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The "I.L. Caragiale" National Theatre from Bucharest will participate, on Saturday, May 20, 2023, in the International "Theatre Olympics" Festival, the largest event dedicated to theatre this year, with the performance "Histrionics", starring Marcel Iures.

The host country for the 10th anniversary edition of Theatre Olympics 2023 is Hungary, which is a travelling event. Its founder is Greek director Theodoros Terzopoulos, chairman of the Theatre Olympics International Festival Committee.

The organizer of the 2023 Theatre Olympics is the "Madach Imre" National Theatre from Budapest, and the artistic director is Attila Vidnyánszky, general director of this theatre.

The previous edition of the Theatre Olympics Festival was held in 2019 (before the pandemic) in Russia and Japan at the same time, with the motto "Let's build bridges". Today, against the backdrop of bridges destroyed by bombings in Ukraine and the continuing fraying of bonds between countries and peoples - this motto implies a bitter irony...".

The 2023 edition of the Theatre Olympics will be a special one, both in terms of quality and impressive statistics: from April to July, 400 companies from 58 countries will come to Hungary for a true festival of light. The 750 performances that will bring together some 7500 performers suggest a potential record for the largest festival of its time! All genres of theatre are represented, as well as dance, puppetry, street theatre, etc. However, it is not quantity, but quality and demanding artistic criteria that have been the basis for the selection of this jubilee edition of Theatre Olympics, which opens its arms wide, inviting all theatres in Budapest and throughout Hungary to join it, in order to invite, at their own choice, in complete autonomy, a theatre from abroad and from the cross-border area. In this way, not only the "fourth wall" between the stage and the audience disappears, but also the one between the capital and the provinces, the tension between "center" and "periphery" disappears. Prestigious theatre events will take place both in Budapest and in 12 different cities across the country: Debreczen, Szeged, Gyor, Miskolc, Pecs, Nyiregyhaza... There will be performances by well-known personalities of international theatre: Theodoros Terzopoulos, Suzuki Tadashi, Romeo Castellucci, Krystian Lupa, Slava Polunyin, Heiner Goebbels, Silviu Purcarete, Eugenio Barba, Tiago Rodrigues, Alessandro Serra, Christoph Marthaler, Declan Donnellan, Alexandru Dabija, Ivo van Hove and many others.

This is the context in which the "I.L. Caragiale" National Theatre accepted the invitation of the "Moricz Zsigmond" Theatre in Nyiregyhaza to present, within the Theatre Olympics festival, the performance Histrionics by Thomas Bernhard, directed by Alexandru Dabija. The cast includes Marcel Iureș, Ana Ciontea, Alexandru Bindea, Alexandra Salceanu, Lucian Iftime, Victoria Dicu, Afrodita Androne.

"Histrionics", a play by one of the most important contemporary playwrights, the Austrian Thomas Bernhard, is a paradoxical hymn to the theatrical art, but also a caustic look at our petty and tragicomic lives. As Bruscon, Marcel Iureș gives life to a splendid buffoon in search of the absolute in art. A megalomaniac, misanthropic, hypochondriac, nihilistic and intemperate actor, author and director, Bruscon bursts into tirades against the mediocrity of his country, rants about everything from politics, society, theatre - which he claims to loathe -, rages against the conditions he is offered, because nothing and no one lives up to his artistic ambitions, and especially his family, with whom he behaves tyrannically.

The production "Histrionics" will be performed on May 20, 2023, at 7 p.m. in the 400-seat Móricz ZsigmondȚ Theatre in Nyíregyháza.

Translated by Andreea Codrea-Boeriu