A fast-paced and provocative prank: Perplex by Marius von Mayenburg
17 May 2023
For the first time on the Atelier stage of the "I.L. Caragiale" National Theatre in Bucharest, Perplex - a play by one of the most popular contemporary German authors, Marius von Mayenburg!
Translated by Elise Wilk and directed by Stefan Iordanescu, "Perplex" is an absurd and surreal comedy, in which the world of the protagonists falls apart with dizzying speed, where relationships dissolve and reassemble in surprising ways. The first performances will take place on 10 and 11 May (previews), 17 May 2023 (premiere). Until the end of the season, two more performances on 3 and 22 June 2023. All performances start at 20.00.
Marius von Mayenburg is a playwright and director at the famous Berlin theatre Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz - where he began his career and established himself as a playwright with the play Feuergesicht/Fireface, subsequently translated into over 20 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean. He has written numerous plays and radio plays. He also works as a translator (Shakespeare, Sarah Kane, Martin Crimp, etc.) In 2010, he wrote PERPLEX, which he staged himself at the Schaubühne. This play has been staged once before in Romania, by Theodor Cristian Popescu, at the "Ioan Slavici" Theatre in Arad. Also in our country, his plays "Fireface", "The Cold Child", "The Ugly one", "Plastic", "Martyr", "The Stone".
Instigating and rebellious, funny and witty, the German playwright's text launches a real assault on theatrical conventions, on the classical plot, on the traditional concept of the fourth wall and, finally, on the consistency of the theatrical character.
The situations follow one another confusingly and quickly, impregnated with a lot of humor, in this play in which everything is theater, but the director has not appeared, and the set is dismantled while the play is still playing. A play in which vitality and metamorphosis are celebrated, revealing the human tendency to escape to other roles, other identities, or other, perhaps more auspicious lives.
The author leaves it up to the director and actors to decide whether the characters take on the names of the performers. That's why you'll hear them calling each other by name, or using their diminutive. In the cast: Medeea Marinescu, Alexandra Salceanu, Gavril Patru, Petre Ancuta.
"The moment you meet four actors so dedicated, so willing to unravel the secrets of a text that breaks the barriers of conventional dramaturgy - says director Stefan Iordanescu - it's better to step back. For me, this project was an experiment. That of respecting the spirit and the letter of the text as much as possible.
I believe it is our duty to make the audience go through all the stages through which four actors, in exceptional form, bring before our eyes a story about the world and life, about the ridiculous and the sublime, with the means of the postmodernist current in which, of course, nothing of what there is not apparent to you, in which themes from Pirandello, Brecht and Martin Crimp are woven together in an almost mathematical demonstration of the world, life, theatre and the vain. At these moments the author has decreed that the director has retired. And so he should be. I'd still like to find him somewhere again at the applause and catch a glimpse of the gleam of triumph in the eyes of the actors on stage. Because we also have to contradict the text, don't we?" asks the director rhetorically.
The atmosphere of the show is supported artistically, visually and acoustically by his other collaborators: Dorothea Iordanescu - Set design and original music, Sebastian Hamburger - Video design, Flavia Giurgiu - Stage movement, Lucian Moga - Lighting design.
We invite you to stay as long as possible... Perplexed, watching this fast-paced and provocative prank, brilliantly performed by the four NTB actors, under the discreet but effective direction of director Stefan Iordanescu.
Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu
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