Bucharest Calling
Written by Peca Ştefan Directed by Ana Mărgineanu
Cast members: Laurenţiu Bănescu Isabela Neamţu
Cosmin Seleşi
Katia Pascariu
Daniel Popa
Following its first New York City endeavor in November 2006, MONDAY Theatre at Green Hours in Bucharest returns with a series of performances as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. Featured are two plays written by Peca Ştefan and directed by Ana Mărgineanu, with performances at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street.
The Sunshine Play The international hit of MONDAY Theatre, The Sunshine Play earned 5-star reviews at the Dublin Fringe Festival 2005 and won the London Fringe Report Award for Best Play---Relationship Drama in 2006.
"This show is a welcome delight. Three thirtysomethings' lives intersect on a Bucharest rooftop, and a "broken hearts' magical mystery tour" to the seaside is planned. To reveal more would be to deny other audience members the delight of the discovery, and to disrupt the sophisticated calibration of writing, staging and performance (in English) on display here from the MONDAY Theatre at Green Hours, winner of last year's Fringe Project award. The overall impression is of effortless lightness – just a slice of life, filled with humour – but Peca Stefan's play also offers a fascinating window into Romanian life, which might startle Irish audiences with its familiarity: tribal politics, the pull of global capitalism, the isolation of the returned emigrant." -----Karen Fricker – The Irish Times
Bucharest Calling The artists who created The Sunshine Play continue their work in Bucharest Calling, which had its Romanian premiere in December 2006 in Bucharest. The English text for the play has been developed with the LARK Play Development Center in New York, and is now incorporated into the Romanian version of the production.
Bucharest Calling is the story of five characters in collision during the course of three uncomfortably hot nights and days in 2006 Bucharest, a city which itself becomes the sixth character of the play. According to the playwright, Bucharest Calling is a contemporary ode to the very controversial place and character of Romania's capital: a post-transitional city in a country that feels an urgent need to move forward, to forget the past---a place where people long for a new start.
