The Time Stand Still

Cast: Alina Berzunțeanu, Marius Stănescu, Adrian Titieni, Ioana Anastasia Anton
Directed by: Vladimir Anton
Stage design: Tudor Prodan
Translated by: Vladimir Anton

Time Stands Still is set in Brooklyn and revolves around Sarah, a photo journalist who has returned from covering the Iraq war after being injured by a roadside bomb, and her reporter boyfriend James who is swamped by guilt after leaving Sarah alone in Iraq. They receive a visit from their friend Richard, a photo editor, who introduces them to his new girlfriend Mandy, who is much younger than he. The play focuses on their relationships and Sarah and James’ prospects at a more conventional life.

“A playwright’s responsibility is to move people, to show them truths about their world and about themselves that they may not have considered in quite that way before. But my plays are not about ideas but about people. Time Stands Still is not a political play, it is a love story. It is very much about the choices and compromises we all make – in love, in work and, in war. Ethical struggles touch on all aspects of life”.

Donald Margulies was born in 1954 and is a highly appreciated American playwright and Professor of English and Theater Studies at Yale University, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His notable works include The Country House (2014), Time Stands Still (2009) and Brooklyn Boy(2004). Sight Unseen and Collected Stories were the finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1992 and in 1997. Dinner with Friends was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.

The director of the play, Vladimir Anton, considers that: ”Margulies` play does not offer solution-answers but potentiates the questions. In our world filled with doped-images as in a reality-show, in which a block-buster or a real war have the mediatic power to deliver to people adrenaline doses, what would be the mission of the journalists left in the conflict areas? Stricly that of informing (inevitably partial) of the events and always as the `breaking news`? To facilitate the knowledge (inevitably superficial) of the possible causes of the violence and attrocities which will become at some point `historical`? Or, maybe, their role would be to rather communicate, through words and images, the stories of some regular people, people like us, from whose destinies the History is composed?”

Time Stands Still premiered in 2009 in Los Angeles and in 2010 on Broadway.

The price tickets are: 21,20 lei and 12,72 lei