“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)

By Stefano • May 19th, 2008 • Category: Agenda

June 26, 2008 8:00 pm

June 28, 2008 8:00 pm

pantagruel-3-300x225 Pantagruel sister-in-law by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France) PANTAGRUEL SISTER-IN-LAW

directed by Silviu Purcarete
production National Theatre Radu Stanca Sibiu (Romania), Hungarian Theatre of Cluj (Romania) e Compagnie Silviu Purcarete (France)
language: speachless show
lenght: 80’
dal 26 al 28 giugno 8.00 pm
Teatro Bellini

With this performance, Purcarete pays hommage to Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, a Renaissance opera, encyclopaedic and open, which tells the of the undertaking of Pantagruel, son of the giant Gargantua. The number of operas is the linguistic exuberance which interlaces technical jargon, classic languages, dialects, original and inventional training, folding the narration to the most various kinds, from the philosophic despute to the baudy joke. Purcarete’s hommage is a “Rabelaisian” story with no words, certered on the figure of Pantagruel’s cousin, whose existence is not resisted in any text and yet emanates like a malicious perfume from each page of Rabelais. It is about a feminine figure such as language, that is the true protagonist of the opera of Rabelais, a generous and truculent language, able to take on all styles and forms.

Purcarete does not present a reduction of Pantagruel’s text, but in his hommage makes the echo of the opera vibrate using a saraband of actors as the vocabulary and rhythms as the grammer. In the objects brought into play such as the flour, wine, bread and other food, Georges Banu, Honorary President of the International Critics Association, reveals the traces of Purcarete’s “poetic materialism”: «The stage accepts the worldy materials as a concrete, fragmentary, and evocative presence». The spectator’s imagery is connected to a primary, elementary and essential universe on which one can take root, and starting from there, unfold.

Born in Bucharest in 1950, Silviu Purcarete graduated in Direction from the Romanian capital’s Theatrical Academy. After working with the Pietra Neamt Theatre (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette) and the Constanta Theatre (Ecuba di Euripide, Miles Gloriosus di Plauto), starting from 1978 worked with the Teatrul Mic of Bucharest (Giraudoux, Sartre, Shakespeare) and taught at the city’s theatrical Academy. In 1986 he staged an extraordinary Campiello di Goldoni which won the National Theatre Award. In 1992 he was named the artistic director of the Teatro Bulandra di Bucharest. In the 1990s he endorsed four performances celebrated by the public and by international critics: Ubu re with scenes from Macbeth, Titus Andronicus and Phaedra. In 1996 he was named Director of the Drama Centre of Limoges for which he produced, among others, Oresteia, Three Sisters and Don Giovanni, and where, a year later, he created a school of training for young actors. In 2002 he founded his own company, a permanate group with whom to share a common artistic course. Since 2003, Silviu Purcarete is a personal member of the Theatre Unione of Europe.