The story of Shakespeare in Craiova can be seen as the story of a city's effort to find its place on the European cultural map and make itself recognizable and unique. In 1989, the authoritarian regime in Romania was overthrown. In 1991, the National Theater in Craiova was a successful guest at the Edinburgh Festival. Three years later, in 1994, the first International Shakespeare Festival was held in Craiova. Tying the festival to the name of William Shakespeare, the most famous, influential and significant European playwright, gave the festival the opportunity to develop a clear and recognizable concept on the basis of which it can gather artists from all over the world and present the city of Craiova and Romanian theater and culture as an integral part of the European cultural space. The festival was, for the most part, supported by the city of Craiova itself, but the Ministry of Culture, the region, as well as many international sponsors, foundations, banks... For ten days (from May 21 to 31), a large theater fair took place in Craiova, where performances and theatrical events took place all day long. The festival program covered different target groups: Shakespeare for kindergarten children, Shakespeare for teenagers, an international theater symposium dedicated to Shakespeare's work, concerts, Shakespeare on film, art exhibitions inspired by Shakespeare, Shakespeare's village... In the offer of the theater program itself, we could see puppet theatre, circus, performance, modern ballet, monodrama, duodrama... and, of course, large ensemble performances from all over the world. From the abundance of performances and content, we single out three performances by Japanese artists: Titus Andronicus: Reborn, Hamlet | Toilet i Romeo and Juliet. The signatory of these lines has rarely had the opportunity to see theater from Japan and this event was not to be missed: how artists matured in Japanese culture approach Shakespeare's work. Finally, there was the setting King Lear directed by Silviu Purcarete and performed by the host theater of the festival.
TITUS ANDRONICUS: Reborn
Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedies (adapted and directed by Ryunosuke Kimura, performed by Theater Company Kakushinhan). In the treatment of Japanese theater, the story of Titus Andronicus is woven into Japanese traditional and contemporary culture. The theater set and costumes of the actors are similar to those of No drama. But drama, in short, is a highly aestheticized and highly stylized traditional theater in Japan, intended for the upper social classes (unlike Kabuki). The heroic experiences and sufferings of the hero are shown on stage. But theater and Shakespeare's theater existed at the same time, which makes them close. In both theaters, the acting was stylized, in both theaters it is about the suffering of the hero, and in both theater cultures the action takes place on an empty stage, where the actor needs to convey everything to the audience with his acting. Shakespeare's theater was not intended only for high circles like the No theater, but it was the highest aesthetic range of its time in the West. The performance begins as a Shakespearean theater (on stage) and with costumes as from the No Theater, but without the masks that are mandatory in the No Theater. As the plot of Shakespeare's play becomes more and more bloody, the play moves closer and closer to the No Theater. Titus Andronicus himself becomes the hero of No drama - he wears a mask and a wig typical of this type of theater and has characteristic slow movements and a singing way of speaking. The idea of a man in extreme suffering transforming into a mask and losing his human form is inspiring, and the idea of telling a European dramatic story through the aesthetics of No theater is an interesting theatrical experiment. However, the trouble with No drama is that it is slow and demands patience, whereas Shakespeare's tragedy, as it draws to a close, demands acceleration. An even bigger problem with this play is that elements of popular contemporary culture have been inserted into it (party music, golf, plastic T-rex...), which may be meant to actualize the story, but essentially have no connection with either Shakespeare or No drama and act as a distraction in the artistic concept.
photo: alex meckloskyHamlet | Toilet
HAMLET | TOILET
The play was created at the Japan Society in New York in 2024 and is an attempt to meet contemporary Japanese and Western culture (director Yu Murai). The very idea of the play, the scatological Hamlet, seemed to me to be artistically rude, which was the reason for the audience's choice. Hamlet | Toilet rests on a provocative premise. Everyone knows that Hamlet has inner dilemmas. The authors of the play ask the question, what is our interior if we have never seen the soul? If there is no soul, then our insides are the contents of our stomachs – our intestines and their contents. That's why Hamlet takes place in a modern public toilet. What is the relationship between the sterile, white, modern toilets, in which the man is separated from everyone around him, and Hamlet's internal dilemma, which separates him from the other inhabitants of the court? It should be known that it was the Renaissance, to which Shakespeare belongs, through Rabelais, that opened up the question of the relationship between the grotesque, scatological humor and high art. This idea was further developed in the 20th century by a whole series of avant-garde artists, led by Zari and his piece King Ibi, which is also inspired by Shakespeare's work. So, the initial premise of the play is provocative, but the problem is that its concept cannot last more than ten minutes on stage - after the monologue "to be or not to be" the whole idea becomes "read", and the play is monotonous despite the great effort of the actors to shock, provoke and, ultimately, entertain us with scatological jumps.
photo: promoRomeo and Juliet
ROMEO AND JULIET
A dance duodrama that takes place after the death of Romeo and Juliet (Romeo: Saburo Teshigawara, Juliet: Rihoko Sato, choreographer Saburo Teshigawara, "Karas" theater). In this dance performance inspired by Shakespeare's tragedy, two older, experienced dancers in amazing dancing condition and with bodies that show a rich dance biography, play Romeo and Juliet as two ghosts who are wanted in the other world - life has left the lovers' bodies, but the memory of love remains. They are sought for, missed, not recognized, and when they finally meet, they are horrified to learn how body and spirit change with the passage of time because each has preserved the memory of a young lover. The play raises a series of questions about the meaning of love. As you watch the play, associations swarm: can love be stronger than death, when we love, who do we really love - the other person or our idea of him, what we want from love and can love make us happy. It's exciting to watch those bodies with a rich dance resume move delicately, elegantly and expressively around the stage. Additional drama is given to the dance by the well-made light, which creates light rakes and light doors (dancers exit and enter the light). The lighting effects make the dance extra dramatic, making the overall theatrical image resemble a baroque painting with a religious theme. There is almost no direct reference to Shakespeare's tragedy in the play, but what there is is an abundance of artistic associations with two people who love each other madly and are looking for each other. Precisely because the play is so deeply stylized, the only excess was the pantomimed poison-drinking scene. It was the only scene that had an immediate association in the plot of the piece, but as such it was a foreign body in the exciting dance picture of the search for a close being.
KING LEAR
The theater "Marin Sorescu" (National Theater in Craiova) is the initiator and host of the festival, and director Silviu Purcarete is the best-known Romanian director's name. His King Lear is played on an empty stage where the audience and the actors are together. Because the audience and the actors share the space, we have the feeling that we are drawn into the performance by the stage space itself, that we were a kind of witness and even accomplice in the drama. King Lear it begins as a decadent feast, where the kingdom is shared like a piece of a celebration cake, and then the overconfidence and arrogance of the main actor pulls everything into a tailspin. King Lear (actor Claudio Bleont) is not a senile, demented old man, as we often imagine King Lear to be. He is a man who is still in power, but he is in power so much that he has completely lost his compass, and his reckless and capricious decision leads to the collapse of the entire system. Gonorilla (Romanita Ionescu) and Regana (Iulia Colan) are two modern women who try terribly hard to look correct, but underneath their correctness and decency, a mental darkness emerges, the cause of which is personal frustration and the desire to get rid of an authoritarian father. Cordelia (Costinela Ungureanu) is a cheerful girl who does not care about court protocols and licks the filling for celebration cakes. When Lear's downfall begins, she will turn into the Madwoman who will guide Lear through his suffering: there is no storm here, but there is destruction as an effect of political games in the family and the state. There has been much discussion about why the characters of Cordelia and Luda are played by the same actress and why the whole play has a rondo structure - it begins and ends with a feast - the ruler has changed, but the conventions of rule have not. Purkarete's play does not aim to make everything clear, but it provokes again and again the question of the relevance of Shakespeare's work in the contemporary family, social and political context. And that is the main value of this performance, but also of the entire festival.
The festival in Craiova encourages thinking about how Shakespeare's legacy is intertwined in various aspects of contemporary culture, whether different cultures can meet in Shakespeare's work, what all Shakespeare's tragedies, historical dramas and comedies can bring and what they cannot possibly be, that is, it calls for an examination of one's own limits of what is acceptable and what cannot be accepted.
For the contemporary Serbian cultural context, the festival in Craiova is inspiring in many ways. In Craiova, no one questions whether the fact that the festival is dedicated to the English writer Shakespeare stifles the spirit of the Romanian people, just as no one questions whether Romanian culture is part of European culture, and as such has the right to inherit works of other European cultures. No one questions the attitude of the Ministry and local self-government towards culture and no one questions that sufficient funds are approved for the needs of the festival on time. Nobody is boycotting anything. Everyone participates in the festival events, from children in kindergarten to distinguished theater experts, who have traveled from India, China, France, America for the conference... No one sets themselves up as a moral, aesthetic or political judge who assesses whether the festival should exist and who is welcome and who is not. No one complains that too much money was given to the festival - most of the program is free and a serious effort was made to encourage citizens to participate in the festival and accept the festival as their own. How many light years is that away from our current theatrical situation and our position in contemporary Europe and what in the world will happen to our Bitef, which is older than the International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova?
