class="">Twenty-Five Years of Stories in the Romanian Theatre

We have been learning the language of democracy for twenty-five years. Ever since the Greeks, though, we let ourselves be seduced by the power of the theatre to bring us together, to help us decipher the exercise of dialogue. The theatre is the profound humanity within us and our society. It is the suspended time of „us” and not just „I”. The theatre speaks piercingly about each and every one of us, about community, about times. And it brings about an encounter. Beyond reality.

by Marina Constantinescu, the NTF’s artistic director

Travelling through Romania for the selection of the National Theatre Festival, I have seen a hallucinating country. Alive yet numb, European yet provincial, modern yet conservative. I have seen the side of Romania that nobody talks about and very few of us really want to know about. I discovered once again that the road from reality to fiction, which the theatre proposes, is a sign of normality. It is the road to our own selves.

The theatre talks about what we live with intensity and distinction, about this particular country and this particular moment in history. The over forty performances are first and foremost more than forty stories with and about us. Now, tomorrow and yesterday. About us anytime. A sharp and powerful mirror of the Romanian theatre, as well as of the world where it originates. A bustling, overburdened world, worn out by all sorts of conflicts, dangers, wars, terrorism, lies, indolence, hate, envy and murder. A world in which love and truth still exist. That is what I felt during my ten-month travel in search of Romanian theatre. „It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it”. Seneca was right.

But the theatre is the celebration which expands time, so that all of us can fit in, for one night. And which makes us all richer. We lose ourselves in the others, we wander around the stories of the others, we travel through illusions, in the most sublime inner freedom.

That is all I propose to you. Let us be free, in order to perceive what draws us near and what separates us. In order to enjoy the distinction of the famous artists and the challenges of the younger ones. While the 25^th edition of the National Theatre Festival is a jubilee, I have not had a festive strategy in mind. I have not aimed at bringing performances which cover the whole map, just like I have not necessarily thought of names, figures or representation. I have never been influenced by such an approach.

This year’s edition is vast and diverse, with a focus on the quality, value and subtlety of the performing arts as proof of the stake of the Culture and Spirituality which govern us. And the whole world. This Festival is unique in its telling in every way possible the fascinating story of the Romanian theatre. For twenty-five years.