Artistic director

Date and place of birth: 14.06.1959, Bucharest

Studies: Institute of Theater and Cinematography "ILCaragiale" Bucharest, 1983, class of Prof. Dinu Cernescu

He is the son of the well-known theater and film actor Iurie Darie and the actress Consuela Roşu.

Alexandru Darie – Ducu, as he is called in the theater world – came to the State Theater of Oradea at the beginning of the 1983/1984 season, immediately after graduating from the directing department of the IATC Bucharest. His debut was marked by the inconvenience and scandal triggered by the attempt to censor his show by the party forums. It is the show „Jolly Joker”. Tudor Popescu’s comedy – in fact a fierce satire on the so-called „multilaterally developed” socialist society, in fact a society undermined by deprivation, poverty, corruption, lies, a society in which people lived with the fear of expressing their opinion openly, with the fear of being constantly followed, by people paid by the „vigilant” Securitate, of being controlled, etc. The Theater had already gone through something similar with the show „Casa evantai” by Marin Sorescu. This time, the very young director managed to maximize the dangerousness of the satirical text.

In the factory that the play was about, everything goes awry, where people steal, lie, and hide reality when the big boss appears, someone from the control, who is given a red carpet upon arrival – well, at the „suggestions” of the party ideologues, he was replaced with one of a different color – but, anyway, the audience understood who the boss was!). The factory, yes, becomes the place where no one can manage if they behave normally, except the professional handyman, Jolly Joker, who actually doesn’t have many scruples, because he has to adopt chameleon-like, often obedient positions, in order to manage in difficult, complicated situations. The metaphor was revealed to whoever wanted to understand: the factory was, in fact, Romania with all its evil, with the material and moral misery that people could no longer bear. No one predicted that in five years liberation would come…

The characters in Alexandru Darie's show were pitiful caricatures of Romanians, forced to utter slogans that no one believed in for a long time, to endure hunger, to be afraid to say what they thought, and, above all, to helplessly witness the knowing cultivation of non-values (the allusions to the illiterate Elena Ceauşescu, who became a doctor in chemistry, and to President Nicolae Ceauşescu, a babbler and stammerer, who always gave everyone "precious indications", to the obedient activists, who shamelessly propagated a false ideology, completely foreign to the reality in which we lived, and which, as one columnist observed, was becoming more and more... Kafkaesque.

The director, intelligent, cultured, with a sharp critical spirit, attentive to how people lived in Romania in the 1980s, achieved something that even the author – Tudor Popescu – had not dreamed of: the apparently banal, realistic situations became, through hyperbolization, extremely dangerous, the allusions – transparent. The show was shocking from a political point of view, hence the troubles of the Theater, its ban (after its presence at the Gala Comedy in Galaţi, where it had a fulminating public success) and a whole procession of scandals. Certainly, absolutely all the actors stood out, their characters being convincing, some hard to forget: Cristian Şofron (the young actor – the director's mascot – who came with Darie and Maria Miu, and left just like that), Nicolae Toma, Ion Mâinea, Eugen Ţugulea, Daniel Vulcu, Eugen Harizomenov, Alla Tăutu, Anca Miere Chirilă, Ion Abrudan, Tiberiu Covaci, Nicolae Barosan, etc.

The director then signed an interesting show with a short play, "The Bright Week" by Mihai Săulescu (because this somewhat religious title was not accepted, the show was called "The Gates". It was presented at the 4th edition of the Short Theatre Week, in a coupé with "Apa" by Dumitru Solomon (directed by Victor Ioan Frunză). Darie's show was a controversial one - starting with the version, with the proposed stage version, but also with the director's vision.

„"Amadeus" (1986) by Peter Shaffer was the high point of the young director's presence in Oradea. His permanent collaboration with Maria Miu at all the performances in Oradea was, once again, auspicious. The scenography of this performance was truly exceptional. The show was fascinating, carefully crafted, with fine, refined nuances, not lacking in allusions to Romanian reality and its leaders (precious ideas: artists dying of hunger, mediocre people with great chances of existence in society, the evil presence of those who decide the fate of a nation, the condition of the artist in an unbalanced society, etc. The director admirably visualized Shaffer's valuable writing, and the actors, well, the actors were surprising, capable of triggering great emotions in the audience: Ion Mâinea (Salieri) - "the role of an entire career as an artist", Cristian Şofron created "brilliantly" the role of the brilliant Mozart.

The last show signed by Alexandru Darie in Oradea was "Ten Laughter" by Tudor Popescu. He confessed, in the program booklet of the show, how from the "magma-text, with a free structure, formed by dramatic pills, linked by a comparison - in fact a play about us, about the theater" - it slowly became a kind of commedia dell'arte script". He wanted to make a show about the "terrible force of the theater". And he succeeded, we say, much more, he made a show considered downright dangerous and subversive by the political scoundrels present at the viewing (which was, in part, even true). The show was banned and, with serious cuts imposed, it premiered only in December 1987. Behind the "laughter of laughter" one could easily "read" the serious, often caustic accents of the show.

Valentin Silvestru wrote about the show that it was conceived "on several levels", having a polymorphic structure that enhances the comedy", "the entire production admirably orchestrated by Alexandru Darie, in an unostentatious register across all ranges of humor - from comical humor to heavy humor, from sketch to caricature... with a fine dosage in scenic simultaneity, so that the reliefs mutually enhance each other, intransigently aiming at the decommissioning of the springs of consciousness, denouncing it serenely, alertly, without gloom".

Alexandru Darie has directed both in the country and abroad (Great Britain, USA, Japan, Germany). Since 2006 he has been the director of the Bulandra Theatre in Bucharest. In the spring of 2009 he was re-elected as president of the Union of European Theatres (founded by Giorgio Strehler).

(Presentation by Elisabeta Pop)

Artistic sheet – Oradea State Theatre

• Artistic direction (debut) for JOLLY JOKER by Tudor Popescu, 1984
• Stage adaptation and Artistic Direction of THE GATES (THE LIGHTED WEEK) by Mihai Săulescu (Spectacol coupé APA by Dumitru Solomon and THE GATES/THE LIGHTED WEEK by Mihai Săulescu), 1984
• Assistant director on THE BOOK OF IOVIŢĂ by Paul Everac, 1986, dir. Dan Alecsandrescu
• Art direction and light design at AMADEUS by Peter Shaffer, 1986
• Selection of texts, collage and Artistic Direction for TEN LAUGHTER by Tudor Popescu, 1987