by Lucian Blaga
Absolute premiere

Artistic director: Tudor Chirilă
Scenography: Claudiu Mărgineanu
Musical illustration: Claudiu Frunză, Iosif Trendler, Oana Mereuţă
Premiere date: April 27, 1991

An expressionist piece, with strong psychoanalytic and philosophical accents, "Ivanca" has as protagonists four fragments of human individuality: The Father - hypostasis of primary energy; Ivanca - manifestation of the same vital cosmic elan; the painter Luca - embodiment of the Apollonian, but also crushed by obsessions, and his friend, Dinu, who shares his orientations, but tempers his destructive impulses. The greatest fear of the painter Luca is that of not killing, followed by the terror of the passage of time, embodied by the absurd mechanism of a clock in the house. His refuge is the sublimated painting of Byzantine angels and archangels, through which the artist hopes to capture a fragment of holiness, of divinity. With Ivanca's arrival at the house, Luca senses that something bad will happen, because the "old fires" buried in the flesh revive in the presence of his living and stirring body. The tension accumulated in the painter's consciousness will spill out through the affirmation of the unconscious, in the hallucinatory scene of the visit of the ten ancestors. The ten "tenants of pleasures" suggest the repression of instinct, of the pleasure that demands to be fulfilled through Ivanca's female body. This pleasure, however, will be experienced by the Father, who loves "goddesses and servants, without distinction, as at the age of puberty" even in old age. After the moment of madness experienced upon learning of this fact, Luca admits the futility of his attempt to control his blood and the inability to be only a "pure spirit", conscience and morality. Liberation is not long in coming: loneliness no longer attracts Luca, but joy, life, friendship, he is now able to wear his halo of sainthood among people.

Distribution:

Luke:  Dorin Presecan
Ivanka:  Oana Mereuta
Father:  Ion Tomorrow
Dinu:  Doru Firte
The maid: Mariana Vasile
Dreamed figures:  Petre Panait, Daniel Vulcu, Tiberiu Covaci

Technical director: Eugenia Popa
Prompter: Florence Szabo
Lights: Balogh Iosif
Sound: Sorin Domide

AWARDS:
–Second Prize for the performance and Tudor Chirilă: the award for directing, at the 8th edition of the Short Theatre Week, Oradea, 1991