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This is a play that has an ample international echo and whose title has a dramatic resonance with what is happening nowadays. Terrorism is performed by high-class actors, in an exciting staging. This is our latest stage performance, which will await you, on 15th May 2015, at the Black Box Hall of the National Theatre Bucharest.

Claudiu Bleonț, Marius Bodochi, Ileana Stana Ionescu, Adela Mărculescu, Irina Movilă, Andrei Finți, Mihai Călin, Tania Popa, Mihai Calotă, Răzvan Oprea, Florentina Țilea, Rodica Ionescu, Natalia Călin, Victor Țăpeanu – directed by Felix Alexa and staged by Andradei Chiriac – put the emphasis on some linked characters, that find themselves in critical situations ...

Just as Ilf and Petrov, Oleg and Vladimir Presnyakov have also worked in tandem. The signature under which the Presnyakov Brothers publish has quickly become a ‛label’ of the Russian theatre. The play Terrorism brought them international fame and the honour to be the most performed playwrights after Anton Chekhov.

After receiving an award from the playwright contest organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre (MHAT) – where the play has been staged immediately, under the direction of Kirill Serebriannikov – in 2003 the play Terrorism has started a rich international career, being performed in Europe (Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Norway, Spain, Ireland) all the way to Australia and America.

With Terrorism, the director Felix Alexa works with a type ofplay that is directly linked to what is happening in real life. We came up with the idea to stage this play at NTB a few days after the attack of Charlie Hebdo magazine, in Paris.

“A play with such a title has a powerful resonance at the present moment”, stated Michael Billington in The Guardian newspaper. “But the extraordinary thing is how this leaked play of the Presnyakov Brothers extends the definition of ‛terrorism’ in order to include the entire Russian modern lifestyle.”

“The play suggests that it is impossible nowadays to live in a society without becoming a potential mass destructive weapon,” Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times. “The characters, interlaced in an array of short scenes, pass on to each other an unsettling sadness, that stirs violence, as if they were all infected with a contagious flew”.

“Why is it that we are suddenly uncontrollable?” wonders one of the main characters of this play. You can find out the answer in a modern play, built on some life stories that are connected to each other. Terrorism – is a performance with a circular structure, as if it were a folk dance of terror, which has bound sardonic humour with irony, fear and the absurdity of life. An apocalyptic farce about the failure of today`s society.    

“The play demonstrates that you don`t necessarily need corpses to feel, somewhere deep in your heart, that your life is slowly fading away under the terror of your own daily routine, while still having the illusion of happiness…,” Felix Alexa believes.

They are appreciated in Russia for their natural speech, for the dialogues that are as if ‛taken off the streets’, for the spiritual and the sarcastic writing. With bitterness and humour, the Presnyakov Brothers examine the life and culture of post-Soviet Russia.

The show is not recommended for children under the age of 14.

The first stage performances of the play Terrorism will be on 15th, 17th (avant-premières) 20th, 29th and 30th May 2015, at 20.00.

Translated by Ana-Maria Florea

MTTLC, the University of Bucharest