by Boris Bakal and Katarina Pejovic
directed by Bakal and Pejovic
Shadow Casters, Croatia
http://www.huntheater.ro/interferences/darab.php?eid=171
We come into a little waiting area with benches. Andras tells Larissa the history of this building. That after WW2, there were only a few Jews left in Cluj. Something like 60. There are about 27 of us waiting on the benches. "Sorry we counted you so many times, but we can only have a certain number of audience members, and you will see why." Everyone around me is speaking Hungarian. They take us into the main performance space one by one. Me and another woman are the last two left. "Always the last or the first," she says. I'm taken in second to last. A nice woman greets me, and asks me my name. She takes me into the space. She gets me a blanket. She leads me into an area with a bunch of little cots. Everyone in there is lying down in separate cots and it's dark. The walls of the performance space are white gauze. My cot is the bottom bed of bunk beds. She takes my coat and hangs it on the bed. She places a fresh pillowcase on my pillow. I take off my shoes and get into bed. We all lay there in silence for a while. Then ambient sounds. Teeth brushed. People pacing around. A man crying. Telling a story about someone who looked like someone he went to school with. After about 10 minutes, some actors enter the space in the middle. They are coming home. They dialogue is in English. I crawl to the edge of my bed to watch. The young man, the crying man has gotten mixed up with the mafia. His life is at risk. The drama escalates and eventually the older man takes him out of the space away from the women. Silence. A man enters, and reads a list of things that he likes about life. All simple things. It's moving to me and I start crying in my little bed. One of the company members comes to each bed and has us put on headphones. There are two simultaneous monologues. A recently deceased young woman talks about death. All the loved ones that recently died before her. The daughter she leaves behind. "I somehow thought that I was irreplaceable." The show tapped into something pretty primal. It was really an experience.
Alcoholics
by Andras Visky
directed by Gabor Tompa
Teatrul Maghiar Stat de Cluj
http://www.huntheater.ro/interferences/darab.php?eid=155
The girl who's become my friend with the translation headsets assures me that this time it will work. I take my seat in the second row, next to the pretty blonde lady who takes quiet pictures with the big box. Upstage is a huge pile of trash beyond a dirty shallow square lagoon of water with boards as a bridge across it. To stage left is an emptied out barrel, stage right a locker. Imola Kezdi is Eva, the homeless alcoholic who wanted to be an actress. She gives one of the greatest performances I have ever witnessed. Feral, relentless, funny, human, sweet, violent, full, crackling, sparking, ferocious. Singing, dumb drunk, stumbling, spitting. I mostly just can't take my eyes off of her. One of the ensemble members is a violinist who accompanies the whole piece. Some elements of the production are underdeveloped. The angels who suddenly enter the scene are a bit cliche. Eva at one point becomes Mary, who visits the empty tomb. The stations of the cross factor into the script, but it wasn't entirely clear to me. Mary gets drunk with the other Mary, played by another homeless vagabond, named Trezor, with a few teeth, and they're quite rotten ones. Eva gives a monolgue towards the end in a fantasy sequence where she thanks everyone who's helped her "become a famous dancer and actress." Reminiscent of Precious. Kezdi broke my heart. In the final moment of the play, after Eva is redeemed, I was overwhelmed by an emotion that I didn't understand, and I started to weep.
Endgame
by Samuel Beckett
directed by Krystian Lupa
Teatro de La Abadia, Spain
http://www.huntheater.ro/interferences/darab.php?eid=175
The huge proscenium stage in the main theatre is blacked out on the sides. A big cement basement is carved out of the middle, surrounded by a strip of red light around the edges. Windows in the back. A man in a wheel chair with a bag over this head. The acting in this production is extremely strong. Ana is working the supertitles, so I am rooting for her. Clov is played by a woman. Her commitment to the physicality of the staging leaves a little bit to be desired, but that's pretty much the only foible with the performances here. The woman sitting next to me asks me if my headset is in English. I tell her yes. She says that they told her there would be English supertitles. Since I know some Spanish and some Romanian (there are Romanian and Hungarian supertitles and the play is performed in Spanish), I offer her my headset. I do pretty well. It's a shame that I haven't read this play. Theatre without translation. Struggling through language while engaging with performance. I could write a book about this after my experience here in Cluj. It's pretty fascinating. Nagg and Nell are in little coffins on rollers, meat locker drawers that are pulled out of the wall on stage right. The play takes its time, and just delivers the goods. If I'd had translation, it would have been a richer experience, I'm sure.
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