TEATRUL NATIONAL “RADU STANCA”
Sibiu, Romania

WAITING FOR GODOT

author	SAMUEL BECKETT
directed by	SILVIU PURCĂRETE
stage design	SILVIU PURCARETE

performed by

Vladimir	CONSTANTIN CHIRIAC
Estragon	MARINA RALEA
Pozzo	CRISTIAN STANCA
Lucky	PALI VECSEI
Boy	DAN MITREA

Performance time: 2 hours 30 minutes. One intermission.

The two homeless people in Waiting for Godot forget every day what happened yesterday or only a moment before. The membranes of the memory, all the levels of human cultural and religious evolution, intertwine in order to form an immense BLANK. Elements of different eras coexist in the minds of the two as if in a postmodern structure in which the divine music, made to praise God, is played by musicians dressed in Playboy bunnies. Since the sickness of oblivion absorbs everything, the layers of the culture are bandaged. In this all-devouring amnesia, anyone can be mistaken for anything. Sometimes – that is, quite often – with God. The confusion is the distinctive sign of the era!

Godot from Sibiu is a performance about the very core of doubt that erodes deeply at the roots of every belief. Solid remain the fears, alone: fear of death, of aggression, of becoming the victim of the stronger, but also the impulse of attacking the other every time he’s weaker (obvious in the pleasure with which Estragon hits Lucky, when he is immobilised), the inertia in helping (visible in the relationship between the two leading characters). With Estragon’s predilection to self-pity and Vladimir’s predilection to terrorize, the fears are atoned only by the pleasure of acting.

In the two homeless people one can discern a warm kindness. Beckett takes good care not to unveil what opens the metaphysic key we forever search, and Purcărete proves his technical ingenious and finesse playing with our expectations. None of the characters describes Godot, even though they speak of him all the time. Moreover, Godot seems to be the only purpose in the life of the two innocently honest homeless people. In his absence, the characters start to find themselves various activities, to talk a lot, to hinder one another. Their activities are simple: they play, talk philosophy, build a small sick universe, which only Godot’s arrival can change. But Godot is not arriving.

SILIVIU PURCĂRETE

Silviu Purcărete, born in 1950, is one of the most prominent directors in the world. He graduated from the Academy of Theatre Arts and in 1989 began cooperating with the Craiova National Theatre, one of the biggest theatres in Romania, with an ensemble of over sixty actors. There he would, joining his passion for music, song, dance and visual arts, realise the nowadays cult show which connects Macbeth with King Ubu, and which was performed at the most important world festivals. Cruel, grey and dark, his shows were black masses which poured into every corner of the theatre from the stage. What followed was a strong performance of Titus Andronicus, like a row of perverse scenes from childhood, followed by Mozart’s music. Then followed Phaedra, after which Purcărete became the director of a theatre in Limoges, where among other things he directed Oresteia, Three Sisters and Don Giovanni. In France he founded a theatre academy, and then founded his company in 2002. He was the director of dramas and operas in a number of European theatres from Oslo, Bremen, Bonn, and from Royal Shakespeare Company, festivals in Edinburgh and Avignon, to the Viennese Burgtheater.