class="">Old Clown Wanted by Matei Vișniec

Three old clowns, Nicollo, Filippo and Peppino, meet in front of a hiring notice, ready to give their best for the last trick, the supreme frolic before the last curtain falls. The body plays tricks on them, but the mind is vibrating, hypnotizing, and the remembrance of past glory turns the whole world into an extravaganza, into a miraculous manège, a surrealist scenery.

The audience is an amused accomplice in their adventure, a game of life and death in which nothing is what it seems to be, and the theatre hall transforms unknowingly into a circus arena, where one can find fantastic characters, but also their own forgotten dreams.

The play gives the audience the chance to rediscover three very gifted young actors of the National Theatre of Bucharest: Petre Ancuţa, Emilian Mârnea and Florin Călbăjos. They shall be illusionists and artists at the same time, expressive and surprising, combining music, pantomime, magic and charming performance in order to build characters at the threshold between reality and fantasy.

Old Clown Wanted is playwright Matei Vişniec’s last creation before leaving Romania; in 1991 it received the UNITER Award for the Best Romanian Play.