The Saucer
by Maria Manolescu
About the show
In the amphitheater of the Masca Theater in Militari, between the street and the high-rises, two actors perform a post-apocalyptic ecological love cabaret that questions the struggle for resources and relationships with others – in short, a show that promises to end very badly. It doesn’t reach the end, however, because it’s interrupted by a surprise appearance, in between the siege and the cry for help. The unpredictable situation pushes the theater’s security guard, the two actors and everyone in the audience to take a stand. What happens when you can’t get along with unwelcome, non-ticket-paying guests? How do we make room for those who are not like us, but have the same needs?
The Farfuria is a political farce in which the low and the high and the here and there meet in comical, dangerous and demented ways. In a ping-pong match between new and old, “us” and “them”, spaces and space, the show is performed outside the theater and uses the science fiction plane to elucidate dynamics in our immediate reality.
Recommended dress code for this event: comfortable shoes.
Creative team
By Maria Manolescu
Directed by Dragoș Alexandru Mușoiu
Set design by Șteff Chelaru
Stage movement by Mihai Mihalcea
Cast
Voicu Aaniței
Mara Bugarin
Alina Crăiță
Sorin Dinculescu
Nicoleta Hâncu
Chaminda Mirihagalla
Anamaria Pîslaru
Dragos Stoica
“Maria Manolescu’s text is coupled with constant self-deprecating self-reflection and references placed without harshness or sarcasm, to sure comic effect. The conservative fixations of the older generations are formulated through the mouth of the bag-man, Sorin Dinculescu. The actor achieves a minimalist parody of his own statements. The weight of the performance falls on the shoulders of Nicoleta Hâncu and Voicu Aaniței (the octopus and the guard), who have the very difficult task of playing (and they each do it convincingly, even if – at times – excessively caricatural) the constant harassment of the text between irony, comedy, zephyr and pathos. All this, in a demanding rhythm of movement and stage choreography in which I can’t help but recognize Mihai Mihalcea’s nonconformist, strange and seductive performative utopias.” ( Corina Șuteu – The flying saucer at the Masca Theater, Magazine 22)
“The show is a political farce with several themes, in addition to the status of the foreigner, the climate crisis generated by plastic pollution is also strongly emphasized. A scenographic installation made out of petts (author Șteff Chelaru, one of the most interesting young scenographers, who also realized the intricate costumes in the show) thrones on the amphitheater stage, like a suffocating burrow from which an octopus (Nicoleta Hâncu) and a… (Sorin Dinculescu) to present, as a show within a show, an improbable love story that we don’t get to see to the end, being interrupted by the arrival of aliens (Alina Crăiță, Anamaria Pîslaru, Dragoș Stoica). What is interesting is that they, like any alien civilization that the Earth’s mind places in a more advanced stage of development than the human one, turn out to have already consumed the current civilizational cycle, with all its plastic, which seems to have led to the destruction of their planet. In other words, aliens have already experienced the climate disaster we are heading towards.” (Oana Stoica – The new mythology of the alien, Dilema)