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National Theatre Podcasts series

03 July 2024
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03 Jul 2024 (Online) 00:00
The National Theater will be lit up for European Fertility Week 04 November 2024
From November 4 to 10, 2024, the 9th edition of the European Fertility Week is taking place, during which Fertility Europe - the pan-European organization that brings together 33 associations of patients affected by infertility from 28 countries - is intensifying its awareness & advocacy actions for the cause of those who want children but can only have them with medical help. On this occasion, the SOS Infertility Association is organizing the 13th edition of the National Week of Awareness of the Medical and Social Phenomenon of Infertility, an event that has been organized in Romania since 2012 and which since 2016 has been held under the umbrella of European Fertility Week. Among the actions of the Awareness Week organized by SOS Infertility Association we recall: - Press conference (Monday, November 4, from 11:00, Grand Hotel Continental) - among other topics, on the need to adopt a National Plan to fight Infertility, a proposal that SOS Infertility Association will address to the new government in January 2025. - Launch of the study The Sociology of Infertility and Demographic Rearmament: a Romanian perspective on the profitability for the state budget of public investment in the conception of a child through in vitro fertilization, author lect. univ. dr. Bogdan Bucur, sociologist. - Architectural illumination, celebrating European Fertility Week 2024 - supporting the cause of the fight against infertility Bucharest• Victoria Palace – Romanian Government Headquarters• Parliament Palace - seat of the Romanian Parliament• Special Telecommunications Tower of the Special Telecommunications Service (STS)• National Opera in Bucharest• Grigore Antipa Museum of Natural History• CEC Bank Palace – Calea Victoriei• Bucharest National Theater  Brasov• Brasov City Hall• The letters "BRASOV" on the Tampa Cluj-Napoca- "Iuliu Hatieganu" Faculty of Medicine Cluj-Napoca Sibiu• Sibiu City Hall Timisoara• National Opera in Timisoara• National Art Museum in Timisoara - Continuation of the # education_on_fertility campaign: online information about fertility - aimed at the general public, who in principle are not currently experiencing infertility, but could be in this category in the absence of correct information. - Numerous online collective actions, which are intensely shared by a large number of the 43,000 members of the SOS Infertility FB group. - After the European Fertility Week, the 8th issue of "What do you know about your fertility?", a fertility education tool produced and distributed free of charge by SOS Infertility Association, will be out of print. At the European level, during this edition of the European Fertility Week, Fertility Europe is launching the "Gamete Story" campaign, with a focus on human reproduction procedures with third party donors. Fertility Europe, an organization of which SOS Infertility Association is a member since 2010, is calling on decision-makers at European political level and at Member State level:- acknowledge the right to try to have a child as a universal right throughout the European Union;- ensure equal, fair and safe access to infertility treatment;- ensure public funding for all stages of infertility treatment;- involve the public sector in providing better information about fertility and infertility;- implement communication campaigns to remove the stigma associated with infertility problems Messages of #education_on_fertility that the SOS Infertility Association would like to convey to the general public on the occasion of European Fertility Week:- Infertility affects one in six (or, according to more recent statistics, one in five) couples worldwide.- Female fertility declines earlier than commonly thought, with oocytes losing their reproductive capacity particularly after the age of 35.- In half of cases of couple infertility, the male factor is responsible.- If you want children, don't postpone pregnancy.- If pregnancy is delayed, see an infertility specialist (not your gynecologist).- Each year, the number of people going to infertility treatment centers increases by 8-9%.- In vitro fertilization is an exceptional medical advance that can help infertile couples have children, but it is not a panacea. In vitro fertilization cannot overcome the female age factor.- No, babies don't come after 40, as we see on the glossy covers of some magazines. Or: they don't come easily. More often than not, those 40+ moms needed egg donation.- Worldwide, there are more than 12 million people conceived through in vitro fertilization. Currently, a baby conceived through IVF is born every 35 seconds. Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu 
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NTB: Autumn news 04 November 2024
  At the beginning of September, the I.L. Caragiale" opened, at its headquarters, a new theater season after the previous season - 2023 - 2024 - which also marked the 50th anniversary of the institution's activity in the current building, proved to be a remarkable one: in the 10 months of activity (September 2023 - June 2024), 10 premieres saw the light of the stage, confirming that the first stage of the country is in one of its most effervescent moments. Throughout this period, the occupancy rate has exceeded 80%, with the majority of the shows in the repertoire being sold-out from the very first moments of ticket sales. The beginning of the new season was marked by the high-impact presence of the "I.L. Caragiale" National Theatre at the 9th edition of the Romanian National Theaters' Meeting from both sides of the Prut River, in Chisinau, with three representative performances from the current repertoire of the TNB, which were applauded openly by the enthusiastic audience in the capital of the Republic of Moldova: Exit the King, Gertrude and A Few People Away from You. The NTB performance The Silent Escape, directed and performed by the actress Oana Pellea, enjoyed a well-deserved prestigious success during the two special performances held in September at the Théâtre des Capucins in Luxembourg. On October 4th, the first premiere of the new season took place: the documentary-performance The Eichmann Trial by Motti Lerner, directed by actor Mihai Călin (directorial debut!) and presented in its world premiere at the NTB Sala Atelier. "The Eichmann Trial is a play about an event that took place in Israel in 1961. But the purpose of the play is not to re-enact the event as a history lesson. (...) This play is a moral statement which, in today's times, is extremely necessary for the whole world"- this is how playwright Motti Lerner defines the message of his play. A much-needed history lesson and a wake-up call to prevent an unfortunate repetition of history, The Eichmann Trial, staged with intense emotional involvement by an excellent team of actors, is aimed at adults and teenagers, high school students and their teachers. It is not by chance that the National Theatre's performance of The Eichmann Trial was realized within the tnb.edu Program - a program developed out of the conviction that Theatre, by excellence an art of encounter, can complement and cover an important side in the educational process, the emotional-cognitive and direct experience. But what are the latest news of the current season? The return, after 32 years, of director Andrei Șerban to the National Theatre to stage Robert Icke's Mary Stuart "... is not just a premiere, but a major cultural event. The production of Mary Stuart comes with the promise of an intense exploration of great historical and personal conflicts, under the baton of a director who has left his mark on world theater. This is an important moment for the Romanian theater, marking the return of a master who continues to fascinate and challenge new generations of spectators"- says journalist Radu Caranfil (Puterea, Sept. 20, 2024). And Andrei Șerban, in a recent interview with Horia Ghibuțiu (Timp liber magazine, Oct. 11, 2024), says: "I'm back after 30 years at the National Theatre with an extremely ambitious project - Mary Stuart, a modern adaptation of Schiller's famous historical play. It is the drama of two powerful women, Mary and Elizabeth - two queens, of Scotland and England respectively. Both come face to face with the most extreme consequences of power. Mary is a prisoner because she plotted to obtain the crown of England, and Elizabeth, though on the throne, feels herself a captive, dependent on the will of the mob, the manipulations of corrupt politicians or a prisoner of her own ambitions for power. Conclusion: "The royal crown is a jeweled prison cell". A play about the plight of these women, fascinated by each other, caught in a complex web of attraction, rivalry and jealousy. A nation divided, when history loses its meaning and everything seems driven by chance, a truth of all times as well as of the moment we are living in now." Șerban has always been drawn to contemporary reinterpretations of great classical texts, and the collaboration with Robert Icke, one of the most talented British directors of his generation, represents a pinnacle meeting of two different theatrical visions. Mary Stuart directed by Robert Icke premiered at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2016, and the play's combination of modern set design, accessible language and timeless themes has contributed to its critical success. Here is also the team of actors and directors of this upcoming premiere of the National: Raluca Aprodu, Nicoleta Lefter, Ofelia Popii, Florin Aioane, Claudiu Bleont, Marius Bodochi, Mihai Calin, Mihai Calota, Florin Calbajos, Tudor Cucu Dumitrescu, Conrad Mericoffer, Stefan Mihai, Ciprian Nicula, Emilian Oprea. Directed by: Andrei Serban; Associate director: Dana Dima; Set design: Helmut Stürmer; Costumes: Corina Gramosteanu; Music: Alexei Ţurcan; Video: Andrei Cozlac; Lighting design: Cristi Niculescu. Director Felix Alexa is already a regular on the stages of the National Theatre, where we will find him again this season with a staging of the one-act play, Out at Sea, by Polish playwright Sławomir Mroźek. It was written in the 1960s, when censorship was in place in Poland and the playwright was forced to find various roundabout ways to express his beliefs against the Soviet regime. This black comedy follows the adventures of three castaways trying to find a democratic way to decide which of the three will be sacrificed so that the other two may survive... The ethical dilemma is supported by increasingly unusual arguments, until the intervention of a passing postman and an old servant take the play into a hilariously surrealist exaggeration with an unexpected denouement. In the roles of the five male characters, director Felix Alexa (who is also responsible for the musical illustration and lighting design) has cast actors Serban Pavlu, Emilian Marnea, Andrei Finti, Eduard Cirlan and ....Victoria Dicu. Sets: Stefan Caragiu. Costumes: Liliana Cenean. Another expected directorial presence is that of director Botond Nagy, who debuted at the Bucharest National Theatre in March 2023 with the performance The word progress spoken by the mother sounds terribly false by Matei Vishniec. In November, Botond Nagy begins rehearsals for an extremely provocative text - The Prophet Elijah, by another contemporary Polish playwright, Tadeusz Slobodzianek *. (Born in 1955, Slobodzianek is also a director, theatre critic, teacher and director of the Warsaw Drama Theatre, author, among others, of the very well known play Our Class, performed by several theatres in Romania). The premiere is scheduled for February 2025. In December, rehearsals will begin for Secundar, a new production by Alexandra Badea, author and director of her own dramatic text. "The meeting with the NTB company during rehearsals for 'Exile' and the communication I had with the actors inspired me to create a new project based on a text I wrote for them," says Alexandra Badea. The theme of the show is the existential crisis, secrecy, repression, feelings of guilt, collective trauma that has welded or disintegrated a group, fragility, solidarity, individualism. It is the story of a community of people who have been working together for many years, disrupted by an event that provokes a chain of conflicts. Events from the past reappear in the form of flashbacks, in which we discover the toxicity and complexity of their relationships, power games, domination, ambiguity, the difficulty of separating the intimate from the professional." Director Victor Ioan Frunza returns, after a long absence from the stages of the National Theatre, with an ambitious project based on Shakespeare's texts, for which he is already preparing a cast. We will come back with details as soon as they are finalized. So, the series of exciting performances, supported by some of the most brilliant casts, continues at the National this fall, expecting the same enthusiastic audience that we have grown accustomed to in recent seasons.   Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu 
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For the first time at NTB: The Eichmann Trial 04 October 2024
"The Eichmann Trial is a play about an event that took place in Israel in 1961. But the purpose of the play is not to reconstruct the event as a history lesson. It has quite different aims: a moral, an educational and a social one that go much further. The first and most obvious is to unravel the inner mechanism of Eichmann, a human being - perhaps monstrous, but human after all - that made him commit genocide against the Jewish people of Europe. Unfortunately, this still remains a very important goal today, when even after the Second World War there have been too many cases of genocide on this planet. (...) This play is a moral statement more necessary today than ever for the whole world." - this is how the playwright Motti Lerner defines the message of his play whose world premiere will take place at the "I.L. Caragiale" National Theatre (Atelier Hall), in the presence of the author, on October 4 and 5, 2024. Born in Israel in 1949, Motti Lerner studied mathematics and physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, followed by theater studies in London and San Francisco, and is now one of Israel's best-known playwrights and screenwriters, including international acclaim with plays performed in the United States, England, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, South Africa, India, Australia, Italy, Austria, South Africa and Switzerland. From 1993-2008 he taught a course on Political Drama at Tel Aviv University, was a resident at the Center for Postgraduate Jewish Studies at Oxford, visiting professor at the theater department of Duke University in North Carolina, etc. Honored in 1994 with the Prime Minister of Israel's "Writers' Prize" and in 2014 with the Landau Prize for the Performing Arts. Motti Lerner's writings deal with deeply controversial political themes, focusing on the Jewish community and the Israeli identity, including the Holocaust, Zionism, terrorism, and some biographies, in the form of documentary theater texts, which have even been the target of censorship, despite the numerous literary awards he has received. The story of Adolf Eichmann, the Obersturmbannführer-SSS who organized and led the abominable "Final Solution" that led to the extermination of six million Jews between 1940-1945 is a well-known one. Condemned as a major war criminal by the Nuremberg Tribunal, he was sentenced to death in absentia. Captured by Mossad in Argentina, he was retried by a Jerusalem court. The public prosecution was led by Israel's first prosecutor, Gideon Hausner. Found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Eichmann was sentenced to death and executed by hanging at Ramla prison on May 31, 1962. His ashes were scattered in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea to avoid possible future pilgrimages. Based on the re-enactment of the Jerusalem trial, Motti Lerner's play, and thus the performance directed by actor Mihai Calin, aims to have a profound impact on the conscience of the audience: "One of the most agonizing questions I have had over the years in connection with the Holocaust has been: «How can this have happened?!». Many people now believe that it was a long time ago and that it has nothing to do with the present (like communism, for that matter...)" – says Mihai Calin, trying to convey a question we should all ask ourselves. Unfortunately, history repeats itself and, each time, it is the leaders who are condemned ( mostly in declarations), the embodiments of Absolute Evil: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Milošević, ...Ceaușescu... But there is something deeper and more frightening than the EVIL personified by these monsters: the «banality of evil» of which Hannah Arendt speaks and the gears of the system's little cogs, «normal» citizens, «God-fearing» men and women, loving parents, more or less petty officials, who keep the wheels of Terror, Cruelty and Extermination turning perfectly." A necessary lesson in history, but also a wake-up call to prevent an unfortunate repetition of it, the play The Eichmann Trial, staged with intense emotional participation by an excellent team of actors, is addressed to both adult and teenage spectators, high school students and their teachers. It is not by chance that the National Theatre's performance of The Eichmann Trial was carried out within the tnb.edu Program - a program developed out of the conviction that Theatre, by excellence an art of encounter, can complement and cover an important side in the educational process, the emotional-cognitive and direct experience. "I am very grateful to the National Theater in Bucharest for producing the world premiere of this play" - says writer Motti Lerner, who will come to Bucharest especially to attend the first performance of The Eichmann Trial. *We would like to point out that the initiator and supporter of the project in Romania is Mrs. Tova BEN-NUN CHERBIS, president and founder of the "Magna Cum Laude-Reut" Foundation”. Cast: Richard Bovnoczki, Diana Dumbrava, Razvan Popa, Mihai Calin, Axel Moustache, Vitalie Bichir, loan Andrei Ionescu, Cosmina Olariu, Florin Calbajos, Emilian Oprea, Iuliana Moise, Irina Movila, Ana Ciontea, Ovidiu Cuncea, Rodica Ionescu, Andrei Finți. Directed by: Mihai Calin. Set design: Gabi Albu. Original music: Nikita Dembinski. Video-design: Constantin Șimon. Images and video footage: Mircea I. Anca. Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu 
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NTB organizes a playwriting workshop 27 September 2024
The "I.L. Caragiale" National Theatre organizes, from November 4, 2024 to April 28, 2025, a Playwriting Workshop coordinated by Mimi Branescu. The workshop is open to anyone interested. Registrations should be sent to andrei.marinescu@tnb.ro by October 20, 2024. The application must contain: - a brief CV - contact details - a text of your own creation, maximum 3 pages, with a scene for 2-3 characters or a monologue The Workshop will take place once a week. A maximum of 10 participants will be selected and will be notified by e-mail. Participation in the Workshop is free of charge!   Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu
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