László Bocsárdi received the UNITER Lifetime Achievement Award

The 31st UNITER awards gala was held last night in the main hall of the Timișoara theatre, where László Bocsárdi, artistic director of the Tamási Áron Theatre, received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Directors.

Theatre critic and translator Alice Georgescu from Bucharest praised László Bocsárdi’s work as a director. She said that she had first met “Laci” at a festival in Oradea in 1987, present with one of his first performances, entitled Übü Roy with the amateur actors of the Figura Studio in Gheorgheni, which Bocsárdi founded and whose actors are now among the best in the business. She said that Bocsárdi originally trained as a chemical engineer, but graduated as a director in Târgu Mures as a second university degree and has directed many great performances not only at the Tamási Áron Theatre in Sfântu Gheorghe, but also in Romanian, Hungarian and German theatres all over the country. Among his achievements, Alice Georgescu mentioned the Reflex International Theatre Festival in Sfântu Gheorghe, and said that team building is character building and character building is people building, for which László Bocsárdi deserves to receive the UNITER Lifetime Achievement Award.

In his thanks, Bocsárdi said, he is grateful first of all to fate for the fact that he went from being a chemical engineer to a theatre man. As a third-year engineer, he wondered in one of his courses what he was doing in engineering, but he finished university and was posted to Gheorgheni, where he created the Figura Company of teachers, engineers and IT specialists, and has since been doing nothing but theatre. Listening to Alice Georgescu’s eulogy, he had the same feeling he sometimes gets when watching his own performances, wondering if he is responsible for all this. It was as if he was watching a film of himself, as if he was not the initiator, but merely carrying out a judgment… Finally, he thanked those who had helped in any way to make his performances possible, those who deserve this prize as well.

In addition to director László Bocsárdi, actress Ida Jarcsek-Gaza, visual designer Carmencita Brojboiu and theatre critic and historian Doru Mareş were also awarded the UNITER Lifetime Achievement Award, while the Interferences International Theatre Festival, organised by the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj-Napoca, was awarded the Ion Caramitru Award for Excellence, named after the famous actor and late president of UNITER.