by Guillem Clua, directed by Bobi Pricop

Kepler-438b,  created within the European project Fabulamundi. Playwriting Europe is a multimedia show which uses a video installation of processing and live streaming from an adjacent space to the main hall.

Photos by Adrian Bulboacă

Guillem Clua, multi-rewarded playwright, scenarist and director, is currently considered one of the most innovative and versatile theater voices in Spain.The critics have described his work as multidisciplinary, eclectic, and very concerned in narrative structure and plot. Storytelling is at the heart of his style, using elements from comedy, thriller or melodrama, a vibrating rhythm, and an unabashed influence from other media, like television and cinema.

Clua was born in Barcelona, now is living in Madrid, but he also has lived in London and New York, cities that have seen his texts staged and have strongly influenced his writing style. His plays have been also staged in Germany, Greece, Venezuela, Chile, Honduras, Mexic, Ciprus and Poland.

Kepler-438b is his most recent play and the only one which has never been produced until now. It has been presented only as a reading performance in Barcelona, Athens, New York and New Jersey.  In March 2016, it has been read at the Odeon Theatre, with the same artistic team, in the presence of the author, with the title Promised Land.

Bobi Pricop is one of the most appreciated directors of the new generation. He graduated the National University of Theatre and Cinematography  „I.L.Caragiale” from Bucharest – theatre directing section in 2011 and the master studies in 2013.

He has been rewarded with numerous directing prizes, beginning with his debut show Games in the backyard by Edna Mazya, at Act Theatre, but also for Religion Teacher at „Marin Sorescu” Theatre in Craiova, Ashes Afar  of Vanner Company,  or The green cat at Luceafărul Theatre in Iași, for which he has been nominated in 2016 for UNITER Prize for the best director.

His most recent and aclaimed show is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time based on the novel of  Mark Haddon at the National Theatre in Bucharest.

Fabulamundi. Playwriting Europe is a cooperation project among theatres, festivals and cultural organisations in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Romania. The network aims to support and promote the contemporary play-writing across Europe, in order to reinforce and enhance the activities and strategies of the professionals and artists working in the sector and to provide the authors with opportunities of networking, multicultural encounters and professional development.

In the frame of this project, at Odeon Theatre has been presented between 2012 – 2016 eight reading performances from the dramaturgy of all the partner countries. The translated play were  published in 2015 and 2016 in the volumes Italian contemporary drama and European contemporary drama, at Cheiron Publishing House and Cultural Foundation „Camil Petrescu”.

Kepler-438b is the first performance produced within this project.

The opening  will take place on September, 17th, 19:30, at the Studio Hall, in the presence of the author.

The next representations are scheduled on September, 18th, 24th and 25th.

A visually intense performance in which the video installation plays an essential role, not only in this particular one, but also in almost every high-tech production Bobi Pricop puts together.

Even if the technology is very advanced – Bobi Pricop perfectly illustrates this by combining the art of acting with insertions of fragments played and transmitted live from the theatre’s foyer and displayed in the hall -, the people in the play maintain the same customs and are being haunted by the same state. In this distant future, it seems that the planet is shaken by the same problem that existed in 2016 – we actually see the future of these problems that are ignored now and they will be also ignored in the future, when the extinction threat will be a reality impossible to avoid.

Silvia Dumitrache, Observator cultural, October 2016

The new technologies are integrated in the show, not as elements of surprise, expositive, but as theatrical instruments that determine ways of working and new forms of interpretation. One of the acting scores demands that the actors perform outside the stage, in the foyer, from where is filmed and broadcasted live on several screen on the stage. This score is the one that breaks the monotony of the show, offering dynamics and humor. 

Kepler-438b is a show that makes you ask yourself, at least once, where does humanity end.

Oana Stoica, Dilema veche, October, 6-12th 2016

Kepler-438b is both a mirror for the world we live in, which gets its meaning through the projection in the future, and a smart parabola on identity, beliefs, decisions (mostly political), friendship, and more generic, on our purpose on Earth. Guillem Clua, the author of this so unlikely travel in time that it doesn’t even seem science-fiction, created a image both bitter and comical of the little powers facing the great ones, exposing merciless the cultural, social and political clichés, and ultimately, undressing the nations of the emperor’s clothes.

Guillem Clua’s text is very good, supporting itself and awaking the interest even in a lecture-performance. But Bobi Pricop adds the dynamism and the color by creating the stage connections between different plans, to which contributes the science-fiction impression given by the monitors. The minimalism of the stage design and the technical effects succeed in projection the spectator in a future, cold and inhumane world.

Claudiu Sfirschi-Lăudat, b-critic.ro, September, 22th, 2016 

The well chosen and conducted actors (Ioana Anastasia Anton, Mihai Smarandache, Alexandru Potocean/Cezar Antal) play recognizable characters that have a touch of atemporality, symbolism and myth. They succeed in being identified in the quotidian, but also to keep sort of an aura of emblematic charging.   

“Kepler-438b” is fit for the space at the Odeon Theatre, a multimedia experiment, syncretic and sensorial that fulfills a destiny.

Moreover, towards the end, the show transmits a peaceful state, of reconciliation synonym with the abandon; gets you thinking in a subtle and tender manner, awakens compassion and anxiety well tempered. The flight of the Malvati Island in the high, boundlessness space is a reminder of the sinking of Atlántida, the legendary island that still haunts the imagination of humanity 

Răzvana Niță, port.ro, October 4^th, 2016