Odeon Theatre presents online
Saturday, 21 November 2020, at 19h00, in the frame of the European project
FABULAMUNDI. PLAYWRITING EUROPE
the stage reading
AMOR MUNDI
by Victoria Szpunberg
Translation by Ionuț Grama
Directed by Radu Apostol
Cast: Rodica Mandache, Ruxandra Maniu, Nicoleta Lefter și copilul Andreea Tănase
The recording will be available on facebook and youtube till 22 November, at midnight.
Theatre is a hands-on art that is constructed collectively. It is a meeting place where terribly ephemeral elements converge with very archaic echoes. Material, physical and prosaic aspects coexist with the deepest and the loftiest concepts. Theatre is here and now and yet, however, we want to eternalise ourselves in it. It is a game, but playing it is a serious thing.
When I write plays for theatre I try to ensure that the unforeseeable and the unconscious, humour and pain all emerge. I try to ensure that nothing is left to fester. When you believe that you have understood, when you have judged what you see, that is when the other, the mysterious, the questioning of convention appears. I try to hold a dialogue with tradition; I don’t like plays that propose an evident break with it. However, I am no lover of classifications. I seek a chink of freedom and of frenzy. I prefer the amorphous, the imperfect and the living, to spotless structures. I prefer criticism and uneasiness to unanimous applause.
Victoria Szpunberg
Amor Mundi
Does protecting the most vulnerable justify the application of violence? She wonders, a teacher who is faced with a moral dilemma at the end of a long career.
Aurèlia, a long experienced teacher, is about to retire. However, precisely when the time arrives when she would be able to stop working and rest, she will have to face a situation in the class: a girls bullies another and, so as to protect the most vulnerable one, the teacher ends up hitting the bully. Indeed, she believes she’s done the right thing, while at the same time she is aware that nothing justifies violence against children. Have I done the right thing or not? She actually gets quite obsessed with this dilemma to the extent that she questions the valuesand principles that have ruled her life and the practice of her profession. For a start, the school has fired her and now at home with a degenerative disease stealing her vision, she is surrounded by physical and moral darkness. Only a young teacher who visits her and her niece will connect her with a reality that is increasingly alien to her.
Victoria Szpunberg was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1973. Playwright and teacher of playwriting at the Institut del Teatre and at the Escola Superior de Coreografia de Barcelona. In 2000, she was invited to take part in the International Summer Residency for Emerging Playwrights at the Royal Court Theatre with her first play. Since then, her works have premiered at different national and international festivals and theatres. Besides her career as an author, she has collaborated with different choreographers, signed theatre adaptations, worked as a director and written plays for the radio and sound installations. She has also participated in theatre and education projects and is a collaborator of the Patothom school for social theatre. Highlights among her works include Entre aquí y allá (Lo que dura un paseo), The Shop Window (Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 2003), Esthetic Paradise (Sala Beckett – Festival Grec, 2004), The Speaking Machine (a production that she also directed at the Sala Beckett, 2007, and at the Sala PIM in Milan, 2008), El meu avi no va anar a Cuba (Festival Grec – Sala Beckett, 2008), La marca preferida de las hermanas Clausman (Teatre Tantarantana, 2010), Boys don’t Cry (Teatre Tantaranta, 2012) and l’Onzena Plaga (Teatre Lliure, 2015).
Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe: Beyond Borders? is a cooperation project among theatres, festivals and cultural organizations from 10 EU Countries (Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Romania, Austria, Belgium, UK, Poland and Czech Republic). The network aims to support and promote the contemporary playwriting 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 theatre authors and professionals with opportunities of networking, multicultural encounter and professional development.
In the frame of this third edition, at Odeon Theatre, were translated and presented four stage readings – Lullaby by Erika Galli and Martina Ruggeri (Italy), directed by Elena Morar, Sadness & Melancholy by Bonn Park (Germany), directed by Bobi Pricop, You say tomato by Joan Yago (Spain), directed by Radu Iacoban, Among Germans by Azar Mortazavi (Austria), directed by Bobi Pricop and two productions: Gardenia by Elzbieta Chowaniec (Poland) and For your own good by Pier Lorenzo Pisano (Italy), both directed by Zoltán Balázs (Hungary).
