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Director Ion Caramitru Launches a New Challenge in the Theatre "Arena": Old Clown Wanted!
On Sunday, 8 January 2017, 7.30 p.m., the I.L. Caragiale National Theatre announces the official premiere of the show Old Clown Wanted by Matei Vişniec, directed and conceived for the stage by Ion Caramitru.
The premiere shall take place in the presence of the author, on the same day Matei Vişniec being also invited at the National Theatre Conferences. On this occasion, as of 11.00, in the welcoming atmosphere of the Small Hall, the well-known Romanian writer, who has been for many years a familiar voice in the French cultural area, shall talk to us about the Festival d’Avignon, the world capital of the theatre.
„Old Clown Wanted is a play which has followed me like a lucky star since the moment I crossed Europe from East to West, when I passed from one cultural area to another, from one language to another, searching for a new identity. I wrote this play around 1986, when I was already tired of the literature with a „key”, even of the „resistance through culture”.
He wrote it with Fellini’s clowns in mind, aiming at going from the world of metaphors and innuendos – so used at that time – to a realistic story, inspired by a world equally sad, where the star, no matter how lucky, fades much too soon, leaving memories behind, as a main resource for survival.
Elected in 1991 the best play of the year, at the UNITER contest, Old Clown Wanted became one of the most performed contemporary plays, not only on our stages. „This play was a lucky charm for me – recounts the author. After I translated it into French, it immediately found an echo in France and many other countries, it was one of my great hits in Avignon, but also in Germany, Italy, United States, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Poland…”.
The current enactment from the National Theatre of Bucharest brings into the spotlight a new vision on the text, in a variable geometry – the one of the Studio Hall, especially appealing from this point of view, where you can admire at leisure the talent of the three young performers, Petre Ancuţa, Emilian Mârnea and Florin Călbăjos – cast in a highly appreciated hypostasis in the world of circus, that of a musical clown. Three of the youngest actors of the NTB troupe interpret the roles of the three old clowns. An extraordinary challenge for an early career!
Graduates, in 2011, of the Theatre Faculty of Cluj, from the class of renowned professor Miklos Bacs, the three actors-musicians have already performed with great success on the NTB stages in the shows ActOrchestra (directed by Horia Suru), Magic National, as well as in the theatrical duo Caramitru – Mălăele…, both directed by Ion Caramitru.
With Old Clown Wanted, the theatre and circus can be regarded for the first time jointly in the rediscovered „arena” of the Studio Hall, in a tragicomic story, with grey-haired young men and old ones exiting the stage younger than they entered it, with dwarves and giants and circus dogs, juggling, acting-magic-craft, revelations after revelations, but especially with sonorities capable of taming the frost of some harsh winter evenings.
„I enjoy being challenged and I have challenged myself to lead this artistic adventure, joined by these very gifted young actors”, confesses Ion Caramitru, inviting you to be their accomplices in a tremendous experience, a game of life and death in which nothing is what it seems to be, animated by fantastic creatures, colossal memories and high-risk acrobatics of the soul.
Preview shows: 28, 29 December 2016 and 7 January 2017, 7.30 p.m., at the Studio Hall.
Translated by Simona Nichiteanu
