It’s a foggy Sunday night, I’ve just seen the Party, the play where not a single word can be heard. I’m in a room behind the stage where the Hungarian and Romanian actors relax after the performance. There is a bottle of wine on the table, Andrei Grosu, the director sits in front of me smoking his cigarette. We try to understand each other, but his English isn’t very good and I’m not speaking Romanian. We have two translators from the actors at the same time: Sorbán Csaba and Adrian Nicolae voluntarily partecipate in the conversation.
So finally we start to talk, but maybe we should have tried to use non-verbal language…it must has been a little bit easier.
How did the idea come up to direct a non-verbal play with the actors of the Nézőpont Theatre?
Andrei: When Kroó Ádám (he is one of the Hungarian actors) was in Romania, I invited him to watch my play, the Crime and Punishment in Bucarest. After the performance we started to talk about the possibility of a culturale change between the Nézőpont company and us. So I had to think about a show which can be played in the both countries. In this case making a text was very difficult, so I thought that maybe non-verbal performance would be better. At first we thought about a workshop with four Hungarian and four Romanian actors rather than a complete play. We put the whole thing together in 6 weeks from September to October.
Why did you work together with the actors of the University of Dramatic Arts in Bucarest?
Andrei: I’m working with actors from my university, because I don’t want to make a normal performance. For this, I need young people who share my thoughts about life and theatre. I’d like to create a new generation of artists, because I think we can only change the world with our thoughts and approach. Maybe it’s sounds a little bit pathetic...
You use a lot of music in the play to express the thoughts and the feelings of the characters. Nearly the all of them is in English. Why?
Andrei: The reason is the globalization. Everybody understands English, and because of that, I think this will be the language which will connect us in the future. It could be the main link between people.
How did you handle the grammatical limits during the rehearsals?
Andrei: We had translators. Sorbán Csaba translated from Romanian to Hungarian, but when he was at Budapest, because of his other performances, Adi took his place. He translated from Romanian to English. But it’s very hard, because we try to understand each other in three languages.
Adi: But anyway, I think using non-verbal language was the best way.
But how did the actors find each other without a common language? Is it possible to work together with translators?
Andrei: Yes, it’s possible to work with translators, if every member of the team wants the same. Anyway, we have common languages, we just need to discover them. We want to show a common language to the world, which is all about gestures. These also could tell meaningful, not meaningless stories.
How did the actors first meeting turn to a complete performance?
Andrei: The first time we met, we made some texts - Chekhov and Shakespeare – in Hungarian for exercise. After that I tried to connect all these stories. The end of the performance was made in four days, because we thought that we need to create a play which make the audiance think at home.
The Party has a really depressive message, it suggests to the audiance that we all have an empty and lonely life. Where is this pessimism from?
Andrei: A lot of things changed in the last year, maybe not in the world’s life, just in mine. I think it’s normal that I made a performance about my present feelings. People have to see that these days we don’t know how it feels simply just to walk in a park. We are not able to find the things that make us every day happy. This is the origin of my and the play’s message.
During the play, pictures of our everyday life’s places were projected to the background. Who made them? Where were they taken?
Andrei: The photos were taken by a friend of ours, a very good photographer from Bucarest. He’s name is Adrian Bulboacă, besides photography he also plans movie’s image.
The pictures were taken only at Bucarest, but they tried to be as universal as possible, because they don’t carry special meaning.
Is there a purpose to bring the two country (Hungary and Romania) closer? And if yes why?
Andrei: We live in the same world, we share the same problems and thoughts. Let's forget about our countries’ history made of hate and try to find our own opinion about the world.
I’m alone in a world of lonely people…that's what hurts me. I don't care about political borders, this is a too big game for me and I don't want to understand it. So I don't care about politics, I only care about people.
The Party is a once time direction or do you have similar plans for the future? Are you planning an another collaboration with the actors of this play?
Andrei: It’s very lucky, that I found people which think almost the same about theatre and the message of art. So yes, I want to work with them again. We want to make what we really like, and this is theatre, but not in a commercial way, that can be seen in many theatres. We hope that we’ll have a lot of opportunities and we can send our messages to the audiance how we really like.
Unfortunately, now they have to leave, because their train to Bucarest departs this night. But they promised that they will be back with the Party in the beginning of 2010. Maybe they’ll also invite us to a party after the Party… :)
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