Zorro premiere
11 December 2022
“Zorro, a Hermit on the Sidewalk”, for the first time at TNB, with Ioan Andrei Ionescu
The "I.L.Caragiale" National Theatre announces the premiere of a new show as part of the "Open Doors for All" program, Zorro by Margaret Mazzantini, a text translated and presented in National Premiere. A one-man show by actor Ioan Andrei Ionescu, directed by Toma Dănilă, the new production at Pictura Hall will premiere on December 11, 2022, at 8 pm.
The audience is invited to the preview of the show on December 4th to discover, in the setting signed by Mara Nicola, one of the most moving contemporary stories about the unpredictable, multi-faceted way in which fate can play tricks on us and life can change without warning. How a good man can become both victim and executioner at the same time, when everything in his life goes haywire and he can no longer rely on anything that used to be ordinary, safe... Come and discover a moving dramatic monologue that will remind you how fragile and exposed to chance we are.
"I invite you to do an exercise of imagination together," proposes Toma Danila, the director of the play. Let's walk together into the story of Zorro, the faceless man we can meet on the street corner or at the traffic light in a busy intersection, the faceless man who blends into the landscape, the man we avoid because he could spoil our normality, he could hijack our daily routine. I invite you to find out his story, and perhaps, afterwards, we will take a closer look at those we used to call "street people" or "homeless". Maybe we'll just call them "People".
An actor with multiple interpretative skills, Ioan Andrei Ionescu continues to surprise his audience by tackling a variety of characters and by dissecting, in depth, the particularities that make each character he plays a special human type. From a rich artistic record, we recall, selectively, the part in "Anonymous Venetian" - a show that he has successfully performed for almost a decade with his partner, Ilinca Goia, the role of Lopahin in "The Cherry Orchard" or his recent and remarkable creation in "Machinal. The Musical", Mr. Zero, an acting performance of great virtuosity! Of the more than 20 different characters he has played over the years on the NTB stages alone, Ioan Andrei Ionescu considers Zorro to be his most demanding and moving part.
The author of this touching story, Margaret Mazzantini is a famous Italian writer and actress who has given up the stage in favour of writing. For her novel "Don't Move" (2002) she received the Strega Prize and the Grinzane Cavour Prize, Italy's most prestigious literary awards. Translated into 35 languages, the book immediately became an international bestseller, selling more than two million copies, and was screened by Sergio Castellitto, starring Penelope Cruz. She wrote the stage monologue "Zorro, a hermit on the sidewalk" in 2004 for her husband, actor and director Sergio Castellitto.
"Zorro helped me to uncover a fear we all have. Because within each of us, unacknowledged, masked, there is this extreme possibility: the sudden loss of the threads, the ballast that holds us anchored to the ordinary world. How many of us, on a night when our souls were gulping, sheltering under a portico, with the shutters up, have not felt towards that body, towards that pile of rags under which a body hides, the possibility of being ourselves in its place? Homeless people are wanderers who have escaped from our homes, who have the smell of our closets, the smell of what they don't have, but also of what we lack."
The performance given by the actor of the National Theatre in Bucharest, Ioan Andrei Ionescu, will convince you that the bet with life is worth winning every day, with sincerity and empathy towards those around us.
You are invited to the theatre, Zorro is here, and everywhere, there is more than you would expect... “Zorro, a Hermit on the Sidewalk” by Margaret Mazzantini, with Ioan Andrei Ionescu, on December 4 and 11, 2022, at the Pictura Hall!
Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu
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