It's a little disconcerting to hear from the director of The Chairs for the National Multicultural Festival, Chris Simion, "I hate Ionesco".
What can she mean? Eugene Ionesco, who wrote the play in 1952, is after all Romania's most famous playwright, though he did from his mid-twenties live and work in France. Simion is among Romania's busiest directors, concentrating on The Chairs twice a day in Bucharest and having previously taken the production to India for the Francophone Festival in 2004.
According to Simion, a founder of the Compania de teatru "D'AYA" as an experimental student theatre group in 1999, "D'aya" means "just like that" and "is a simple name for simple theatre". The Chairs may seem simple, but there's a lot more to it than a superficial view might suggest. Considering Simion's success over the years, taking the company to theatre festivals in Egypt and Italy, her dislike of Ionesco must surely be disingenuous.
In The Chairs, an old couple decide they would like to pass on to humanity what they have learned in their long lives. They invite a vast crowd of people, none of whom come. All the Old Man (Ioana Marchidan) and the Old Woman (Adriana Trandafir) can do is speak to a vast array of empty chairs.
So demoralised that they can't go on living, the old couple leave the revelation of their message to an Orator they have hired (Gabriel Fatu) - but he turns out to be deaf-mute. Well, maybe such a black view of the very ordinary lives we mostly lead is enough to hate Ionesco for. But does this mean his play is too horrible to watch?
On the contrary, there is a special fascination in the old couple's dilemma. Rather than depending on speech, Daya Theatre have devised a "modern and a new interpretation" based in movement and comedy which means the "end of our performance is not a conclusion. It's a choice."
What we can expect to see is strong theatre from that part of the world, the eastern end of Old Europe, where cultural diversity has been both a blessing and a cause of conflict for so long, and so has a tradition of art in all forms which entertains while exposing realities. It is this tradition which gives depth to what at first seems simple.
For the actors, then, there is a deep satisfaction in presenting The Chairs. Trandafir says "my role in the play is based upon movement and so it was difficult to assume it at my age. But I believed in this work and I made it. Now I'm happy." Fatu explains "In our performance the director's vision surpasses the one of the author, giving an open end to the play".
And so, we can reinterpret Simion's concern about Ionesco. When he was writing in the years soon after World War II, at the time when the proliferation of nuclear weapons was the order of the day, it was not surprising that his play had a doomsday feeling about it. Politically, Romania and its neighbours were oppressive and dangerous places for original thinkers and activists. For the new generation of the 1990s Ionesco's cynicism and the philosophy of absurdism - that life actually has no purpose despite what we would like to believe - must have been something to hate. How else could things change for the better?
The irony is, of course, that Simion admits that Ionesco's "vision of life is real". She at the same time proves him wrong in the very creation of art on stage, performing his play with a new purpose which inspires the actors, and will surely inspire us in the audience.
This is the special value of our National Multicultural Festival, growing, once again under Dominic Mico's direction, far beyond a folkloric celebration. The Embassy of Romania is doing our community a great service by presenting work which gives us an insight into their culture's serious theatrical life.
Daya Theatre's intentions are to show the nature of society in an educational light. It might surprise some people to know that Daya's performances in India were part of a cultural agreement between Romania and India from 1957. 1999 was the beginning of an explosion in cultural exchanges of all kinds from handicrafts, photographic exhibitions, art competitions, dance performances, an Indian feature film shot in Romania, books about India published in Romanian, through to occasions such as when Zubin Mehta conducted the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra at the annual George Enescu International Music Festival in Bucharest. The new century seems to be celebrating cultural diversity, pointing towards a more hopeful world.
Despite the director's throwaway line, I suspect we will not hate Ionesco, but find we appreciate and respect him in The Chairs.
The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco
Daya Theatre Company, Romania
Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre
Tuesday to Thursday February 14-16, 7.30pm
Tickets: $32 full, $28 concession and Festival card holders, $10 students
Bookings: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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