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<\/a><\/span>We retain memories of the first assembly of the then newly elected Executive Committee of the International Association of Theatre Critics<\/strong>, held in October 2014 in Beijing, since it signified not only the election of representatives from countries with either strong or emergent economies, as for instance India and Romania, but also because of the proposal of the Romanian delegate, Octavian Saiu<\/strong>, for the city of Craiova to host the following European Theatre Prize<\/strong>. Having held its previous session, its\u2019 14th<\/sup>, back in 2011 in Saint Petersburg, this prestigious institution had since failed to assure funding by a European city eager to become its financial and organizational sponsor. Happily though promise was kept and the 15th<\/sup> edition<\/strong> of the Event took promptly place in Romania, from 23rd<\/sup> to 26th<\/sup> of April, in partial combination with the 10th<\/sup> edition of the Shakespeare International Festival<\/strong> and in collaboration with the local \u201cMarin Sorescu\u201d National Theatre.<\/p>\nEssential \u201cReturns\u201d\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Only an hour later and back to the main venue of Shakespeare Festival and Premio Europa alike, the Craiova National theatre, the select audience was treated to Thomas Ostermeier<\/strong>\u2019s (*1968) highly personal view of Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cRichard III<\/strong>\u201d(c.1599). Already well known and cherished in Athens, currently member of the Artistic Direction and resident Director of the famed Schaub\u00fchne in Berlin, Ostermeier had been awarded the Theatrical Realities Prize at Premio\u2019s 2000 Taormina edition. \u2026 and actual Theatrical Realities<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Visceral excitement occasionally exceeded our endurance in Ostermeier \u2018s assumption of \u201cRichard III\u201d, it proved though more thought provoking than the largely cerebral s\u00e9cheresse<\/em>\u00a0 that characterised much of what we witnessed as scenic part of the 13th<\/sup> Edition of Theatrical Realities Prizes. These were awarded to the directors Viktor<\/em>\u00a0 Bod\u00f3<\/em> (*1978) and Andreas Kriegenburg, the playwright Juan Mayorga, the National Theatre of Scotland \u00a0and the French Jo\u00ebl Pommerat<\/strong> (*1963), playwright and director, with a Special Prize reserved to the Romanian director Silviu Purc\u0103rete<\/strong>. We didn\u2019t manage to attend conferences about all prize winners, but what\u00a0we savoured from these sessions of exhaustive theoretical analysis was hardly matched by fragmentary presentations or complete performances of their works. But, in spite of all the above, witnessing, on April 26th<\/sup>, Kriegenburg\u2019s \u00a0Deutsches Theater production of \u201cNathan der Weise<\/strong>\u201d,\u00a0 at the Craiova Students House, –nota bene-<\/em> \u201cafter\u201d Gotthold Ephraim Lessing\u2019s\u00a0 enlightened (1779) \u00a0five – act\u00a0 Dramatisches Gedicht<\/a><\/em>,<\/em> proved a rather tedious occasion. And this besides our whole hearted endorsement of director\u2019s \u201ccall for religious tolerance and intellectual dialogue grounded on reason and a lightness of spirit that mankind is losing today<\/em>\u201d, stated in the accompanying ETP booklet. The production proved self defeating owing to an\u00a0 unbearably shabby scenery and the actors zombie – like stage appearance. These elements burdened considerably the light hearted love story of a presumed-to-be Hebrew girl with a young Christian crusader who saved her, risking his life as the plot\u2019s refreshing frame for the main intellectual course, one of claim to the heritage of \u00a0religious Truth\u2026<\/p>\n An even more paradigmatic case of the frequent gap between maxims of theoretical analysis and performing reality was the one of the playwright Juan Mayorga<\/strong> (*1965). \u00a0The Spaniard came to the fore of the Event claiming that the true creator of a critical culture is the community. He tries to minimize the distance between contemporary and ancient Greek theatre, which he regards as one intended primarily to watch, and invokes his own experience as a spectator in order to justify his coming to writing for the genre. Mayorga aims to characters who dare to know and to think, that interpret philosophers, and considers the philosophical and historical aspect as a dramatic source that contributes to establish the philosophical language of his works. Physical nature is to him a fragile bridge between Logos and Polis and he has no difficulty to admit that his theatre can be very demanding to the audience, because it is charged with philosophical ideas.<\/p>\n As a bonus to the participants of the conference devoted to him (25\/04\/2016) Mayorga presented fragments\u00a0 of his new play \u201cThe Yugoslavs<\/strong>\u201d, stating that his plays are works in progress, not only because the interpreter may find things that the author doesn\u2019t know (the text knows better than the author, as he fitfully formulated it), but also regarding the author\u2019s contribution itself, since, even in that same morning of the conference, he claimed he had seen gestures in a restaurant that he wanted to integrate to his play!<\/p>\n On the other hand and with the emphasis on the performing rather than the literary element, the still homeless and itinerant National Theatre of Scotland<\/strong> (est. 2006) employed presumably low budget technology to good effect for its production of Kai Fischer<\/strong>\u2019s play \u201cLast dream on Earth<\/strong>\u201d, directed by the author himself, and managed to strike a humanitarian chord of political correctness in the parallel drawn between Yuri Gagarin\u2019s first stroll to outer space and the refugee \/ immigrant drama of our day. Isolated by the use of earphones, viewers – auditors were made to sense the highs and lows of mankind\u2019s moral aspirations and defeats in a very direct, emotionally charged and interestingly constructed way of recitation for these extreme conditions of human solitude and despair. A valid reminiscence to creators and scholars alike that the desirable checkmate of a theatre piece is unattainable without addressing the soul of its prospective recipient\u2026<\/p>\n Mats Ek, a spell binding Europe Theatre Prize<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Indeed throughout Ek\u2019s production the boundary between black and white, masculine and feminine remains labile and mysterious, offering opportunities to unexpected directions, as in his production based on Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cThe Merchant of Venice\u201d for the historical Teatro Argentina of Rome[6], where Shylock is interpreted by a woman as a clear symbol of his marginalisation, an option also significant of Ek\u2019s own understanding as a Male in front of Woman\u2019s constant transformation.<\/p>\n Mats Ek surely deserves to be acknowledged as a person instrumental for the perception of Ballet as a phenomenon of modern times, not necessarily confined to a limited academic tradition. Born in the transitory year 1945, Ek firmly believes to transforming, \u201credecorating\u201d the house, while retaining a distinctive notion of style as a trademark, much in the way that Mozart influenced Music. And so he does in his clearly defined, special, sometimes processional way, as in his \u201cGiselle\u201d\u2019s emerging from the tomb, repeated obsessionally for 12 consecutive times. In his personal way, Ek pays an anthropological visit to the academic past, renewing classicism through humour, dramatic quality and truth, while claiming a certain scale of human consciousness in order to enter the philosophical core of this repertoire. In this respect he achieves the transformation of the classical works without departing from classicism, but instead by pervading them with an intemporal humanism and by lending them an uplifting transcendental element.<\/p>\n Although he boldly stated during the Conference that analysis of his work is beyond his horizon, Ek has constantly inspired his interpreters, as the artists themselves testified in loco.They always seeked to be as near to him and his visionary theatricality as possible. A theatricality expressed as the inseparable interaction between body and soul, that requires many human forces and expresses itself in choreographies which, while not intended for specific dancers, nevertheless dictate the selective nature of his choices.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Having just crossed the threshold of his 71st<\/sup> birthday (April 18), Mats Ek\u2019s Europe Theatre Prize is indisputably the crowning distinction of a long career, that acquires especial importance after his declaration, during that same April 26th<\/sup> session, that he intends to \u201cstep out of business<\/em>\u201d on his own terms and consequently liberate himself, by the following summer, from all his still pending commitments. To the obstinate questions that followed this announcement, Mats Ek made clear that, while profiting from the \u201cempty<\/em>\u201d time, he doesn\u2019t forbid himself anything, a soothing prospect to eager ears, considering snippets shown in the end of the session from his fairly recent choreography of Shakespearian provenance, created for the Royal Swedish Ballet in 2013 and bearing the title \u201cJuliet and Romeo\u201d as an insinuation to the pre – Shakespeare Italian source of the great dramatist\u2019s inspiration[7].\u00a0 It is a concept that not only departs from Sergei Prokofiev\u2019s deservedly famous ballet for large chunks of music by Tchaikovsky, including his \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d Overture-Fantasy and his first piano concerto, but also introduces interesting deviations of the plot, \u00a0as in the case of Mercutio\u2019s murder, presented as a lynch act of clan killing in a public lavatory with an evident homophobic reference. Thus the well known story becomes a tale of inexorable Hassliebe<\/em>, an expression of solidarity to victims of prejudice and an optimistic credo to love being ultimately stronger than death\u2026<\/p>\n Moving Epilogue with a furtive tear\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [1] Music and Lyric Theatre critic Kyriakos Loukakos is considered to be a leading vocal connoisseur in Greece. He is an attorney at law and a Dr. Juris of the Cologne University. In 1991 he joined the Greek Ministry of Home Affairs as a member of its Strategic Policy Unit and, as of 1998, he is a senior investigator at the Quality of Life Department of the Greek Ombudsman\u2019s Office. But music has been his lifelong passion, leading to the formation of his own extensive archive of records and privately recorded performances on several kinds of sound carriers. Therefore, from 1994 to 2010 he has commented and presented almost every opera feature for Greek Radio 3, including innumerable EBU direct relays and deferred transmissions, as well as contributing an extensive series of vocal artists\u2019 and conductors\u2019 portrayals. In 1997, commemorating the 20th<\/sup> anniversary of her passing, he presented a 28- hour step-by-step biographical radio homage to Maria Callas and the total output of her recorded roles, for the first time as a whole in radio chronicles. He also reported for the ERT WORLD TV cultural program \u201c9+1 Muses\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Since 1997 he is the music critic of the Sunday edition of the Athens daily journal \u201cI AVGI\u201d. He has provided texts for practically every major musical institution of his country (Athens Megaron Concert Hall, Athens Festival, Thessalonica Megaron Concert Hall, Greek Parliament Foundation, Athenaeum International Cultural Center, European Cultural Centre<\/em> of Delphi,<\/em> etc.) as well as serious cultural magazines (Peritechno, Odos Panos, To dendro, Classical Music, as well as and for the bimonthly periodical ILIAIA). He further supervised a\u00a0 CD-set edition of 7 complete operas in rare archival recordings featuring distinguished soprano Vasso Papantoniou. In 2011 he managed extensive bilingual texts and overall supervision to a lavish 4-cd set, issued by\u00a0 \u201cThe Friends of Music Society\u201d of the Athens Megaron Concert Hall and devoted to hitherto unpublished recordings from the archive of the late (mezzo) soprano Arda Mandikian, a close collaborator of Benjamin Britten and Sir Peter Pears and the Dido in both the first ever complete performance of Berlioz\u2019s Les Troyens<\/em>, in Oxford (1950), and the subsequent first complete recording of its second part, Les Troyens a Carthage<\/em>, under the baton of Hermann Scherchen. The set was favorably reviewed by such prestigious international periodicals as International Record Review, Opera magazine, The Record Collector and Classical Recordings Quarterly and was accorded the 2012 \u201cGina Bachauer International Foundation\u201d Record Prize. Since 2011 Dr. Loukakos has further reported regularly, in Greek and in English, for the e-magazine for drama, dance and music critique www.critics-point.gr<\/a>, an activity he now refreshes through his new e-magazine address www.criticscorner.gr<\/a> .<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a> The coincidence of Europe Theatre Prize with the Shakespeare Festival proved a happy one, since the latter provided stuff for the so called \u201cReturns\u201d chapter of the Premio Europa, which comprised two valuable contributions from laureates of past periods and some of the most significant theatrical stimuli of the whole event. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Recipient of the 1996 Europe Prize Theatrical Realities, Romeo Castellucci<\/strong> is a sufficiently known figure in Greece. His provocative rethinking of so called \u201cSpared Parts<\/strong>\u201d from William Shakespeare<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cJulius Caesar<\/strong>\u201d proved once more genial and controversial in equal proportions. At their best, Castellucci\u2019s ideas can be fresh and well thought out, audaciously introducing formal elements of several performing arts in often disarmingly courageous and utterly unexpected ways. Coming from an educational background of painting and design, his work pays attention -albeit an extravagant one- to aesthetics, thus in many instances enhancing significantly the psychological appeal of the action. This 1st<\/sup> repeat of the \u201cJulius Caesar\u201d sequence was exceptionally given at the Entrance Hall of the Craiova University and an affluent public suffered patiently the afternoon glow of a burning sun in order to attend this much awaited opportunity to witness the Maestro\u2019s work. For many though this performance, reserved to accredited persons only, remained an unfulfilled wish, as the sound of banging to closed doors testified during much of the performance\u2019s \u00be of an hour duration.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0 Founded in 1947, the University of\u00a0Craiova<\/a> is using the significantly older and in any case majestic former Palace of Justice and so its Hall formed a credible frame for this solemn Roman drama, visually almost automatically referring to the Senate of the Eternal City, where Caesar\u2019s murder had taken place on March 15 of 44 b.C. Caesar \u00a0himself (Gianni Plazzi<\/strong>) appeared as an already deceased person in a blood coloured tunic, a spectre emerging from the dead in solemnly choreographed movement strictly paced by taped percussion instruments. The opening monologue was preceeded by the use of a portable camera in order to project the actor\u2019s vocal chords, while Marc Anthony\u2019s famous monologue, which formed the\u00a0 conclusion of this \u201cdramatic intervention on W. Shakespeare<\/em>\u201d, \u00a0was disturbingly reserved to an actor (Dalmazio Masini<\/strong>) deprived of voice through tracheotomy!<\/p>\n<\/a>Action in this staging of Shakespeare\u2019s first history play was transposed to a utopian futurist era. But while \u201ccostumes, live percussion music, video projections and a powerful array of technical equipment<\/em>\u201d may conjure to form \u201ca completely contemporary set to which the play, written at the end of the 16th<\/sup> century, adapts perfectly<\/em>\u201d, as the program leaflet puts it, the same doesn\u2019t apply to the verses \u00a0\u00a0of divine Shakespeare, transferred to contemporary, trivial and hardly poetic German. This may simplify the sense of the plot to lazy audiences of today, but it falsifies the real\u00a0 reason of reference to this -or any other- masterpiece, a reason not limited to some possibly \u00a0didactical narration of historical facts but mainly focused to the imaginative aesthetic intervention for their presentation, in other words to the unsurpassed integration of this narration to a poetic utterance that, beyond ethic evaluations, idealises characters and deeds. And this was the crucial missing element of this demanding revival, a fact made even more apparent to German speaking spectators through the director\u2019s choice to juxtapose the more than often prosaic German translation (by Marius von Mayenburg<\/strong>) with select fragments of the Shakespearian original.[3] In any case the 2 \u00bd hour-without-an-interval spectacle did remain demanding! Especially for Lars Eidinger<\/strong>, the omnipresent and energetically moving throughout and all over the stage eponymous anti hero, a Tribulet-like figure avant la lettre<\/em>, who mounted the throne through mischief and finally succumbed\u00a0 to an inexorable process of paranoid isolation from everybody in his Court and the outer world. The partial megaphonic support of his declamation was a helpful if problematic option, since it exposed his and other actors\u2019 somewhat undernourished voice projection in the room. Debatable remained also Ostermeier\u2019s option for unnecessary – to our view – frontal and rear male nudity, even more provocatively combined to blood lust, as in the scene of the Duke of Clarens\u2019s assassination, Richard\u2019s brother, who was made to expire in total exposure of his well formed body and literally drowning in his own blood! All in all a disrespectful voyeuristic vulgarisation of a great work \u2026<\/p>\n
\nThe morning conference of April 24th \u00a0\u00a0<\/sup>was focused on the (East) German Theatre and Opera director Andreas Kriegenburg<\/strong> (*1963). We derived unalloyed pleasure from the video sampling of some of his recent productions, such as Federico Garcia \u00a0Lorca\u2019s \u201cThe House of Bernarda Alba\u201d (2015) for the Staatsschauspiel Dresden or the recent revival (2016) at the Deutsches Theater Berlin of \u00a0Kafka\u2019s \u201cEin K\u00e4fig ging einen Vogel suchen<\/a>\u201d, \u00a0endorsing his view that comic element in a play is a way of pressure relief. We unreservedly share his remarks regarding the terror acts in Paris and Brussels, where, as he informed us, his daughter also happened to be, especially his apprehension of a European society increasingly inclined to delect itself to convenient answers, thus alienating many young people who seek responses to existential questions to fanatics and their dubious certainties. We encourage his call for a theatre anxious to provide a path to doubt as its own moment of happiness. And we cherish the presence of a talented young Bosnian (?) bass for an aria from Astor Piazzola\u2019s tango opera<\/em> \u201cMaria de Buenos Ayres\u201d, as a memento of\u00a0 his 2015 production for the Theater am Goetheplatz of Bremen.<\/p>\n<\/a>All above helps to understand the current international editorial interest for his plays, already translated to many languages, Greek holding a special place among them. But proverbial theatrical reality counterfeited his intentions this same evening from the scene of the \u201cColibri\u201d Children and Youth Theatre. His play \u201cReikiavik<\/strong>\u201d depicts the famous 1972 chess match that took place in the capital of Iceland between American Bobby Fischer and Soviet Boris Spassky, a match that mirrored also the political rivalry between super powers USA and USSR. All these are reflected in the text which nevertheless was presented in such a swift pace that defied the average human ability of perception and left one perplexed after a quite lengthy evening, moreover one without an interval of either intellectual or physical repose. One further wonders how on earth Mayorga, in his pronounced ambition to turn literature into theatre,\u00a0 made so little use of technology in his own play, despite being an alumnus of director Robert Lepage,\u00a0 who not only came to name his team \u201cEx machina\u201d but furthermore produced a technically\u00a0 spectacular Wagner \u201cRing des Nibelungen\u201d\u00a0 cycle for the New York Met\u2026<\/p>\n<\/a>As we have been accused in our country for acknowledging performing arts\u2019 mutual transgression of boundaries[4], we feel vindicated \u00a0by the latest choice of \u00a0Mats Ek<\/strong> for the European Theatre Prize, a man who acquired fame as the intuitive choreographer of many creations that have long achieved cult status. It is a choice that defies our era\u2019s lowering cultural standards, an era subjected to the after- Andy Warhall ambivalent cultural triumph of a trash taste, in its pretence of a democratic legitimacy, one more reason to deny the luxury of separatism among performing arts, especially one of questionable motivation. Ek\u2019s Prize \u00a0also coincides happily with the actual presidency of the IATC by the respected Swedish Theatre and Dance critic Ms. Margareta Sorenson<\/strong>, and further justifies, albeit in a more peripheral frame, the fairly recent (2013) acceptance of two eminent Dance critics[5] as the first members of this discipline by the almost 90 year old Greek Drama and Music Critics Union<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/a>The theatricality of Ek\u2019s choreographic creations was of course extensively commented during the conference devoted to him, on the last day (26\/04) of the Europe Theatre Prize event. Even before his belated joining of the morning session, speakers underlined Mats Ek\u2019s artistry as serving a concurrent multitude of personally charged artistic and social goals. Ek\u2019s choice for the European Prize is indelibly linked to the narrative force of his choreographies that allows dancers, albeit deprived of speech, to function as participants to real theatrical events, an orientation no doubt inherited from his actor father. A pronounced feminist character emerges as a common trait in many of his works, not in an obsolete use of the term feminism, but rather as a symbolic and representative means to sensitize against oppression of minorities in society, a notion reflected in the density of the feminine figure in his already legendary \u201cGiselle\u201d or in others of his early ballets. In his \u201cThe House of Bernarda Alba\u201d choreography, based on the namesake theatrical play by Federico Garcia Lorca, Ek used a virile man dancer as the female protagonist, a choice intended to imply a dictatorial figure, removed from the stereotype of maternal affection, who, in his view, could not be adequately impersonated by a woman. The feminine element remains prominent in his \u201cSwan Lake\u201d choreography, where the evil sorcerer Rothbart assimilates traits of the Queen Mother of the story, while, in his \u201cCarmen\u201d version, Eros is represented by a combination of fans forming a vagina!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/em><\/strong>The last curtain upon the 15th<\/sup> edition of Europe Theatre Prize fell at the Great Hall of the \u201cMarin Sorescu\u201d National Theatre of Craiova with the obligatory and unavoidably moving prize-giving ceremony, presented, in our hosts\u2019 language only, by two young and elegantly dressed Romanian announcers. As a farewell encore, the select public was treated with two valedictory Ek choreographies. First the video wall projection of \u201cBuy<\/strong>\u201d, which had marked Sylvie Guillem<\/em>\u2019s<\/em> \u00a0farewell to the scene in 2015[8], using to great effect the music of Beethoven\u2019s last (32nd<\/sup>) piano sonata, op. 111 (its equally valedictory final arietta<\/em> movement). The Event came to its conclusion with \u201cAxe<\/strong>\u201d(Securea in Romanian), a special commission for the Ceremony of Premio\u00a0<\/a>Europa. It was a symbolic and devotional dedication to the Master\u2019s wife and Muse, the dancer Ana Laguna<\/strong>, who gave its world premiere opposite her colleague \u0399<\/strong>van<\/strong> Auzely<\/strong>. As it focuses to the long standing companionship, its occasional alienation of the partners but also the shared benefit of\u00a0 fellow traveling in life \u00a0that ties one partner to the other, it was a tribute easily extendable to the rector spiritus<\/em> of the Premio, Alessandro Martinez<\/strong>, and his devoted team for their long standing and far from easy task to keep European cultural ideals standing and ablaze. Keep up the good work!<\/p>\n
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