We started our 76th season
The seventy-sixth season began on Monday with the opening meeting of the company at the Tamási Áron Theatre in Sfântu Gheorghe. “The sword of Damocles is hanging over the theatre, but we must continue on our chosen path,” said acting director Gyöngyi Ferenczi Pál to the company, referring to the government’s cost-cutting plans.
The head of the institution expressed the hope that the staff had at least partially recovered from the fatigue of the past festive season, as the government’s cost-cutting plans had unfortunately prevented them from having an uninterrupted rest. “Because if this plan goes ahead, it will put the country’s cultural institutions in an unprecedented difficult situation. It would mean the immediate death of institutions with fewer than 50 staff, and for larger ones, such as the Tamási Áron Theatre, it would be the beginning of a prolonged period of agonizing,” she said. The merging of institutions, the 15 per cent cutbacks, the elimination of unused or vacant posts, and a budget cut to 7.5 per cent (from 28.5 per cent in the case of Sfântu Gheorghe) would create an impossible situation, Gyöngyi Pál Ferenczi pointed out, and expressed the hope that the memorandum of cultural institutions and the wave of protests nationwide, such as the demonstration in Sfântu Gheorghe, would prevent this measure.
Premieres
Turning to the plans for the new season, Gyöngyi Pál Ferenczi said that rehearsals for Ivan Vyrypaev’s Iranian Conference are already underway in the direction of László Bocsárdi, and the company will premiere this production at the beginning of October. At the end of October, rehearsals for Dominik Kovács and Viktor Kovács’s Ice Cake, directed by Máté Szilvay will begin in the Chamber Hall, with several interruptions until the premiere scheduled for early February. Also at the end of October, the artistic staff will begin rehearsals of John Kander – Fred Ebb – Bob Fosse: Chicago, our New Year’s Eve production this year, directed by Zoltán Puskás. The next production will be based on Eugène Labiche’s The Lourcine Street Affair, directed by Árpád Barabás, and the last production of the season will be directed by Máté Hegymegi, who has worked with our company on several occasions.
Renewals, tours
In September the theatre will participate in the Dráma Contemporary Theatre Meeting in Odorheiu Secuiesc with the performance Sunflower, and in mid-October a mini season will be held at home, during which the company will perform Dievoushka, Oxygen, Sunflower and Iranian Conference, in addition to the performance of M Studio’s romeo@julia.com.
Oxygen, directed by Tibor Pálffy, has been selected for this year’s National Theatre Festival (Festivalul Naţional de Teatru), which will be presented twice in Bucharest on 21st October. The third module of the Reflex 5 International Theatre Festival, announced for this autumn, is still in question for technical and financial reasons.
