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ANDRÁS VISKY I’m enthralled by the easy refinement and precision with which he speaks Romanian. His instructions are precise, the actors understand them instantly, even the tiniest distinctions. FEBRUARY 28, 2020 The day begins with a story. Silviu Purcarete was directing in the Teatrul Mic in Bucharest, sometime near the end of the 70s. “Back in those days,” he says, “we were directing long, involved productions lasting five hours, and we spent our lives in the theater. The production’s second part proved highly unusual because on the front stage the actors did not play to the audience but cattycorner, as it were, to the side, and as a consequence the principal axis of the scene also took this orientation. A strange, unaccustomed world came into being, surprising everyone, the critics most of all. After the production, many people congratulated me and praised the invention and its fine but courageous political allusion, since, as it were, they were playing to the exit. I pondered,” he says, “how this second act could even have come about. Smoking was forbidden inside the auditorium, and because I was still a heavy smoker at that time,” he says, “I constantly had a cigarette in my mouth while at work, and that’s why I stood in the doorway nearest the stage, following the rehearsals and constructing the scenes from that vantage point. The actors got used to that direction and the entire act remained that way, rotated 45 degrees, aimed right in the direction of the Iesire (exit) sign.” With this story, he informs the actors ofthe reason why he changes his vantage point from time to time during the rehearsal. The Paris scene” — here, even more sharply, if possible, Silviu Purcarete’s deep-seated doubts come out; indeed, it’s his dark resignation distilled to stoic wisdom in face of the great historical events. Absurdity, blood, appealing and infinitely empty slogans: this is what history is, nothing more. During the rehearsals of Julius Caesar in Cluj, several times he mentioned that revolutions — that is, thoroughgoing societal changes — generally make bad things worse: and this finds its source in human nature. In the Paris scene, cabbage heads fall into the awaiting handcart, balloons pop, one of the severed heads bounces like a basketball, and Danton, with a virtuoso motion, shoots it and makes it land (in the handcart). The scene hurts and amuses simultaneously, topped by Eve “as a ragged, aroused porn star,” when she urinates the tricolor piss onto the table, attempting in this way to obtain Danton’s masculine favors. (Adam: Andras Csaba Molnos, Eve: Etelka Magyari.) 79 Madäch: Ibid., Scene 9: Paris, Place de la Grève. + 264 +
