I’m a stranger in Romania and I didn’t know anything about Urmuz till yesterday.
“
The Fuchsiad” after
Urmuz... – it sounded so closed and distant to me; it evoked nothing. Just that Urmuz sounded somehow in Turkish and Fuchsiad – mythological. Then I saw that these strange names come from the
German State Theatre, Timisoara and my instinctive suspiciousness vanished. I have followed the activity of this theatre since 2010 and I know that in their repertoire nothing is accidental. So, I expected something provocative and imaginative.
“
The Fuchsiad” is a theatre installation imagined by
Helmut Stürmer and assisted by
Silviu Purcărete. It’s a pretended mythological story about the life of
Teodor Fuchs (a Romanian pianist and composer). Urmuz is the pen name of
Demetru Dem. Demetrescu-Buzau - an avant-guarde Romanian author from the beginning of the XX century, close to Dadaism etc. (I shortly googled them both – Urmuz and Fuchs).
The theatre installation of
Stürmer and
Purcărete is glamorous, extravagant and of course parodic. It’s a visual fontain of colous, fantastic otherworldly costumes, strange disoriented monsters, some antique mythological activists… Everything here is strange and everybody is a stranger, everything is in permanent movement. I especially admired the androgyne costumes – half male/half female ballroom attire with vertical line of separation (costume designer
Corina Grămoșteanu). The original music of Vasile Șirli gives to this carnival an aspect of solemnity. “You dirty satir” – sings the black diva…
After all that density of movement, images and sounds, richness and playfulness,
Declan Donnellan’s performance “
Measure for Measure” after Shakespeare (Moscow Art Drama Pushkin) returned us to the ground by its visual minimalism and domestic moral problems.
“
The Last Night of Giacomo Casanova” (directed and performed by
Mario Mattia Giorgetti, Centro Attori Contemporanea) also discussed in a long and emotional monologue the notions of moral, love and regret.
Aglika Stefanova-Oltean
