Play in three acts by Titus Popovici

Artistic director: Dan Alecsandrescu
Decor: Nagy Sándor
Costumes: Eliza Cozma
Premiere date: December 6, 1960

Around August 23, 1944, in an old, unfinished house, a music teacher who was fired from the school where he taught, disagreeing with the acts of the dictatorship in power, his teenage daughter, Ada, and Andrei, an exceptional pianist, Jewish, whom the teacher hid throughout the war, live their existence isolated from the horrors of the outside world. There was a beginning of polemic between them and the official society, but, upon realizing the ideological mismatch, the three preferred to withdraw, convinced that through temporary isolation they would remain pure, untouched: "Time does not exist (...) It got scared of us and avoided us. It left us on an island. Three shipwrecked people." (Ada).

The external reality bursts upon them unexpectedly in the person of the German officer Knapp, a former professor of philosophy at the university. Surprisingly, a cordial discussion begins between Knapp and Andrei, based on an apparent underground understanding between intellectuals: they savor the beauty of Bach's "Passacaglia", they praise the elites and the few who think. However, there can be no bridges of communication between the one who has adopted the cruelty and violence of war and the one who has avoided them at all costs. Knapp and his subordinates crush Andrei's fingers, mutilating him physically and spiritually.

The second one who disturbs the isolation of the three is Mihai, a young Romanian soldier, a communist freshly released from prison and immediately a fighter against Nazism. To the abstractions of the Knapp-Andrei dialogue, he opposes the clarity, the determination, the honor of being involved in the fight. The practical inclination does not exclude aesthetic aptitudes, but in Mihai's case, beauty exists in people.

"Passacaglia" (etymologically, the term derives from the Spanish words "pasar" - to walk and "calle" - street) is a play about the relationship between the artist/intellectual and society. Do they have the right to completely detach themselves from the environment, from the events of the time? As Liviu Ciulei, who staged the play at the Municipal Theater in Bucharest, notes, "essential to the main issue of the play is the truth that man cannot live alone. His consciousness must be part of the consciousness of the era he lives in (...) To be free, you must understand your obligations towards yourself, towards the society in which you live." (from the program of the show).

Distribution:

The teacher:  Constantin Adamovici, Constantin Simionescu
Add:  Sofia Albu
Andrew:  Nicholas Thomas
Michael:  Liviu Martinus
Lieutenant Knapp:  Dorel Urlățeanu
Knight of the Iron Cross:  Andrei Bursaci, Marcel Segărceanu
Legionnaire:  Jean Sandulescu 

Technical director: Dalma Simionescu
Prompter: Agy Segărceanu