Comedy by Bertolt Brecht
Translation: Mariana Șora and Mircea Șeptilici

Artistic direction: Alexandru Colpacci (debut)
Scenography: Dan Erceanu
Premiere date: December 19, 1970

The belief behind the play "The Disappearance of Galy Gay. A Man = a Man" is that the human personality can be dismantled and reassembled like a machine, without the man losing anything. We are therefore offered a strange experience, through which the gentle and harmless dockworker Galy Gay will be transformed into the soldier Jeraiah Jip. On an evening like all the others in India, Galy Gay leaves home with the intention of buying a fish for household needs. He meets three English soldiers who, in order not to be sanctioned, ask him to participate with them at the evening roll call, in place of a missing comrade. Reluctant at first, Galy Gay accepts, being unable to say NO. His adventure thus becomes a consequence first of naivety, then of helplessness, because once he enters the position of soldier Jip and responds "presently" to the call, his previous self ceases to exist. He will gradually change his character and personality, going through moments of extreme violence, even being confronted by the firing squad. The peaceful man at the beginning, disarmingly docile, will eventually kill innocent people during the assault of a fortress. Thus, the play seems to suggest that in the economy of the world's making, people with their personalities are interchangeable.

Anticipating in a way the art of brainwashing, Brecht personified in Galy Gay the typical victim of the process of dehumanization through standardization, massification, regimentation in a structure destined for violence and destruction. Indeed, at the time of writing the play, the author was concerned with the evolution of man that can transform the innocent into a war machine. The imprecation at the end is an indictment addressed to all those who sow the seeds of war in the world: "May you never have rest and go from war to war, may you roam the whole earth and may no place on earth receive you. May the snows of the mountains freeze over you and the sands of the deserts burn you and may you never return from where you left!"„

Distribution:

Gay Gay:  Nicholas Thomas
Wife:  Doina Ioja
Hunger:  Ion Tomorrow
Jeep:  Grig Dristaru
Jesse:  Ben Dumitrescu
Polly:  Octavian Uleu
Wank:  George Stana
Fairchild:  Ion Abrudan
Begbick:  Gina Nicolae
Mah-Sing:  Grig Schiţcu
Soldier I:  John Martin
Soldier II:  Geo Nune
In figuration: the entire collective of the Romanian section.

Technical director: Elena Varlam
Prompter: Sofica Spoiala
Lighting: Vasile Blejan
Sound: Dorel Olea