a performance by Gianina Cărbunariu
cast: Alina Berzunţeanu, Antoaneta Zaharia, Marius Damian, Gabriel Pintilei, Alexandru Potocean, Gabriel Răuţă, Mihai Smarandache
Scenography, video, light-design: Andu Dumitrescu
Stage movement: Florin Fieroiu
Music: Bobo Burlăcianu
International Theatre and Street Art Festival (TAC) Valladolid, Spain, 25 – 26 May 2017
International Theatre Festival “Una Mirada al mundo”, Madrid, Spain, 17-24 October 2016
Romanian Comedy Festival FestCO, 2015
Sibiu International Theatre Festival, June 21, 2015
Romanian Dramaturgy Festival, Timișoara, April 21, 2015
Temps d’Images Festival, Cluj, November 11, 2014
The National Theatre Festival, Bucharest, October 25 and 26, 2014
pulzArt Festival, Sf. Gheorghe, September 12, 2014
Mihai Smarandache – Best Actor Award at Romanian Comedy Festival FestCO, 2015
Andu Dumitrescu – Best Stage Designer Award at Romanian Comedy Festival FestCO, 2015
Uniter Award for the best performance, 2015
Hunger for Trade is a production of Deutsches SchauSpielHaus Hamburg, in coproduction withKoninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg, Royal Exchange Theatre), South African State Theatre, Cia do Tijolo), Indian Ensemble Bangalore, Theatr’Evasion and Konzert Theater Bern. Funded by the Culture Programme of the European Union..
Duration: 1h 35′
Photos by Octavian Tibăr
The Hunger for Trade project brings together artists, researchers, and theatres from nine countries (Belgium, Brazil, Burkina Faso, England, Germany, India, Romania, South Africa, and Switzerland). The central idea is to formulate questions together, to share different experiences, to express local and personal perspectives on a global problem of today’s world: food. The working method proposed by the initiators of the project (Maria Magdalena Ludewig and Clemens Bechtel – Germany) was to create a documentary base of recorded interview material to which all the artists involved in the project would have access as the project developed. At the end of November 2013, all the teams met in Hamburg to discuss the aims of the project and to establish the stages of the collaboration. On 30 May 2014, performances by each of the teams of artists will take place in the nine partner theatres. Each performance will be accompanied by a presentation of extracts from the performances of the other eight project partners, and by discussions with the audience and with the artists in the partner theatres (via Skype), with a view to connecting both artists and the international public in the analysis of global phenomena that have a local impact.
“In our documentation for the play De Vânzare/For Sale, we tried to gather perspectives, eye-witness testimonies, and questions related to the theme of land grabbing, a phenomenon which has already been going on in Romania for a good few years. The fiction is inspired by interviews and discussions carried out with the people of villages in the counties of Cluj, Ialomița, and Călărași, and with anthropologists, sociologists, activists, and journalists, and also by the interviews carried out by our partner artists in England and Germany with investors in these countries who are interested in farming on a large scale in Romania. Face to face with a reality that is being played out before our very eyes, we have tried to translate for the public, through theatrical means, the questions that arose during the period of documentation and while we were working on this play: What does the Romanian peasant of the year 2014 look like? Why do the vast majority of peasants choose to sell or lease their land? Why is agriculture profitable for large landowners, both Romanian and foreign, while small farmers are struggling to survive? Why have the people of villages like Pungești and Roșia Montană been denied the right to decide about how they want to live in their own communities by companies like Chevron and RMGC, with the state actively participating in these abuses? What is the Romanian peasant being forced to turn into in the context of a new world order? What is actually being bought and sold? Who feeds us, what do they feed us with, and at what price? “
Press reviews
The production is extremely courageous, engaging without being intrusive, intellectually stimulting, and explicit regarding the political class in Romania. Firmly anchored in social reality, the staging maintains a powerful aesthetic dimension, putting you in front of an authentic artistic act. Not for a moment can the spectator regret the “theatrical” experience for which he or she has paid the price of a ticket. Not only do the actors play their parts very well, from well-groomed corporate executives, to peasants forgotten by the world or humble employees who commit grave injustices behind the uniforms they wear, but we can feel the passion they have developed for what they have brought onto the stage.
Ioana Tamaș – Dilema Veche, June 8th, 2014
“De vânzare” by Gianina Cărbunariu at the Odeon Theatre cannot leave us indifferent. Whether it is from an artistic point of view, or civic, or emotional. Working on all these levels, the experience of those ninety minutes has that strength that is specific to art of quality – it obliges you no longer to be indifferent, at least for one evening.
Alina Epingeac – www.yorick.ro, June 30th, 2014
The director Gianina Cărbunariu has shaped the production with major support not only from the actors, but also from the Andu Dumitrescu’s stage design, continually complemented with video images. Nothing is gratuitous in this production. Every moment finds its support in the video images projected on the two parallel sides of the room, with the actors in the middle, in the close proximity of the spectators, who thus become their partners. To call this surprising directorial concept “original” would be banal. Everything in the room is life, made concrete with a rich substratum and through the projected images.
Ileana Lucaciu – blog Spectator, May 29th, 2014
