The famous American actor, director and scriptwriter Tim Robbins: Theatre remains important, truly essential

The second day of FITS, one of the biggest and most important performing arts festivals in the world, brought to the audience in Sibiu two new sold out performances of the world premiere of Aphrodite and the Liberation of the World (a Greek vaudeville musical) by Tim Robbins, winner of an Oscar and three Golden Globes, one of the most acclaimed and challenging voices of contemporary cinema. The second performance ended just after midnight with minutes of applause.

 

Also programmed yesterday, DinDor'NdoR was an impressive performance by Gigi Căciuleanu. The Romanian director has staged a choreography crossed by the idea that each dancer represents a complex geometry of the body, inscribed in a kind of spatial mathematics represented by structures, shapes and/or symbols, materialized also through a series of accessories - metaphors.

 

The day's artistic program was completed by On the Trail of Moby Dick, a grandiose contemporary circus act in the Big Square, brought to Sibiu by the French Compagnie de Productions Polymorphes & Populaires, and other circus, gospel, dance and music performances.

 

 

Yesterday’s highlight was the special conference dedicated to the dialogue between Octavian Saiu and Tim Robbins, artistic director of The Actors' Gang - a theater company he co-founded in 1981, having more than 150 artistic productions and over 100 awards to its credit. Robbins' productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Orwell's 1984, Harlequino: On to Freedom, Embedded and The New Colossus have been performed on five continents and in forty American states. In addition, Robbins' stage adaptation of Death Row, sister Helen Prejean's book, has been performed at over 150 universities in the US and abroad. The Actors' Gang have helped and continue to help thousands of children through their transformational educational programs, and their groundbreaking Prison Project has received national recognition in the U.S. and currently operates in two juvenile detention centers, two reentry facilities, and 12 prisons in California (USA) and Tecate (Mexico).

 

“You can reach millions of people with a lie, as seen in movies. If you reach 100 people with the truth, the truth will multiply. I saw a production directed by Andrei Șerban in New York a long time ago and I understood then that truth is central. Let's say we have 20 people in a theater, it's essential to have that performance. You don't know who's in the audience and you're supposed to do the show, you don't know who's there and who you're going to impact. Theater is still important, essential, absolutely essential. We can say to an audience: phones aside. Join us. It's important to do it, because using the phone too much will make us dying inside," Tim Robbins said. A detailed summary of the conversation can be found on https://blog.sibfest.ro/, along with texts from all the conferences during this edition of FITS.

 

 

Another touching moment of the day was the meeting with Pippo Delbono, the rebel child of world theatre, who has shaken up the methods and rules and imposed sincerity and emotion, in a dialog facilitated by Octavian Saiu. His show The Awakening, which had its world premiere at this year's FITS, is a masterful, incisive, moving and unforgettable confessional-performance.

 

“I love Romanian people and they love my theater. I came here, I saw the city of Sibiu, which I know well. I consider you my brothers and I perform with my brothers. I'm in a city I like. In Italy I don't really like doing shows, but here in Romania I have different feelings. I feel a strong friendship here. It seems to me that we are all brothers”, said the artist at the conference.

 

 

The second day of FITS was also a special occasion for intercultural dialogue between countries. The day was opened by a press conference dedicated to the Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024/2025, in the presence of FITS President Constantin Chiriac, Minister of Culture Raluca Turcan, President of the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) Liviu Jicman, as well as the Polish representatives Hanna Wroblewska - Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland and Olga Wysocka - Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw. The press conference was moderated by Octavian Saiu.

 

The Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024/2025 is a cycle of artistic events in the two partner countries, taking place over eighteen months. The Season is the result of the cooperation between the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, with the support of the Polish Institute in Bucharest, and the Romanian Ministry of Culture, together with the Romanian Cultural Institute. During the Season there will be hundreds of music, theatre, cinema, literary events and exhibitions, both in Romania and Poland.

 

The audience at the FITS will have the opportunity to see The Employees by Polish director Lukasz Twarkowski, as well as three other performances presented by the Warsaw Academy. We also had a presentation of paintings at the Brukenthal National Museum which brings Polish art to the public. “It was very important for me to open the Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024/2025 here in Sibiu," said Hanna Wroblewska, Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, who was present at the press conference.

 

 

 

The second press conference of the day was dedicated to the People Power Partnership (PPP), a participatory theatre project for the public spaces, that facilitates real and sustainable encounters between young people in an artistic context. Over the course of the project, 104 youngsters, aged between 18 and 25, are developing 13 independent productions as well as a final, large-scale performance that will tour the 13 partner cities to prestigious international festivals.

 

“Whenever we run such projects, we always think of participation options that include many young people. Very often, these projects are exchanges of experiences involving theater makers. We want to get people to ask questions. When we reach the audience, something changes in them in a good way. From my point of view, we have to focus on human rights, everyone's rights. Left and right look to the past. But now we're moving towards globalism. It has never happened that one nation has solved major political problems. What we are doing with our project is to try saying it's good to be different," said Matthias Rettner, representing Aktionstheatre Pan.Optikum in Freiburg (Germany), the PPP project leader.

 

 

The 31st edition of Sibiu International Theatre Festival (FITS), one of the largest and most important theatre and performing art festivals in the world, takes place from June 21st to June 30th, with the theme FRIENDSHIP. So far, FITS has 830 events in the program and over 5000 artists from 82 countries are expected. This year's novelties include a change in the structure of the FITS associated event, the Sibiu International Performing Arts Market, which is a platform for dialogue between young artists, cultural operators, performing arts institutions and cultural networks. This year's edition will also include a rich French season, celebrating 100 years of the French Institute in Romania, as well as an extensive Polish season, previewing the Romania-Poland Cultural Season 2024-2025. The FITS app currently includes all the events programmed for this year's edition and allows customization of the program and many other facilities. The FITS app can be downloaded for free in both Google Play for Android and AppStore for iOS.