Current Repertory
UFO
by Ivan Vyrypaev
UFO
by Ivan Vyrypaev
Premiere: 17.09.2017
Duration: 1 h 20 min / Pause: No
40 lei
20 lei (cu reducere pentru elevi, studenți și pensionari)
The Soul, the Last Frontier
Are there UFOs? In the beginning, Vyrypaev assures us that yes. He knows it: he crossed the entire world in the search of people who guarantee us that they have seen them. It is only about respectable people, professionals, students, mothers, professors, scientists, businessmen. Whom he discovers all over the world, in Australia, Russia, the United States, England etc. Each of them recounts his experience, the way he perceived this encounter. How and where did they meet? In the most different places, in a bar, on a terrace, on a river bank. The encounter is a profoundly personal experience; it cannot be shared, nor conveyed.
What are UFOs like? Do they have a certain shape, do they communicate in a certain way? No, there is nothing concrete, visible. It is a moment of loss of consciousness, a detachment from the body, from the sensory world we are accustomed to, it is an illumination, a loss of oneself, an inexplicable emotion, a momentary disturbance. To come out of oneself, to break the barriers of daily perception, to penetrate into a completely unknown dimension.
For Vyrypaev, each of these encounters is a journey into the inner being, a discovery of unexplored territories, an opening towards spirituality, which seemed unattainable.
Theatre remains, fundamentally, the enounter with ourselves. But because it is easier to travel through space than finding the path to oneself, the show UFO, directed by Bobi Pricop, becomes a sort of sensory-digital circuit, through the cosmos of our unrest. Here, the soul is the last fronteer.
Using simultaneous projections on different surfaces, 3D virtual environment (Paul Spike), live-video (coordinated by Tudor Panduru), an inventive scenic and technical construction (Paul Popescu and Mizdan), but also the original music of Alexei Țurcan, UFO tells stories. With clarity, authenticity, humour, virtual truths and practical revelations.
An enactment breaking its own conventions, turning reality into the supreme artifice, and the soul into performance.
The storytelling mechanisms employed in the show rely on last-generation technologies, but integrated into the drama of the natural, in a hi-tech artistic installation of emotions expressed on several levels, at all levels of life, perception and reality.
It is the experience-show we need when we forget about ourselves, due to the surrounding noise, but also a game of docu-mystification, of green humanoids, alien civilisations and the peace of a cloudless morning.
UFO is the second show staged by Bobi Pricop at NTB (in a national premiere), after The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, distinguished with many awards and it is his second enactment after a text by Vyrypaev – „Illusions”, which premiered in 2015 at the „Marin Sorescu” National Theatre of Craiova.
Translated by Simona Nichiteanu
| Emily Wenser : | Ada Galeș | Artiom Gusev : | Istvan Teglas |
| Artiom Gusev: | Alexandru Potocean | Nick Scott : | Ciprian Nicula |
| Robert Evans : | Mihai Călin | Jennifer Davies : | Raluca Aprodu |
| Johanna Harris : | Medeea Marinescu | Viktor Rizenghevici : | Ion Caramitru |
„If director and actor Vîrîpaev, in his own versions, preferred minimalism, Bobi Pricop chooses to give the show a spectacular visual appearance. The director continued his approach of thinking the performance space in contemporary terms, meaning using multimedia with a more complex meaning than illustration. With a partly new team (Paul Popescu, Mizdan Negraton, Paul Spike, Tudor Panduru, Alexei Turcan), Bobi Pricop proposes a concept of virtual scenography: A multimedia configured space and tuned, as a technique, to the Convention of the text and, as a symbolic, to its essence. Technology mediates stage expression (and emotion) and is potentially a facilitator of new performative languages.”
Oana Stoica, Dilema Veche – Encounters with the Self
„Ingenious at Bobi Pricop's recent performances is the very natural way in which he integrates the actor and his stories in a new media stage format. The immediate human presence is not substituted by an ultra-performing but cold device. [...] Bobi Pricop is interested in texts with a consistent story, and on the path of these stories to the audience, the recent technology manipulated by experts who know and master their potentialities comes in beneficially. Thus, the junction of two only apparently distant worlds - applied science and aesthetics is achieved, two different types of creativity are found, the scientific and artistic one. Science remains an instrument of creation; art is the beneficiary of this magic born by devices of all kinds.”
Oltița Cîntec, Adevărul - UFO, a Journey on the Boondocks of Imagination
„Thanks to the text, stage design, the video concept, score and performance, UFO is a show that will move you, give you a state reverie, will transpose you into an ideal world where you are always well with you. Each of the six characters (the seventh has a completely different role, no spoiler alerts) reminds you what is really important in life: Do not live in fear, distance yourself from unnecessary noise, remember that simplicity is very easy to achieve, and that ignorance is actually knowledge, that what we call home must not be a physical place, but a condition that stems from within oneself.”
Cătălina Micu, Scena 9 – Six Characters in Search of a UFO
„Enacted multimedia at NTB, the show UFO by Bobi Pricop is a fertile meditation on a revealing contact with us. What the director understood from the Russian meditation is a splendid enactment, a modernity worthy of a millennial theatre. Bobi Pricop's great collaboration with a great team of sound, light and, I dare say, the stage spatiality gives the viewer a new effervescent experience after "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time". [...] It facilitates the journey of the seduced viewer, along with the characters of the play, into a deeper and larger universe, dazzling and dizzying, that of the self. [...] Whoever does not rub one’s eyes after this show, as if one woke up from a captivating dream, one wouldn't want to separate from so easily or at least by wiping out discreetly a tear appeared in the corner of the eye has probably missed the room.”
Horia Ghibuțiu, Journalist Blog - UFO at NTB or Voyage Towards the Centre of the Inner Universe
„After "The Curious of the Dog in the Night-Time", Bobi Pricop has returned to the Bucharest National Theatre with the performance of Ivan Vîrîpaev "UFO", exploring again the means and benefits of technology and how projections, live sound and video can trigger emotions and tell stories with the actors or, why not?, separately. How is the world's perception changed once one has turned the realism to another form of understanding of the universe and how can one replay experiences and sensations, by definition impossible, to put into words? [...] In Bobi Pricop's direction, the show "UFO" remains a visual enjoyment, a query of the meaning of technology in theatre and a series of monologues infused with a special sensitivity, which is conveyed even through so many artificial media…”
Oana Bogzaru, Yorick – UFO and the Mystery of Life
„UFO brings to the fore ideas such as (Eastern) mysticism in an un-magic, melancholy and cold world, transcendence, the (intimate) vision of the world and the universe, the openness to spirituality. The architecture of the stage, live-streaming, multiple video projections, 3D animations, all deepen anxiety and multiply the perspective effect. Just as Pirandello tried in some dramatic texts (Six Characters in Search for an Author) to prove that the intensity of life removes the dramatic artifice, so director Bobi Pricop tried to show that theatrical performance could choke the play, thanks to a fantastic team, brought images seemingly taken from the X files. Without disclosing the mystery on the stage, UFO nourishes the child from the viewer’s mind, combined, at a constant pace with 3D, preserving the meaning of the miraculous and leaving space for continuous wondering, not crushing the „world’s crown of wonders”.
Mădălina Dumitrache, Webcultura – The Kaleidoscope of Questions – UFO
A truly excellent play! Not only did I not waste my time seeing it, but I have experienced the feeling mentioned by the immense scriptwriter Jean-Claude Carrière: „During a good show, spectators forget to grow old”. In other words, time is abolished. Success for the future and thanks again.
Cristian Bădiliţă
Translated by Simona Nichiteanu
