, we’ll develop resistant friendships. And it’s well known that directors do indicate things even in alternative spaces, beyond the horizon, I guess this will be left for afterlife, for some other world. Actors were always great. Some hesitate, especially at the beginning. There is a foggy zone of their taste. I mean, you, a debutant, are in the auditorium and see the great lady of Romanian theatre. She’s tense, scandalized, her face covered with a fan made of the program leaflet she got for free.  She sees a naked man on the sacred wood of the stage and then, when there is this small fake erection of the young actor, she leaves. So you, spectator, young actor, freshly arrived from some province high school, will empathize with the shocked actress, especially if she teaches your acting classes, especially if there are rumors she will soon be running that theatre where they have one vacancy for a debutant actor, paid 150 euros a month, before tax.

How did this “festival experience” help in the construction of your future performances?

Jesus !!!! There was this other theatre theory graduate who writes quite a lot, who blundered enormously saying: it’s not ok that we don’t know beforehand who the selector for the NTF will be, because this way, the directors will not know what to do to please her/him, in their aspiration to be selected. So this is what she thinks of the artists, this is how you realize she never met a real artist in her entire life, that she herself is a fake, believing that this is how you do things in this profession, sitting around the corner and looking out for little opportunities!

I don’t have a better answer to that. The festival may be influenced by artists- the artists are not allowed to be influenced by the festival. I admit there is this trend of political theatre in Europe, a EU theatre, that the big festivals have this kind of texts on their agendas, in a very special place. But this influences creation. Those who have something to say are above norm and they surely will be casting irony upon EU theatre right there where it belongs.

If there was a clear theme given by the NTF, one that could motivate artists, a theme for those who are involved in the performing arts and if they knew it two years ahead (like I do, for example for the HOP gala) then sure! That would change the situation! I’d do a commissioned show if I’d consider the topic interests me. But still, I wouldn’t keep the framed portrait of the NFT selector on my desk, to remind who’s the boss, whom, as the involuntarily hilarious theatrologist sees it, I’d have to please.

You are the artistic director of the HOP Gala. Did you notice if any of these young actors have the same “spark” you had when you were their age?

I was never their age. I didn’t have their age in theatre. And it’s obvious that those who don’t have that “spark”, as you call it, will terminate their carriers before the age of my debut. Mr. Caramitru handed the HOP Gala to me three years ago and since that moment I met there excessively good actors, especially people with free minds, some of them beautiful contesters of a system they try to get to know. They do realize they need to be strong and united in order to be able to change it and to take their other, talented but frail, colleagues under their wing.

I like those who free themselves of the acting school experience as soon as possible and without paralyzing nostalgia. Last year, the NFT presented some of the young actors’ exercises from HOP. I could give you a list of about twenty great actors, who were at HOP over the past three years and who are already playing serious roles in film and theatre. Looks good!

Photo credit: Maria Ştefănescu

September 15^th 2015