The 2024/2025 season at the National Theatre in Cluj-Napoca ends with two premieres - two very different performances, but connected by the curiosity to explore, to see what lies beyond the boundaries, the freedom of imagination and a burning desire to ask the questions that matter.
On 11 June, the much-anticipated Gilgamesh, inspired by the Epic of Ghigamesh and directed by the Turkish performance artist and theatre maker Ҫağlar Yiğitoğulları, debuted on the stage of our experimental Euphorion Studio. Combining acting with music and physical theatre, this compelling new performance completes the trilogy imagined by Ҫağlar Yiğitoğulları: Shamanic Songs/The Quest, The Servants of Beauty, Gilgamesh.
Drawing upon the ancient Mesopotamian epic, Ҫağlar Yiğitoğulları translates the legendary initiatic journey into a quest for unraveling the meaning of life. Together with the actors of the National Theatre, he creates a deceivingly simple space, but in fact teeming with symbolic elements, transposing on stage the hero’s inner world. The video projections created by Radu Daniel, the costumes designed by Sânziana Tarța and the live music composed by Mihnea Blidariu amplify the ritual dimension of the performance, building a lyrical meditation on human condition, in all its paradoxical splendour, juxtaposing fragility and strength.
A meditation on human condition is also Mr. Harpagon’s Brave New World, the last premiere of the 2024/2025 season, debuting on the Main Stage on 19 June, written by contemporary Italian author Michele Santeramo and directed by Roberto Bacci.
Molière’s famous character emancipates himself from under the tyranny of his first author and carves out a new destiny for himself among us, the spectators, whom he takes as his accomplices and confidants. After the trauma of having had his money box stolen towards the end of the comedy that established him three centuries ago, he reconsiders his business model, going from a petty moneylender to a rapacious child trafficker. In Radu Lărgeanu's interpretation, the tight-fisted moneylender reinvents himself as a businessman who specialises in dealing in souls.
The sets created by Tudor Lucanu and the costumes designed by Bogdan-Robert Bodros and Eduard-Ionuț Pîntea evoke opulence, including baroque elements that actually expose their theatricality through an ironic, understated commentary on the true nature of avarice. Spiritual pettiness still lingers behind the splendour, although the nature and scale of the transactions concluded before our eyes differ radically from the limited stakes of the original play. The performance questions the limits and relative nature of morality, the implicit or explicit guilt of the silent witness, and the responsibility that society has towards its most vulnerable members.
Cover photo: © Nicu Cherciu
