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       “Princess Turandot” tells the story of a Chinese princess whose hand in marriage is promised to the suitor who will succeed in solving three riddles. The director Andriy Zholdak breaks away from Carlo Gozzi’s text and imagines a surreal world in which the Venetian playwright, who seems to be awaken from Goya’s etching “The sleep of reason produces monsters”, descends upon his distorted characters to narrate and to let them narrate themselves. Altoum’s empire is a world running towards self-annihilation, a decadent, aged world, obsessed by its own fragility, by its own end. It is a doused universe – which not incidentally refers to the myth of Atlantis, and in which the heroes wear the symbols of Nazism (but it could have been those of any other totalitarian regime). The director sees the fall of the human being into its own body – the soldier becomes an animal. We deal with a universe of neurosis. The radical solution chosen for the staging of the three riddles transformed into a gender clash gives way to a crescendo of violence which will degenerate into a veritable arming competition in an (auto)ironical clue. Alina Mazilu

Dramatic Script                   Andriy Zholdak

Adaptation                          Lia Bugnar

Director                             Andriy Zholdak

Scenography and costumes   Dargos Buhagiar

Music                                Vladimir Klykov

Light design             Andriy ZHoldak, Dragos Buhagiar

Video                     Andriy Zholdak, Vladimir Klykov

Actors

TURANDOT - Ema Vetean / Cristina Flutur

CALAF - Florin Cosulet

ALTOUM - Constantin Chiriac

GOZZI - Pali Vecsei

BARACH - Catalin Patru

SOLDIER & EDIK - Eduard Patrascu

ZELIMA - Simina Contras

ADELMA - Veronica Popescu / Arina Trif

SOLDIER - Vlad Robas

THE WIFE - Emke Boldizsar

           "When he arrived in Sibiu to start the rehearsals with Princess Turandot, the Ukrainian stage director Andry Zholdak, one of the strongest theatrical voices in Europe today, said he didn’t know a thing about what he was going to do, except that he was sure that the acting space had to be without an exit, without windows. After intense rehearsals during the summer and excellent cooperation with the set designer Dragos Buhagiar, Constantin Chiriac, director of the National Theater in Sibiu, producer of the show to be premiered in Bucharest, and an actor in the performance, told Scena.ro: “One thing can be said for sure: the show will be a huge box-office hit. When you make a show with a popular dimension, directed by Zholdak, there is no other way. This is the first show I did with Zholdak that has a story.” Don’t miss the story of Princess Turandot! www.sibfest.ro

           “Princess Turandot” tells the story of a Chinese princess whose hand in marriage is promised to the suitor who will succeed in solving three riddles. The director Andriy Zholdak breaks away from Carlo Gozzi’s text and imagines a surreal world in which the Venetian playwright, who seems to be awaken from Goya’s etching “The sleep of reason produces monsters”, descends upon his distorted characters to narrate and to let them narrate themselves.

         Altoum’s empire is a world running towards self-annihilation, a decadent, aged world, obsessed by its own fragility, by its own end. It is a doused universe – which not incidentally refers to the myth of Atlantis, and in which the heroes wear the symbols of Nazism (but it could have been those of any other totalitarian regime). The director sees the fall of the human being into its own body – the soldier becomes an animal. We deal with a universe of neurosis. The radical solution chosen for the staging of the three riddles transformed into a gender clash gives way to a crescendo of violence which will degenerate into a veritable arming competition in an (auto)ironical clue.

Alina Mazilu