Lasha Chkhartishvili

 

A Theatre in Five Perspectives

 

In the small and picturesque town of Târgu Jiu, the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre became, for several days, the epicenter of an exceptional cultural effervescence. The institution hosted a large-scale international event — one organized entirely by the theatre itself. With its long-standing history and well-defined artistic identity, the theatre set out, over the course of a week, to present its productions not only to international guests but also to the local audience, reaffirming its role as a cultural landmark in the region.

 

Organizing a showcase dedicated to a single theatre is not an entirely new practice within the contemporary European theatrical context — nor beyond it — yet it remains an ambitious endeavor that not every institution can sustain. Such an event requires a coherent, diverse, and artistically valuable repertoire, capable of offering both a representative image of the theatre’s artistic identity and a glimpse into its potential for future development.

 

Under the leadership and initiative of Mariana Ghițulescu — both director and actress — the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre has, in recent years, successfully organized several cultural events of international relevance. Among them, the Showcase holds a distinct place, contributing to the theatre’s increased visibility, the strengthening of its artistic prestige, and the encouragement of creative dialogue between artists and audiences.

 

The event also serves as a catalyst for attracting new directors, refining the aesthetic and professional standards of the company, and fostering motivation among younger actors by offering them genuine opportunities for artistic growth and recognition. At the same time, it deepens the theatre’s relationship with its audience — a public that seeks in the theatrical experience not only entertainment but also reflection, emotion, and the aesthetic delight of a well-spent evening.

 

During the Showcase, audiences — alongside guests from Georgia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bucharest — had the opportunity to discover productions directed by artists from different generations and with diverse visions, representing a wide range of theatrical genres and forms.

 

The event opened with a staging of The Marriage by Nikolai Gogol, symbolically marking the link between tradition and contemporaneity in the artistic discourse of the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre in Târgu Jiu.

 

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Director Mihai Brătilă offers a classical stage interpretation, faithful to Gogol’s spirit, crafted with traditional theatrical means yet infused with charm, humor, and tenderness. Far from ostentatious directorial exercises, Brătilă embraces an aesthetic of simplicity — theatre as a living encounter between actors and audience. His strength lies not in concepts or visual effects, but in his actors — in their presence, energy, and naturalness. They become mediators between text and spectator, and through their performance the show breathes, communicates, and captivates.

 

The actors function as a single, unified organism, in perfect harmony. Every gesture, glance, or silence seems part of a shared inner language. Hidden within this cohesion is the director himself: he does not impose, but rather shapes from within — invisible, yet omnipresent. It is that subtle kind of directing that prefers listening over demonstration, allowing the theatre to arise organically through collaboration and trust.

 

Șteff Chelaru’s set design follows the same principle of balance and restraint. Static yet expressive, it creates a believable, warm environment that evokes a bygone era without idealizing it. The décor — an elegant terrace and a few doors suggesting possible interior spaces — delineates a small but vivid world, suspended between realism and convention. The costumes complete this universe with refinement: colorful, elegant, carefully stylized, and perfectly attuned to Gogol’s world.

 

The play’s theme — the fear of committing to a shared life — proves surprisingly contemporary. Through his bittersweet humor, Gogol speaks about human fragility in the face of responsibility, about the contradiction between desire and fear. Brătilă transforms this theme into a warm and human reflection: we crave love, yet we fear it; we laugh at the characters who run from marriage, but we also recognize ourselves in them. The performance becomes a collective confession about loneliness, freedom, and the longing for closeness.

 

The production’s power lies in its lively dialogues and authentic stage partnerships. The actors truly listen to one another — a rare quality. Outstanding performances come from Mariana Ghițulescu (Fiokla Ivanovna), Teodora Constantin (Agafia Tihonova), and Vlad Fiu (Podkolesin), who animate their characters with a blend of humor, grace, and insight.

 

Cristinel Dobran delivers a moment of refined solitude — a monologue crafted with intelligence and sensitivity, becoming one of the emotional peaks of the show.

 

Vlad Fiu’s Podkolesin acquires a distinctive humanity: a fragile, indecisive young man caught between the desire for happiness and the fear of losing his freedom. His liberty is both a gift and a curse. In counterpoint, Kocikariov (Alexandru Papadopol) is pragmatic and worldly, trying to restore “order,” the voice of conventional reason. Between the two unfolds a constant, amusing tension that fuels the play’s comic energy.

 

One of the most memorable moments is Podkolesin’s escape through the window — a scene of pure comedy, tinged with subtle melancholy. His gestures, the rhythm, the text — all combine into a portrait both comic and moving: the man who longs to be free but does not know what to do with freedom.

 

Teodora Constantin’s Agafia Tihonova evolves from the naivety of a dreamy young woman to the bitter lucidity of a betrayed one. The ending — laughter breaking into tears — is disarmingly sincere. In just a few moments, the actress moves from comedy to tragedy, from surface to depth, revealing both genuine pain and the inner strength that redeems resignation.

 

Mariana Ghițulescu’s Fiokla Ivanovna is a vibrant, multifaceted creation, oscillating between grotesque and clarity, cunning and gentleness. She serves as the emotional axis of the show — a warm, ironic spirit whose naturalness illuminates the stage.

 

Each character in this production has its own distinct vibration. This is not a comedy of situations, but a comedy of character — a living fresco of human weakness, treated with empathy and intelligence. In the version of the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre in Târgu Jiu, The Marriage is not only a meeting with Gogol, but a meeting with humanity itself: contradictory, comic, sorrowful, and profoundly human.

 

 

 

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The Little Pony, directed by Antonella Cornici, brings to the stage of the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre in Târgu Jiu one of the most sensitive themes of the contemporary world: the right to be different and the need for empathy in an increasingly intolerant society.

 

The production is inspired by a real case that took place in North Carolina in 2014. A nine-year-old boy, Grayson Bruce, was bullied by classmates and even marginalized by his school because he carried a backpack featuring the pink pony from the popular animated series My Little Pony. Instead of addressing discrimination and bullying, the school administration found a “simple” solution: it banned the child from bringing that backpack to school. Only the intervention of his parents and public outrage forced the institution to admit its mistake.

 

Starting from this true story, Antonella Cornici builds a tense and profound performance that explores the conflict between two perspectives — those of a married couple who love each other deeply but hold opposing views about how to raise their child. From this emotional clash arises a painful confrontation that transcends the domestic sphere and becomes a reflection on intolerance, personal freedom, and the right to difference.

 

Tension is present from the very first moments. The music — grave, mysterious — evokes a sense of imminent danger. The set design constructs a fragmented world: chairs scattered chaotically, suspended lamps, all resembling pieces of a puzzle that the young couple struggles to reassemble. Within this minimalist and poetic space, light becomes a crucial character.

Vlad Lăzărescu’s lighting design breathes in rhythm with the actors’ emotions — at times intimate and warm, at others sharp and confrontational — drawing the audience into a state of emotional participation.

 

A remarkable element of modernity is the use of video projections and AI-generated imagery by Andrei Piu. The face of the child at the center of the conflict is digitally created — a solution that protects the identity of minors while simultaneously demonstrating how contemporary theatre can employ technology with both ethical awareness and artistic refinement.

 

The cast, composed of Tedi Popescu (Jaime) and Gia Enache (Irene), gives the performance its emotional strength and authenticity. The two actors build a passionate, deeply human couple. Between love, fear, and opposing beliefs, their relationship evolves into an intense duel of principles. What begins as a domestic discussion becomes a confrontation of ideas with universal resonance.

 

The father, Jaime,  emerges as the lucid and progressive voice of the piece — defending his child’s right to be himself, even when society rejects him. Through empathy and courage, the father becomes a model of humanity that refuses to judge. In contrast, Irene, the mother, embodies fear, conformity, and the tendency to avoid conflict through submission.

 

Cornici transforms this opposition into a visual and emotional meditation on freedom. The play does not offer answers, but questions. The audience is invited to reflect: How prepared are we, as a society, to accept difference? How much freedom are we truly willing to grant others without perceiving it as a threat?

 

Through this production, the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre reaffirms its openness to contemporary, socially relevant themes, handled with both sensitivity and boldness. The Little Pony is a plea for empathy and moral awareness,  a story about parents, children, and the society that shapes them — told without didacticism, yet with depth and emotional truth. The performance confirms not only Antonella Cornici’s directorial strength, but also the ability of Romanian theatre to tackle delicate subjects with intelligence, compassion, and artistic courage.

 

Ultimately, The Little Pony is a play about every person’s right — child or adult — to live freely, without fear and without shame. A true lesson in humanity, which theatre here transforms into pure emotion.

 

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Theatre is a living organism — constantly in motion, constantly changing. It never repeats itself; it exists only in the moment it is performed. Each show depends as much on the audience’s breath as on the actors’. I say this because The Memory of Water failed to leave a strong impression on me. The story was clear and coherent, but the staging did not move me emotionally; it did not awaken that inner impulse that makes theatre a living experience.

 

Theatre is a collective art, and the success or failure of a production belongs to everyone — the director, the actors, the set designer, the technicians, the lighting team. In this case, I witnessed a family drama about memory and identity — essential themes, but handled without the necessary vibration. The play reminds us that memory is a deceptive entity: selective, subjective, often distorted. Just as each of the three orphaned sisters reconstructs her past through her own lens, my perception of the performance is, inevitably, subjective.

 

 

Director Mihai Brătilă chose a traditional, almost museum-like theatrical language. The story unfolds at a slow pace, with a succession of episodes linked by the classic device of “darkening the stage” — a technique used in 20th-century theatre, but today considered conventional, a sign of a direction that struggles to find fluid transitions between scenes. This stylistic choice gives the performance an outdated air, lacking the contemporary tension and pulse that the text demands.

 

More troubling is that the lighting design by Vlad Lăzărescu did not function properly on the evening of the performance. The lighting shifted abruptly: it came on too early or too late, shadows overlapped chaotically, and this visual imbalance significantly undermined the scenic rhythm. In a show where atmosphere and the fragility of memory should be supported by light, such technical flaws become meaningful.

 

The dialogues and monologues, though correctly delivered, lacked inner tension. The actors made an effort, but they did not seem to live the story. The text was spoken, not felt. And when there is no life on stage, the audience cannot truly empathize.

 

There was, however, one standout moment: the marital conflict between Teresa (Gia Enache) and Frank (Sandu Mustățea). Here, the intensity returned to the performance. The two actors literally ignited the drama. Their expressiveness, rhythm, and emotional truth converged into a scene that was alive, authentic, and full of energy. They provided a much-needed contrast to the rest of the show and demonstrated how much a single honest, passionate scene can elevate an entire production.

 

In this version, The Memory of Water remains a correct but superficial exercise. Its subject — the fragility of memory, the illusion of identity, and the weight of family trauma — called for a poetry of detail, a finer sensitivity, a kind of theatre that breathes from within emotion. In its current form, the staging feels more like a memory than an experience.

 

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Director Dumitru Acriș states: “For me, the ideal is that after seeing one of my productions, something happens within each spectator. Not necessarily in the mind, but in the soul — because the instrument we directors work with is the human soul. I want everyone who sees Morphine to leave the theatre disturbed, with the feeling that they’ve understood what self-love truly means — a force that protects us from self-destruction and from destructive attacks coming from outside. That is the ultimate goal I dare to assign to theatre. Isn’t it so?”

 

It is a noble statement. But the natural question arises: does what he intends actually manifest on stage? Too often, directors formulate concepts and intentions that only they and their creative team can understand — messages that fail to reach the audience. Not because the audience lacks perception, but because the scenic message fails to communicate clearly. Theatre is born for the spectator — and when the spectator cannot connect to the performance, the fault does not lie with them.

 

In Morphine, the adaptation diverges considerably from Bulgakov’s original. That, in itself, would not be a problem — if the result were a coherent, emotional, and authentic theatrical experience. Instead, what the director delivers is a visually and sonically intense but unbalanced product — more a stylistic exercise than a genuine theatrical confession.

 

The protagonist, Sergei Vasilievich Poliakov (played by Vlad Fiu), is portrayed here as a young, inexperienced doctor, lacking the intellectual depth of Bulgakov’s tragic hero. Instead of a man worn down by suffering and sharpened by lucidity, we see a fragile, confused, almost innocent character. This youth brings vulnerability, but strips the role of its philosophical weight and tragic gravity.

 

One interesting directorial decision is the cutting of the stage into the auditorium, an attempt to bring the action closer to the audience and to create intimacy. Yet this technique demands restraint — control, silence, emotional precision. Here, the opposite occurs: the performance is dominated by excess — shouting, exaggerated gestures, and loud music. The result is redundancy; authentic emotion drowns in a torrent of sound and intention. The actors perform intensely, but they do not truly live on stage.

 

Acriș’s direction reveals a tension between psychological intent and visual temptation. Built on the principles of Stanislavskian realism, the show nevertheless suffocates under its own theatricality. Hence the prevailing sense of artifice — a “stage falseness” that distances rather than draws in the viewer.

 

Still, there are moments of striking visual power. The doctor’s arrival in the province, with the beam of the train’s light cutting across the audience, is a haunting image. Likewise, the scene of the encounter with the woman — symbolically banal (the woman as temptation, as sensual demon) — is nevertheless crafted with visual intelligence. Bold, though aesthetically questionable, is the sequence played in complete darkness — poised between eroticism and provocation, ultimately crossing the border of artistic taste.

 

The main issue lies in rhythm. Scenes stretch beyond their emotional capacity, the tension dissipates, and the constant movement cannot mask the monotony. The multiple endings suggest the director’s uncertainty — as though he does not know where to place the emotional full stop of the story.

 

Overall, Morphine reveals the portrait of a courageous and imaginative artist, one deeply concerned with the human condition, yet caught between theory and theatrical expression. Dumitru Acriș creates unforgettable visual images, but at times loses contact with the living substance of theatre — emotion. Bulgakov wrote about addiction, solitude, and the decay of the soul — themes that demand silence, listening, and finesse. Acriș, instead, raises his voice where only a whisper was needed.

 

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Christi Avram’s staging of “Romeo and Juliet” is one of those rare productions that invite debate, impress through directorial imagination, and reveal a remarkable capacity to transform a classic into a living, urgent text that beats in the rhythm of the present. Avram demonstrates boundless creativity — so much so that, as one might say, from a single one of his shows, four other successful productions could be born.

 

Young and visionary, the director speaks about Shakespeare without fear of the canon, preserving the lyrical essence of the tragedy while situating it within a deeply contemporary and politically charged context. What defines the production is the very hallmark of current European theatre — the principle of “here and now.” Avram brings Verona into our own reality, into a world that feels tense and familiar, where love becomes a form of resistance against corruption and social cynicism.

 

The performance does not merely adapt the text; it reconstructs it. The director makes cuts, rewrites, and rearrangements, without ever betraying the Shakespearean spirit; on the contrary, he gives it new vitality. Even though the action is placed in a recognizable present, the Gothic-style costumes — sumptuous, original, full of personality — recall the Elizabethan era. The choice is deliberate: a visual statement that times may change, but human nature and its passions remain the same.

 

Staged at the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre in Târgu Jiu (at the initiative of theatre manager Mariana Ghițulescu), the production stands apart from any other version of the play. Avram proposes a symbolic reading in which echoes from other Shakespearean tragedies appear — allusions to Hamlet through the theme of “to be or not to be,” the transparent sarcophagus, and the presence of mysterious figures reminiscent of Macbeth’s witches, who seem to guide the characters’ fates.

 

From an acting standpoint, the performance is a true gallery of characters. Every performer, regardless of role size, leaves a memorable impression. Vlad Fiu (Benvolio) confirms his versatility, while Alexandru Manea gives us an eccentric, exuberant, and exquisitely accessorized Mercutio — the portrait of a hedonistic generation lost in pleasure. Eugen Titu is remarkable for his nuanced portrayal of the Nurse — both lyrical and grotesque, fragile yet dignified, a symbol of serene solitude. Claudiu Bleonț (Lorenzo) offers a paradoxical depiction of a well-intentioned yet faintly ridiculous priest, through which the director wittily comments on religious institutions, contrasting Catholic progressiveness with Orthodox rigidity.

 

Avram subtly introduces political undertones as well. Verona’s society becomes an allegory of the contemporary world — a society dominated by power, money, and status. The Capulets and Montagues are no longer just rival families, but symbols of a social order that sacrifices innocence for ambition. In this world, the love between Romeo and Juliet turns into an act of defiance and moral rebellion.

 

Irina Chirilă’s scenography is minimalist yet ingenious: a few chandeliers, suspended windows, and open spaces that transform — through light and performance — into streets, courtyards, nightclubs, or crypts. Vlad Lăzărescu’s light design adds a near-cinematic subtlety, supporting the visual poetry of the production. The result is a constantly shifting stage, alive with atmosphere and rhythm.

 

The emotional peak of the evening belongs, naturally, to the central couple: Ana Vînău (Juliet) and Tedi Popescu (Romeo). Both radiate youth, passion, and vulnerability. Their characters are not mere romantic icons, but contemporary young people — restless, contradictory, fragile, yet capable of absolute love. Their presence on stage has magnetic energy, giving the production genuine emotional depth.

 

Also noteworthy is Avram’s formal courage, his willingness to break conventional rules of staging. He builds dynamic structures, unexpected compositions, and alternates rhythm and tension with precision. For him, narrative drive and emotional intensity matter more than static aestheticism.

 

At the end of the performance, an extraordinary and heartfelt moment moved the audience: Alexandru Manea, who played Mercutio, proposed to his colleague Oana Marinescu on stage. A spontaneous gesture filled with poetry and meaning — a reminder that when theatre is authentic, it extends into life itself.

 

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Thus concluded the Showcase at the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre in Târgu Jiu — an event that revealed the diversity and vitality of contemporary Romanian theatre. Under Mariana Ghițulescu’s direction, the theatre confirms its European spirit, openness to dialogue, and ability to generate memorable artistic experiences.

 

Everything in Târgu Jiu was warm, sincere, and alive — a weekend where theatre and life met in perfect harmony.