On Tour
Ghosts and Dandelions at Bals
The play "Ghosts and Dandelions" returns to where it all began, in Oltenia, more precisely in Bals, the birthplace of writer, director, and actor Gavril Patru.
For at least 35 years, there has not been a theater performance at the Youth Center in Bals. So, for the residents, October 28 will be a real event!
Gavril Patru is the director and author of the play "Ghosts and Dandelions", which is part of the theater volume that earned him the "Marin Sorescu" Award for Debut Book of the Year 2022, offered by the Bucharest Branch of the Writers' Union.
Inspired by his childhood and adolescence spent in a village in Oltenia, "Ghosts and Dandelions" offers an authentic picture of Oltenia, with its customs, superstitions, popular language, and local mythology, capturing with humor and authenticity the atmosphere of magical realism of the "land of the right words," as Marin Sorescu called Oltenia, highlighting the linguistic richness and creativity of the local people.
Gavril Patru sketches a caustic and humorous family portrait against the backdrop of a wake with surrealist accents, the perfect setting in which the superstitions of the Oltenian village bring to the surface family secrets and personal dramas.
An performance typical for Oltenia, gothic, bizarre, sarcastic, and sharp as a glass of sour wine on an empty stomach, a black comedy with vampires, thousand-year-old women, and the scent of sarmale, a farce played at a devilish pace, but with moments of rare dramatic sensitivity, which makes us witnesses to the inevitable moment in the life of a family, in which, as the poet says, "all secrets come to light, like oil."
Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu
