Text by Eugène Ionesco
Direction, set design and lighting concept by Robert Wilson
Performed in Romanian
At the invitation of the National Theatre Marin Sorescu, whose artistic horizons have been broadened in the 1980s when it was run by theatre director Silviu Purcarete, American director Robert Wilson has staged Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco in Craiova. The enigmatic drama by the French author of Romanian descend hovers somewhere in-between surrealism, magic realism and the absurd and has been a perfect vehicle for Wilson’s imagination and creative drive. In company with a 30-member ensemble Wilson has created a theatrical madness, in which imagination runs wild, pushing the limits of logic and classical perception of the world. People are slowly turning into rhinoceroses, reality gives way to irreality, and the theatre magic dispels all bleak visions of the world and affords views further beyond, across other dimensions. What Ionesco aimed to do with the language, Wilson does with images. The corpulent bodies and expressive faces of wonderful Romanian actors draw on the rich tradition of European avant-garde theatre and silent movies extending from Gordon Craig and Max Reinhardt to Charlie Chaplin and Cabaret Voltaire.
Eugène Ionesco
RHINOCEROS
A play in three acts Romanian translation by Vlad Russo and Vlad Zografi
Direction, set design and lighting concept
Robert Wilson
Costumes Jacques Reynaud
Associate direction Charles Chemin | Tilman Hecker
Associate set design Adrian Damian
Lighting design John Torres | AJ Weissbard
Video Tomek Jeziorski
Music Adam Lenz
Sound design Daniel Drăgoescu
Dramaturgy Konrad Kuhn
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Stage direction assistant Bobi Pricop
Costume assistant Adriana Dinulescu
Lighting design assistant Rui Monteiro
Dramaturgy assistant Luiza Mitu
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CAST
The Whitness, a Logician Ilie Gheorghe
Bérenger Valentin Mihali
Jean Claudiu Bleonț
Daisy Iulia Lazăr
Dudard Valer Dellakeza
The Grocer’s Wife Tamara Popescu
The Grocer Angel Rababoc
The Old gentleman Nicolae Poghirc
The Housewife Raluca Păun
The Waitress Monica Ardeleanu
The Cafe proprietor George Albert Costa or Dragoș Măceșanu
Monsieur Papillon Cosmin Rădescu
Botard Constantin Cicort
Madame Boeuf Mirela Cioabă
and 13 extras (‘Rhinoceros heads’) in the pit
Press
“It has been said that Wilson’s theatre is that of “mobile sculptures”, that the actor is especially shape in the refined geometry of the director – one with its own rhetoric, an alternation of space and non-space, full and empty, which the light-infused décor illustrates. Architect Wilson’s show from Craiova, a suite of vivant paintings, stuns through the beauty of shapes”
Cultura magazine
“The performance contains all the ingredients that the Wilson brand has us accustomed to: impressive glowing backgrounds, rapid changes of color; spectacular videos, expressive and extravagant costumes, interesting decor elements. Yet if all these were to be expected, it was the intellectual approach of the play that surprised us, and very pleasantly too”
SpectActor magazine
“Robert Wilson’s new staging at the National Theatre of Craiova is a triumph… Wilson is a painter, an architect and an artist for the visual stage”
Revista SpectActor
