Mini Season of the Young Would-be Directors

Last year proved to be a successful project to bring and make a mini-season of the performances of the Theatre University of Targu Mures, thus between 20th -25th October we will continue that tradition and bring the student directors’ performances.

We will have a chance to see seven productions.

Mike Bartlett’s Earthquakes in London is about three sisters trying to find themselves in their own chaotic big city lives while people, scenes and decades shift around them quickly, while their own father – a brilliant scientist – predicts a global catastrophe. The performance, directed by Dóra Dobrovszki presents burlesque-striptease shows, visions, paranoia at its height, while everything is soaked with the fear of the future.

Euripides’s Alceste, directed by Ármin Ricz is about Admetus receiving a special gift from the gods: he can escape sudden death, if somebody is his place sacrifices themselves. Nor his father, or his mother undertake the burden, only his beloved wife is willing to sacrifice herself. For that Admetus promises a life of solemnity and never to marry again. However, he soon welcomes Heracles as his guest in his house… Are we able to admit our own weaknesses? And can we make up for our mistakes? Are they forgivable? These are the questions the performance seeks answers to.

Witold Gombrowicz, Yvonne, Princess of Burgundia, directed by Máté Szilvay raises the question: “What kind of god creates a woman that nobody loves? What kind of society is the one where the cruelty of politics is camouflaged by devices of conventions and religion? Prince Philip rebelling against his hypocrite and murderer father, becomes almost a murderer himself, but then he alone remains pure.

What do we desire when we freely can aspire for something? Shakespeare gives a surprising answer to this question in his As You Like It, directed by Máté Szilvay: it is not money or power but play and love, but these are lunacies in the eye of society. In the forest of Arden everyone plays the game they wish: Rosalinda is playing that she is a man, Celia plays that she was born in a faraway land, Orlando is playing that he is courting a man that in response plays that he is a girl. So, everyone is playing, thus the Forest of Arden becomes the metaphor of the theatre, a place where any miracle can happen. But, can we follow all the way the lunacy of human nature, or we have to – at some point – start to follow a more reasonable order? These are the questions the creators of the performance seek answers to.

Othello, directed by Noémi Beczey-Imreh is “the tragedy of pure love, honesty, faith, vain, emptiness, the lack of feeling loved, the false relationships, jealousy, the lack of self-confidence, the great men and small ones – and all that in a world where human evilness is endless and undestroyable. The creators believe this performance is directed by the evil itself: has the script, also the cast and ceremoniously takes a role as well.

According to the creative team Macbeth, directed by Mark-Christopher Demeter, has the central theme of the vicious circle: ambition, lust for power, sexual desires etc. As they say, these are what drive the actions, behaviour of man, but to what extent? In fact, is it worth chasing our desires? It is quite obvious that Shakespeare is as much relevant today than in his time, but the texts need to be compressed, according to the creators. The final script of this Macbeth contains only 30 percent of the original, yet the problematic is present entirely.

A.P. Chekhov’s Three Sisters directed by Krisztián Kiliti is the drama of the unfulfilled desires, those that we cannot fathom, nor guide, but that are the roots to our instinctive actions, ambitions but also to our innermost fears as well. The three Prozorov sisters wait endlessly for something or someone who perhaps help them out in their bleak lives. Chekhov’s play is as contemporary as can be that beautifully depicts the quest of the young adults in the web of the challenges of our society.