The 21St century might start with Eugen Ionescu

An Eugen Ionescu international festival in Bucharest? This is an audacious idea for its initiators and a good opportunity for the Romanian audience to get enthusiastic by watching the works of the famous playwright, performed under various stage interpretations given by worldwide theatre companies.

Director Al.G. Croitoru, winner of many international prizes, is also a script-writer, a poet, an actor, a professor of film acting and film and television direction at the Hyperion University in Bucharest, a member of the TIBERINA Academy in Rome and of the CIDALC Romanian International Committee. As a general manager of the National Centre for Francophone Action, he supports the idea of initiating such a project in 2001. The project involves gathering all Romanian drama groups that have performed Ionescu’s plays over the last seasons. The festival would come as a completion to the Zilele Eugen Ionescu event (The Eugen Ionescu days), which takes place in Slatina, the writer’s native town. If financial circumstances do not allow all drama groups to gather, a specialised jury will take a tour to the towns that cannot send their representatives to the festival and will grant prizes to the best performances.

The National Centre for Francophone Action (CNAF), an organisation founded in 1994 by Constantin Crisan, attempts to create, at the beginning of a new millennium, a real cultural connection with Eugen Ionescu’s adoptive country, France, by organising this festival. The idea was born several years ago, when director Al.G. Croitoru brought to Slatina several drama groups that had participated in the Zilele Eugen Ionescu event. “COntareata cheala” (The Bald Singer), one of the most tragic analyses of the human grotesque, was supported by the National Centre for Francophone Action and performed at the Excelsior Theatre by a group of students at the Hyperion University, trained by professor atefan Radof.

CNAF theatrical activities were not confined, over the past years, to Eugen Ionescu’s work. They also included the “Elvira Popescu” dramatic performance contest, the “Elena Vacarescu” reciting contest, organised at the National Theatre in Bucharest, and a painting and diction competition focused on fables, intended to honour the “La Fontaine” tercentennial (1995).

An Eugen Ionescu festival in Bucharest would be beneficent for a larger collaboration, which might come into effect by means of a documentary on the French military mission in Romania during the first world war, which would use the documentary material of the national archives. CNAF is only facing financial difficulties. Two years after the first issue of the magazine “La Roumanie Francophone,” the foundation is trying to get the support of the French Academy, of the French Comedy and of the Francophone Ministry in France. Such a large project could be the beginning of a new series of cultural exchanges between Romania and other Francophone countries.