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An Exceptional Ionesco, Premiering at NTB!
The I.L. Caragiale National Theatre of Bucharest announces the premiere of the play Exit the King by Eugène Ionesco, a show with great actors, a reference play of contemporary literature, staged by a popular tandem of directors, the young Andrei and Andreea Grosu, founders of Unteatru, which has become one of the most appreciated theatres.
Exit the King is an enactment not attempting to amaze through scenery or costumes, but in the first place, a reencounter with an acting couple offering us an artistic feast with each appearance on stage, Mariana Mihuţ and Victor Rebengiuc, joined by Ana Ciontea, Florentina Ţilea, Şerban Pavlu and Richard Bovnoczki, telling us a story in which time is dilated and distances are diminished like magic. The stage design is created by Vladimir Turturica and Chris Jaeger signs the light design of the show.
Despite the title, the show is fortified by the lust for life and man’s incapacity to make peace with death.
We are living disorderly – with a constant craving for tomorrow, we love desperately, we procrastinate as much as we can, we hurt without feeling, we turn mistakes into experiences and continue to experiment. The show is a praise to this unconsciousness named life.
Exit the King, a staging stirring the numbed consciousness of being and putting the soul’s strength to test, in relation to man’s sole certainty, death, in front of which we can choose to believe that we are kings, although we are mere subjects. To the question What is more absurd between life and death?, Ionesco would probably answer: man!
Eugène Ionesco was obsessed by the theme of exitus throughout his entire life, ever since childhood. ”Ever since the age of four, when I knew I would die, the anguish has never left me. It is as if I had understood, all of a sudden, that there was nothing left to do to escape it and there was nothing left to do in life (…). I am also writing to express my fear of dying, my humility of dying”, confessed the famous Romanian author. I told myself that you can learn how to die, that you can teach others how to die. This seems to me the essential thing we can do, because we are mortals not accepting the fact of dying‒ motivates playwright Eugène Ionesco the genesis of the play Exit the King.
"Mr. Ionesco’s King has enabled one of the most beautiful encounters for us, claim Andrei and Andreea Grosu, the directors of the show. With people we fell in love with, with people we were already in love with and which we shall cherish the way they offered themselves to us, with smiles, fears, joyful, emotional, authentic. The queen leading us, another one trembling, the overwhelmed physician, the powerless guard, the frail maid and a dying king. We learn from them the art of dying. It is a story with kings and queens, with clouds and trees growing out of floors, great inventors, fears, family, but especially with and about love".
The official premiere is scheduled for 28th November 2017, from 7.30 p.m., in the Grand Hall.
The next representation shall take place on 17th December 2017.
Tickets can be purchased at the NTB Box Office, from the Grand Hall foyer, as well as online, on www.mystage.ro.
Translated by Simona Nichiteanu
