NETA News

Electra, a staging of the National Theatre of Macedonia, is one of the one of the most anticipated plays in the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival and will open Friday, on September 4 on the National Theatre of Bucharest’s Grand Hall stage. Andriy Zholdak is the director of the play, once a “wonder child” of the Ukrainian directing community and one of the most appreciated European artists of nowadays. Distinguished with the UNESCO Award in 2004 for his contribution to the development of the theatrical art and with two “Golden Mask” awards in 2014, in Russia, the original Ukrainian artist with residence in Germany is either brilliant of terribly uncomfortable and has worked on many important European stages in Russia, Finland, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland. He is also well known for his theories on the renewal of the theatrical art, presented in international workshops and conferences. This 3hrs and 30 minutes show is born out of a minimalistic text but which holds, complete, ravishing, the substance of antic tragedy. “Zholdak resembles a meteorite which cracks and breaks the surface of a familiar text…,” said dramaturge George Banu in 2009. “He is not an advocate for traditions, but he does not set out with the intention to criticize. More likely, he uses them as raw material and does that with exceptional courage. It is this terrible clash and artistic expression that give birth to a true eruption.” Andriy Zholdak’s “Electra” starts from the murder tragedy in a royal family, translated to the contemporary universe, with a clear intent to explore the theme of cruelty, deeply buried in the human subconscious. “At some point in the history of our country, our family, or of any individual, the cruelty suddenly escapes control and transforms into a force that is controlling man, observes Zholdak. Nevertheless, how deep is human cruelty? And how could it be measured,” asks the provoking artist. This play was granted four of the most important national awards in Macedonia during the 2014 theatrical year: The Award for the Best Play of the Year, The Award for the Best Director, and two acting awards, for Electra (Daria Rizova) and Oreste (Aleksandar Gorgieski).

The Long day's journey into night by Eugene O'Neill will be staged by the National Theatre of Tirana, Albania, within the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival. Playwright Eugene O’Neill received the Nobel Prize for Literature and four Pulitzer awards, one of which was awarded posthumously for the Long day's journey into night play. Two famous main actors – Artan Imami and Yllka Mujo, guided by one of Albania’s most renowned directors – Spiro Duni, bring in Bucharest a shattering drama about desperate people trapped in the claws of fate, the one fate that gives with one hand only to take with the other. A family caught in a tornado between love and hate, between acceptance and rejection, the bitter existence deprived of solutions, drowned in alcohol and drugs. “With an apparently minimalist directing, believes Prof. Dr. Josif Papagjoni - an illustrious playwright and critic, Spiro Duni’s vision engages viewers through the in-depth exploration of human sadness and bitterness, analysing characters on deep psychological levels. It shows you suffering souls, shivering, terrified of death, failure, the impossible, boredom, anger, of all the rages, felt and buried for too long.“ The art of actors is majestic in this two-hour staging, without break. The words spoken on stage shine bright with logical, emotional, and rhythm meaning, “going up and down like a wave, revealing explosion and violence beyond peace, the extraordinary beneath the ordinary, and the brutal and turbulent alongside the austere and clean”. A famous actor, Spiro Duni’s career began in the theatre of his childhood, Skampa of Elbasan, with two shows that received important awards. In the same theatre he staged Victor Eftimiu’s play “The Man who saw the Death” and also played the Vagabond. His name has been linked over the past years with the National Theatre of Tirana, where he received the “Award for the best show” in the “Kosova Infest International Theatre Festival”. He also collaborated with the National Theatre of Pristina, and staged “Beyond the bridge” at the Aleksander Moisio theatre in New York and “Visit of the old lady” at the Salem State Theatre in Massachusetts, USA. The Long day's journey into night play is scheduled within the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival in Bucharest on September 3rd in the “Studio” Hall of the National Theatre of Bucharest starting at 20:00.

Freedom is an eternal theme, which, even more so nowadays, is crucially important, provocative, and vexed, said a Montenegrin critic after the “Everyman Dilas” by Radmilla Vojvodic premiere at the National Theatre of Podgorica. The play will have a single representation on September 1st, 2015, at the Studio Hall of the National Theatre of Bucharest, within the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival (August 28 – September 4). Milovan Dilas (1911-1995), a remarkable personality with a decisive role in the history of the new Yugoslavia, revolutionary, politician, party activist, and Montenegrin writer, has the central part in the play. For his brave critical spirit in society less permissive with free speech, the first part of Dilas’ life was a balancing act between freedom and deprivation. He made his entrance into politics as an illegalist, persecuted by the monarchical government for his left-wing beliefs, and becomes close to the Tito regime and a member of the Central Committee of the Party and Political Bureau. After a short while, Dilas rises as one of its the most ferocious critics, both at home and abroad, quickly suffering a severe backlash. His books were printed abroad, while in his country jail gates close behind him often and for long periods. Even as calm settles, the Western world sees Dilas as a dissident and a hero, while being a controversial character in his own country, spending his remaining days under surveillance. In her play, director Radmilla Vojvodic focuses on Milovan Dilas’ universe and the consequences of his work, “The Anatomy of a Moral” and “The new class”. The latter is one of the most influential books of the XXth century, a ruthless analysis of the communist system, the reign of a new class and of a new regime, based on arbitrariness and terror. Everyman Dilas is a call to possible and impossible, to our courage, ability, and risk to create, to become the creators of our own destiny despite any obstacles. The Everyman, a classic medieval term, and especially the everyman moral values, are appealing to the ethics of the modern man in the play, as gaining our freedom today is an act of scruples. (Borka Pavicevic) Radmilla Vojvodic built her play as a documentary in which characters are both historical people and fiction. Together with the Berlin Wall, a utopia collapsed. In addition, under the pressure of the events, so did the Yugoslavian utopia. What is our utopia, which is the utopia of the modern world, who are its creators and heroes, its supporters? – asks the creator of the show, her voice now valued in the theatrical life of the former Yugoslavia. Esteemed director and dramaturge, reputed pedagogue, rector of the Montenegrin University, vice-president of the Academy for Science and Art, Radmila Vojvodic’s career has been crowned with numerous awards and some of the most important national awards. A play in five acts, with a total duration of less than two and a half hours, each representing just the tip of the iceberg, a fifth of its body. Four fifths of its meaning and potential lay just beneath the waves…

Confusions, a coproduction of the Croatian company Eurokaz, the Dramatic Art Academy of Zagreb, and the Domino artistic collective, joins the modern staging series brought by the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival, organized in Bucharest between August 28 and September 4. The show will begin at 20:00 in the “Black Box” Hall, Monday, August 31. Confusions was born from the famous novel The confusions of your Torless, written by Austrian author Rober Musil. The storyline progresses around a young man called Torless, who undergoes a physical and (homo) erotic maturation during his time at a military school on the outskirts of the Habsburg Empire. For this project, artist Brank Brezovec, renowned professor of the Dramatic Art Academy of the University of Zagreb, brought together all departments (acting, directing, light design, film directing and production) and casted a remarkable young generation of Croatian actors to join actress Suzana Brezovec (Torless mother and the courtesan) on the stage. Starting from his own observations of the theme, the director uses unconventional dramatic techniques, supported by a daring and dynamic musical illustration (Peteris Vasks IIns Symphony and the final act of Wagner’s Siegfried), to follow or undermine the storyline in the creation of its own meta-narration. This innovative dramaturgy style is enriched by combining various texts, contexts, languages, and acting styles in the same show. Branko Brezovec is investigating unexplored regions of the dramatic text, applying motives originating in different cultures (especially in the Balkans) joined through modern directing techniques. The result is a visually fascinating stage experiment, with an opulent symbolism. “…Confusions is a play which disorients you until you discard any preconceived opinions about narrative theatre (…) You must be ready to be cast out into new territories, uncomfortable and amazing,” writes “Out Magazine” of New York. This coproduction premiered in September 2014 at the Abrons Art Centre of New York. Selected for several of international festivals organized this year, “Confusions” has already won two significant awards: for “The artistic experiment”, in the Vratsa Festival of the Small Theatrical Forms, and a “Golden Lion” at Umag, in the Chamber Theatre Festival. Throughout the NETA Festival, the show makers will meet mass media and the spectators for 30-minute discussion sessions, organized each day after the show. The entrance to these sessions is free of charge. The International NETA Theatre Festival is organized by the “I.L. Caragiale” National Theatre of Bucharest, NETA (New European Network) through the “Creative Europe” program, and with the support of the UNITER. The event is funded by the Government of Romania through the Ministry of Culture, in partnership with the Cultural Centre of the Bucharest Municipality – ARCUB, and the Romanian Cultural Institute.                     Media partners: TVR, Blitz TV, TV City, NETA Art TV, Radio Romania, Radio ZU, Radio Romantic, Burda Group, Nine O' Clock, Art & Living

The highly-successful NETA coproduction Tobelia, a play about a woman who loved excessively, is scheduled for a single representation in Bucharest on August 31 2015 at 18:00, in the “Painting” Hall of the National Theatre, within the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival. The play was written by Montenegrin Liubomir Giurkovici, one of the most prominent writers from his country, and has won the “Best Play” award in the “Actor of Europe” Festival, organized in Macedonia. In Romania, “Tobelia” was brought by Slovenian Nick Upper, renowned actor and director, while the play premiered in Bulgaria in 2014.        Nick Upper, recognized throughout former Yugoslavia as a pioneer of theatrical postmodernism and alternative theatre, is a performer in search of interpretative and directing art, and a restless explorer of borderline territories in his art. The play is a modern drama of a damned family, which forever lost its masculine presence, developed over an ancient Albanian and Montenegrin custom named Tobelia, and which can still be found in nowadays families without male heirs. The play calls for the reenactment of a myth in the urban environment through an exceptional artistic accomplishment, and is dedicated to Berthold Brecht and Dimitar Gocev. Rewarding their marvelous acting performance, Joana Popovska (Macedonia), Rositza Ognjanova and Kamelia Lishkovska (Bulgaria) received the “Best Acting” award in the 2014 edition of the NETA International Theatre Festival, while Nick Upper was awarded with the “Best Director” during the same event, organised in Vratsa. Tobelia, a NETA co-production (Bulgaria-Macedonia-Slovakia) that received five extraordinary awards, arrives in Bucharest on 31 august 2015. The NETA International Theatre Festival 2015 (August 28 – September 4) is organized by the “I.L. Caragiale” National Theatre of Bucharest (initiator and organiser), NETA Network (New European Theatre Action), and UNITER (co-organiser), financed by the Government of Romania through the Ministry of Culture and with the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) and that of the Cultural Centre of Bucharest Municipality (ARCUB).

Svetlana Makararovič’s play A Dead Man Comes for His Mistress will open on August 30 on the Small Hall stage of the National Theatre of Bucharest, within the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival. Beneficiary of “The best show” of the 2013/2014 season in the Awards Gala of the Theatre Critics Association in Slovenia, the play is a remarkable achievement of a renowned director, Jernej Lorenci. The show is a coproduction of two theatres with distinct profiles, the “Prešeren Kranj” Theatre and the “Ptuj” Municipal Theatre in Slovenia, both with a mission of equally conveying modernity and preserving traditions. Jernej Lorenci, born in 1973, is considered in the Slovenian theatre as a unique director, with a profound artistic perception and an inquisitive eye, representative not only to his generation, but also too many more as well. Svetlana Makararovič’s drama retains its aura of legend in Lorenci’s vision, based on the eponym traditional song and on the “Lenore” ballad by Burger, adapted by the famous Slovenian romantic poet Preseren. The one hour and 50 minutes show, without break, will transport us to the world of borderline situations and fatal love. Where the world of the living and of the departed intertwine, the “living are not truly alive” and” the dead are not actually dead”. Svetlana Makararovič makes apology for the romantic love, which, as opposed to social and economic trends, continues to count on all or nothing. The A Dead Man Comes for His Mistress play can be seen as a triumphant harmony of all scenic arts. The leitmotif of the story is approached methodically, from the human need for love and truth to the social reality of perverted relationships, painful stories of family and women whose place in society is marked, in a play characterised by a complex and poetic language. “With strongly contoured characters, the staging resembles a drama concert,” believes journalist Petra Tanko, from Radio Slovenia 1. At the end of the Bucharest show, the company will meet the audience in the lobby. Throughout the NETA Festival, the show makers will meet mass media and the spectators for 30-minute discussion sessions, organized each day after the show. The entrance to these sessions is free of charge.                                                                           Tickets for the play are available at the Ticketing Agency of the NTB and online.

Medeea, my mother, produced by the Sfumato Laboratory Theatre in Sofia, Bulgaria, will open on August 30 on the National Theatre of Bucharest “Studio” stage within the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival. The play received the Best show of the season distinction in the Icarus 2013 national awards and was rewarded with “A new theatrical language” in the fourth edition of the NETA Festival. Medeea, my mother is a hurtful play, in which six documentary stories relentlessly pummel and invade us, disturbing our peace and rational thinking, writes Svetlana Pancheva in the “Duma” newspaper. Even if author Ivan Dobcev (Stefan Ivanov co-author) subtitles it as “A naive improvisation of a myth”, the play staged at Sfumato by the renowned artistic duo Margarita Mladenova – Ivan Dobcev brings one and a half hours of elaborate theatre, with a striking contemporary drama. “This is our first show with a direct openness towards the audience. So far, we have only created new worlds for the viewers to travel to”. This time, starting from a transfusion, the hero of the play travels in imaginary worlds, searching for his real mother”. A dramatic play of child abandonment and trade, Medeea, my mother warns against the dangers of the contemporary world, the loss of the sacred value of motherhood, dehumanization of the post-human and reducing life to bare survival. “Infants sold, abandoned children, abortions, abuse, the search for roots, the myth of Medea, the Goliath whale, Batman’s Joker and Harmanli, all in the terribly pulsing ‘boom-boom”, writes Kremena Dimitrova. Innovative artists, prestigious university teachers, renowned throughout Bulgaria and the world for the Sfumato Laboratory Theatre they created in 1989 as a theatre for long-term subjects, authentic art-science “expeditions” in partnership with a wide array of experts, directors Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobcev have been successfully leading ever since this project. Poetically titled Sfumato (meaning ‘painting in the air’), this laboratory theatre turned into a State Theatre in 1994, aiming cultivate a unique theatrical expression and create innovation strategies. At Sfumato, captured in particularly sensitive artistic view, the indistinguishable becomes actual, visible. Come to witness a show about the outcast, searching for their roots in Sfumato. Medeea, my mother, fulfills its purpose to create perceptible reactions within the audience, as Sabina Vassilieva noted in the “Sega Newspaper”.   The plays within the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival are subtitled in Romanian and English.

Two premieres will open in the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival: Hura, Nosferatu by Andrej Skubic, directed by Simona Semenic – August 29, starting at 18:00 in the Small Hall, and Chiril and Metodiu – who are you?! by Jordan Plevnes, directed by Martin Kocovski, September 2, 20:00, in the Painting Hall. The two co-productions are brought to stage especially for the Festival, meeting the NETA purpose – to create a constructive artistic dialogue between the members of this prestigious cultural network, founded ten years ago in spirit of culture without frontiers. Hura, Nosferatu focuses on an issue that is rare and delicate – the Dravet syndrome. The author (renowned playwright, translator, dramaturge), and the director (dramaturge, successful screenwriter) are dramatically close to the subject of the play in their daily lives. The story is special, in which the real and the imaginary tangle, the feeling of guilt appears itself in a multitude of shapes, revealing unexpected meaning. The play attempts to acquaint us to the suffering of those that cannot be as everyone else, often misunderstood, sidelined and excluded by society. The universal topic of the play is guilt, surfacing as something irreparable happens and other regret not having done enough to help those with special needs. “Hura, Nosferatu” is a co-production of the National Theatre of Slovenia, Nova Gorica, The Youth Theatre in Ljubljana, and the B-51 (Ex Ponto) Cultural Society of Slovenia. The Chiril şi Metodiu - who are you?! play reminds us of the two advocates that brought the Slav civilisation on the stage of history, and which alongside Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, is one of “the saint patrons of Europe”, and that have translated the Bible in ancient Slavonic. Main characters in Jordan Plevnes’s play, our contemporaries are living far apart from each other, at world’s ends: Chiril is a teacher at the Columbia University, and Metodius – specialist engineer at Gazprom. A fierce family drama, unravelling between New York and Siberia, determines us to contemplate the human condition in uncertain times. Could love and unity civilisations coexist locally and globally when all hope is destroyed systematically? The answer reveals in the play as an international prayer, said in the theatre temple, built in 100 minutes anywhere in the world. Created as a drama to save the survivors, “Chiril and Metodiu – who are you?!” reminds us of a sacred principle of ancient tragedy, according to which Art must address all and each one. The show is a co-production of the “Voydan Cernodrinski” National Theatre of Prlep, the Drama Small Theatre of Bitola, the Macedonia Ohrid Summer Festival, the NETA network, the Sfumato Experimental Theatre from the Bulgarian capital city, and Kyklos Art Studio of Thessalonik, Greece.   All the plays included in the Festival are subtitled in Romanian and English!

Opening the 2015 NETA International Theatre Festival on August 28, A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the most innovative staging of Shakespeare, a production of the Vaso Abashidze Music and Drama State Theatre from Tbilisi. The play, featured on the Studio Hall stage of the National Theatre in Bucharest, received several prized in the 2013 Duruji awards: Grand Prize of Georgia, Best Director – David Doiashvili, Best Actress – Ana Aleksishvili (as Helena), and Best Actor – Archil Sologashvili (Philostrat and Puck). Out of classic patterns, appreciate Georgian critics, no other staging of this play reveals as many connections between mystical characters and ideas hidden within the work of the greatest playwright of all times. The acting, the scene, light design, video projections, animations, as well as Chopin’s extraordinary music create a dreamy and enchanting environment that, combined with the terrifying nightmare, deeply affect audiences of all nationalities and believes worldwide. A director’s performance, the 2012 Tbilisi staging is one of the three consecutive shows created by Doiashvili, including the National Theatre of Croatia in 2013 and the National Theatre of Hungary in Budapest in 2014. Another Shakespeare play he directed, Macbeth, received 9 awards and 12 nominalizations at the 2010 International Theatre Festival of Croatia in Rijeka. A leading artist of Georgia, he received the “Medal of Honour” in 2003 and the “Holy Order” in 2013. David Doiashvili’s name is synonym to the rebirth of the theatre he governs for over a decade and his performance is confirmed by numerous participations in national and international festivals, personal awards and for the Vaso Abashidze Music and Drama State Theatre from Tbilisi. Born in 1972, the famous Georgian director attracted the world’s attention as he began his career, and was invited to direct The Witches of Salem at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, UK, after his graduation. During the same period, he staged the A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the firms time at the Royal National Theatre in London. Among other Shakespearian successes of Doiashvili are Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, The Siege by Albert Camus, The house on the border by Sławomir Mrożek, Separation by Giorgi Eristavi, and more. Alongside with his passion for directing, David Doiashvili aims to integrate the Georgian theatre within the European theatres.