The Microstagiune Showcase presented the work of the Hungarian State Theatre “Csiky Gergely” and the German State Theatre in Timișoara to an international audience. Borisav Matić reports on a culturally mixed programme.
If you were to walk through Alba Iulia Street in central Timișoara, you would find a building with two captions on its metal-glass door: Hungarian State Theatre “Csiky Gergely” and German State Theatre Timișoara. Although the building’s architecture fits in the pre-war Austro-Hungarian style of the surrounding city centre, the location is peculiar because it not only hosts two theatres of national minorities but also because it is the setting of theatre life that relies on three languages (all performances are subtitled in Romanian). This cohabitation reflects Timișoara’s multiculturalism – the majority of its citizens are Romanian, but there is also a sizable Hungarian, German and Serbian population. As part of the Banat region, the city has been on the crossroads of migration and different cultural influences for centuries.
From 30 January to 2 February 2025, the two theatres organized their first joint Microstagiune (Micro-season) Showcase, where they presented 7 works, 5 for adults and 2 for children and young audiences. Although the performances show a diverse range of repertoire and aesthetic choices – from dramatic theatre based on foreign contemporary plays to a classic-inspired work with elements of dance to authorial projects with collective participation in authorship – the program either deals with (the city’s) multiculturalism, points to the theatres’ motivation to engage with the international community or in other ways deals with contemporary social issues.
Programme of Hungarian State Theatre “Csiky Gergely”
Perhaps the crown jewel of the Microstagiune Showcase and the performance that garnered the most attention is the Hungarian State Theatre’s 1978, an ambitious four-and-a-half-hour performance that was even longer at the time of its premiere in December 2023, before the creative team shortened it. 1978 is only one installation in the Slovenian director Tomi Janežič’s dodecalogy or 12-part omnibus that portrays a network of family stories in the region from Slovenia to Ukraine (some of the theatres where Janežič directed or will direct the installations are Nova Gorica, Ljubljana, Novi Sad and Ivano-Frankivsk). And although the narrative of each performance is inextricably linked to the city it was created in, it is also connected to Nova Gorica, where Janežič grew up and where all the installations will be performed in 2025 when the city is the European Capital of Culture.
Like 1981 which I saw at Novi Sad Theatre in October last year, 1978 is a complex transgenerational novelistic narrative in the style of documentary fiction, inspired by personal experiences and family memories of cast members that were structured into a performance by Janežič and the dramaturg Simona Semenič. The first part of the performance mostly takes place in Timișoara during the titular year when Nicolae Ceaușescu’s 60th birthday is celebrated with national jubilation. In contrast to that, a Hungarian family tries to lead its ordinary life while the scarcity and everyday violence of Ceaușescu’s regime infringe on their domestic sphere. This is the most compact of the three parts of the performance; the second also takes part in 1978 but often veers into the family’s past during the First World War and before that, while the third is the most (intentionally) chaotic and fragmentary and expressionistic in its anxious and dark imagery as it mostly focuses the horrors of the First World War. Through one family’s lens, the performance narrates an inter-subjective history of a city that was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then joined the Romanian country, went through bloody wars, endured Ceaușescu’s rule and overthrew him in a revolution.
This complex and captivating novelistic portrayal of the family and the city through generations is only one reason why 1978 is so special. Another reason is the way the story is told through the synergy of empathetic acting, the actors’ switch between stage illusionism and direct communication with the public and the imaginary use of space. The show is performed on the outskirts of Timișoara at the abandoned building of the former Hydrotechnics Faculty of the Polytechnic University. Janežič and the set designer Branko Hojnik use three building levels, each specifically used to create a classroom, a family apartment or a battlefield trench. But perhaps the biggest aesthetic trademark of 1978 is that it is equally about theatre creation as it is about its primary subject(s) – the actors are not only transparent that they are telling or performing a story but the whole performance is set as a pseudo-theatre-making process during which Zsolt, one of Hungarian State Theatre’s ensemble members, creates a show based on his family’s experiences.
Another performance for adults of the Hungarian State Theatre “Csiky Gergely” that was presented during the showcase was Danaos, directed by Szabó Kristóf, which is loosely based on Aeschylus’ The Suppliants or, to be more precise, it is a piece that meditates on the play’s topics of migration and exile. The show’s visual identity is stunning – although there are few elements in the set design (most notably the staircase in the back), Kovács Ivó’s visual art is projected on the entire stage, presenting the sea, leaves or other patterns from nature or even abstract shapes that can be associatively linked to certain segments of the story. This is also a show with choreographic and dance elements that are intended to complement the vacuum left by cutting off the majority of the textual material, thus becoming a symbolic piece that poetically communicates with Aeschylus’ play. But by aiming to intersect these different modes of aesthetic expression, Danaos has essentially lost itself along the way. The dramatic tension has gone out the window together with the majority of The Suppliants, the dance language is not sufficiently developed as the director has worked with an ensemble that is foremost experienced in dramatic theatre, and the grandiose visuals are left to entertain us along the way.
Mamma Badu’s Children
The only puppet show for children presented during the showcase, Mamma Badu’s Children, was a nice edition of the program of the Hungarian State Theatre. Based on Dina Velikovskaya’s animation About a Mother, director Varsányi Péter created an entertaining fairy tale of a boy’s coming of age and gaining independence from his family. The cast’s skillful puppetry animation and comical portrayal of characters left the pre-school children sitting in front of me mesmerized (and incredibly quiet) with the performance which follows a classical hero’s journey narrative that follows a boy who leaves his caring mother and travels the world, only to come back with new experiences and wisdom. However, this show is also a reminder of how political worldviews are present in all types of performances – theatre for children is not excluded – so we have to be careful which patterns we communicate with children. In juxtaposing the pre-industrial, tribal, innocent way of life in Africa, where the protagonist’s family lives, to the materialist and exploitative USA (or, to be precise, New York), the show makes a positive stereotype out of Africa. To underline the point – the show specifies in which city in the USA the plot takes place, while the rest of the story takes place in a vague “Africa”.
Programme of the German State Theatre Timișoara
The slice of the Hungarian State Theatre’s program that we witnessed during the showcase points to a tendency for more experimental and playful theatre-making not constrained by convention. On the other hand, the showcased performances of the German State Theatre relied on a more conventional approach by staging, in a fairly classical way, well-held 20th-century or contemporary texts. The logic behind the programming reveals a thoughtful consideration of foreign-language drama and the eventual staging of plays that are non-obvious choices (no populist choices of mega-famous works, at least not that famous for this region) but intelligently deal with relevant political or social issues. However, as I noticed watching the German State Theatre’s three performances based on such texts, their unquestionable loyalty to the textual material also created their biggest limitations. Shy work on textual adaptation characterizes each of the three shows I will discuss below, ultimately creating less exciting pieces than they could have been.
The Soviet writer Evgeny Schwartz’s 1944 play The Dragon is an allegory of totalitarianism that’s thinly wailed by the fairy-tale setting; the play is also a good programming choice for the German State Theatre as it is relevant today and contains valuable insight into how autocratic societies function and what effect they leave on an individual. Perhaps the most daring take from Schwartz’s work is that the dangers of autocracies do not end once the leader falls, but when each soul gets cured of the repression they have endured for years – if that is possible. Although the play unambiguously leads us to this interpretation, this message is integrated into a story about a three-headed dragon that rules a Germanic-like, medieval-like town with its iron fist and fiery breath, the locals who got accustomed to its tyranny and the knight Lancelot who comes to rescue them.
Yuri Kordonsky, the Ukrainian-American director for whom The Dragon marks the third collaboration with the German State Theatre, adapted the play by sticking faithfully to its fairy-tale and allegorical nature. However, there are some direct allusions to contemporary autocracies, especially media manipulation. The video projections (video design: Christian Ienciu) appear throughout the show, often with decorative purpose, but during a crucial scene of a duel between the dragon and the knight, a succession of talk shows in different languages appear where the truth is being distorted. The adjustable set design by Ioana Popescu (kitchen furniture, a bunk bed and a miniature lake) and a somber, mystic atmosphere with muted lights (light design: Cosmin Anania) offer a setting that’s equally appropriate to the pseudo-medieval imaginary and the contemporary allusions. The biggest drawback of the show remains a shy work on text adaptation, especially since the first half is unnecessarily long and meandering. The show’s heavy reliance on the play’s allegorism also makes it outdated with contemporary politically engaged theatre. Sure, Schwartz wrote the story as an allegory because he didn’t have a choice in the Stalinist Soviet Union – and even his veiled political message got the play banned before its premiere. But sticking to that same language in today’s society misses a chance for the show to be provocative and truly politically poignant.
On the other hand, The Son, directed by the Romanian director Mădălin Hîncu, is an intimist production that, nonetheless, deals with important and sensitive social topics – teenage mental health and depression. It is based on the French playwright Florian Zeller’s play of that same name which is part of his family-drama trilogy that also encompasses The Mother and The Father (Zeller also adapted the latter into an Oscar-winning film with Anthony Hopkins). Hîncu stays true to the basic assumptions of Zeller’s play, directing it as a character-driven piece of psychological realism. Thus, the actors are the ones who bear the weight of the show’s serious themes, Yannick Becker is especially convincing as a teenager who struggles to find meaning and motivation in life, though Bülent Özdil and Enikö Blénessy closely follow suit. The only hint of irony that the director creates, together with the set designer Răzvan Bordoș, is a pink-colored living room where all the scenes take place, a rosy counterpoint to the gloom of the story.
But it seems that the director undoubtedly believes in the self-sufficiency of the text and social relevance of the topics it explores, that he’s decided not to interpret the text in any new way, outside the basic assumptions of the story. The result is an at-times sluggish production that could have been more dynamic if the story was condensed. There is a counter-argument to my claims, though, as the after-show discussion during the showcase sparked a long, lively debate about the mental-health problems of teenagers and the difficulty of engaging in a candid public conversation about them. Both audiences and theatre makers participated in this dialogue. But since very little has been said in the discussion about the show and its aesthetic identity and a lot about the topics it explored, it only proved my point that the themes of the show are more exciting than the show itself and that a perhaps bigger conversation about mental health could have been propelled if the show used more creative means in the staging of the text.
Cloud Tectonics
The German State Theatre’s search for exuberant contemporary plays also led them to another Oscar-nominated artist, the Puerto Rican-American playwright and screenwriter José Rivera; that is, his 1995 play Cloud Tectonics. This story at first seems like a typical boy-meets-girl story set in dreamy Los Angeles but gradually pivots to magical realism since it turns out that time ticks differently for the girl and everyone who stays close to her – a night spent with her can equal two years in an outside world. Rivera uses this fantastical plot element to explore questions of love; how one passionate night echoes eternity, if we were to interpret it more literally, or how a spark between two people can depend on an accidental moment when their paths and time frames coincide. Cloud Tectonics also raises the question of memory and does love die once the memory is gone, a subject underlined with the story’s bittersweet ending.
The director László Bocsárdi adds a layer of illusion-shattering theatrical transparency to his adaptation. While the love story plays out in a domestic setting, as set in the play, the actors change and put on make-up in a pop-up dressing room next to the stage; the female protagonist’s pregnant stomach is surreally enlarged and theatre stagehands freely move around arranging the props. It seems that the show aims to link the theme of time in the narrative with the way time-warping is used to create theatre i.e. how time in a show and in real life differentiate. Other than this indirect comment on the relationship between storytelling and time, the show’s main concern is the basic principle laid out in the text – explorations of an intimate relationship, the timely coincidences that make it happen and the nature of memories.
Looked at together, The Dragon, The Son and Cloud Tectonics represent safe choices for the repertoire and theatre-making – pick highly successful but not mega-famous contemporary-ish plays and stage them without any risky, crazily creative interpretation. On the other hand, 1978 is the opposite of that approach; it is a crazily creative, mind-blowingly playful and unconventional piece (or better to say, a piece that merges multiple theatrical conventions). Janežič’s Timișoara show is an example of how theatre can be a positively challenging experience if we only loosen up our usual expectations and constraints in theatre making. On the other hand, rather safe repertoire decisions that led to the creation of the three German State Theatre shows presented three relevant contemporary texts that the regional audience doesn’t usually encounter.
Further reading: review of 1978
Borisav Matić is a critic and dramaturg from Serbia. He is the Regional Managing Editor at The Theatre Times. He regularly writes about theatre for a range of publications and media.
He’s a member of the feminist collective Rebel Readers with whom he co-edits Bookvica, their platform for literary criticism, and produces literary shows and podcasts. He occasionally works as a dramaturg or a scriptwriter for theatre, TV, radio and other media. He's the administrator of IDEA - the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association.
