Text taken from LiterNet.ro

Ramona Nemes: You return to the Regina Maria Theater after you have mounted Tartuffe in 2021. How do you feel you have evolved as a director since then and how do you now find the actors of the "Iosif Vulcan" Troupe a few years later?

Vlad Trifas (laughing): It's... quite complicated to talk about evolution mine. I just hope I didn't make a fool of myself, that's the only thing I wish for. I like to say about myself that I'm a seeker, a person who "explores" with the curiosity of a child. If we're going to talk about my evolution in one way or another, I can certainly say that the hole is bigger, I've started looking a little more, which I hope brings me a little more experience. But I'm just as curious, with just as many questions. I'm afraid of the moment when I answer all the questions, so from this point of view I think I'm the same, but with a greater baggage of experience.

As for the band, I find them in excellent shape. Many of the actors are at an artistic maturity where we are no longer talking about evolution, but about refinement, about a true nobility that is taking shape. It is gratifying to see them like this, and this gives me the courage to dig deeper, since we have already talked about searching. They are very good "casmalagi" in this sense, and I have great confidence in the band here. We communicate very well, and the break of several years in which we did not work together was, I think, beneficial. We now find ourselves at a very good moment.

RN: Your repertoire shows a predilection for classical authors. You have staged texts by Shakespeare, Goldoni, Molière… Why are you attracted to the classics and how do you manage to make them relevant for today's audience?

OT: A much smarter man than me once told me that if you want to make good theater, you should trust the great authors. I have complete trust in the great authors – and I'm not just referring to the classics. There are also contemporary authors, alive today, who write extraordinary texts. But, yes, I've noticed this inclination towards the classics in myself. At one point I even suspected myself of laziness – I wondered if I wasn't reading too little and that's why I keep coming back to them. Then I realized that wasn't the case, I still read, but that big, powerful, universal themes naturally attract me.

I think that's what defines great authors – their ability to always stay relevant. I'm just "cooling their coat". I don't like to work against the text or completely overturn it. The moment I tackle a text I'm convinced that that author has said something valid, interesting and valuable. I'm not interested in forcing a completely different meaning just to demonstrate an "original" reading. The stakes are different there. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just not interested in them.

The big issues that these authors raise are authentic and true. Look, Caragiale himself told how a young man asked him: "Master, give me a topic that will be successful." And Caragiale answered him simply: "A boy loved a girl and his parents wouldn't let him." So simple and so current. Parents have changed, circumstances have changed, but the obstacles and the way we find ourselves in them remain just as alive.

The way I manage to make them contemporary is, I think, strictly aesthetic sometimes. I think it's enough to blow the dust off a book and read it with the eye of a modern theater person, with the baggage of current knowledge and experiences. If you read carefully and honestly, the text contemporizes itself, without artifice. It's an honest, natural process, not a forced one.

RN: Would you say that you have a specific working style or does it differ depending on the project? For example, when building a show, do you start with a clear idea or are you more of a fan of collective creativity and use spontaneous situations during rehearsals?

OT: It's a mix of all of these. It's mandatory from my point of view that there should be a clear idea at the beginning, to have a safety net, otherwise it's dangerous. But on this red thread, on this structure – which is not delicate, but rather sensitive and at the same time very resistant – everything is built. It is the skeleton, and the rest of the "meat" I add together with the actors and the entire team.

I always know what I want to do, but I leave room for surprises brought by people, because the actors are the ones who create the “life” on stage. They are the pulse. Actors cannot and should not play ideas, much less my idea. My idea is a guide on which we then put muscle, skin, flesh and give birth to this living animal that should be the theater. I cannot give them my “child” and expect them to be the only good parents. We have to give birth to it together, and then what we do makes sense.

I wouldn't say I have a very "my" method. I like people, I like them a lot, and that provides me with enough inspiration. That's why I don't feel the need to impose my own method. Each group has a different energy, and I like to connect to their energy and from there start building together.

RN: In your relationship with the actors, you are very energetic and involved. I saw you tirelessly at rehearsals, going up and down the stage, explaining, interpreting. I know you don't like big words, but you are a multi-talented creator. To what extent do you manage to satisfy your creative urge as a director?

OT: I like to think that it happened to me to grow, it happened to me to mature, but it was against my will. At rehearsals I am, in fact, a child who looks at these people and marvels. My energy comes naturally and no matter how tired I am, there, in the hall, something good always happens to me. I can't explain exactly how, but I consume myself and I get totally involved. I am like a shark that, once it has "smells" a good moment, it doesn't stop until it has squeezed everything it can offer.

And the fact that I was an actor before, I think it was a natural stage for me. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's necessarily the Russian model, where we are actors first, then we become directors. I think we are different and everyone has their own path, and for me the experience of being an actor was beneficial.

And as a director I find myself completely. I have an enormous frustration that I can't paint, I can't even draw a straight line, but I feel that through directing I paint in a way. I don't want to be too metaphorical – the actors don't become my brushes – but directing satisfies this need for me to create. I'm also a voyeur, I like to look at people's lives "through the keyhole". That's why I consider myself more of a humanist than a director. I like people, I like life and I think I have the gift of observing and transforming into performances the fragments of reality that inspire me. And this feeds my need for creation. In addition, I compose my own music for the shows, which completes the process.

As I was saying, I believe that these worlds do not exist somewhere in themselves, but are created. I don't even make the music in advance. It appears somewhere in the middle of rehearsals, when the show starts to come to life. I don't believe in "ready-made" things; the music has to be of the show and be born with it.

And I believe something else: before it is art, theater is a profession. It is done by craftsmen. Some of us are destined to take it to the level of art and I really want to be among them. But, if I am not, I am not upset. I am very calm to know that I am a good craftsman, an honest craftsman.

RN: You said you made the transition from acting to directing, and when filming the trailer for "D-ale carnavalui" you seemed to really enjoy this coordinating experience. How do you see the possibility of exploring the film area in the future?

OT: I like it, I like it a lot. I often use elements of film on stage – I have been “accused” of this before – and I would like to explore the cinematic area as well. I am convinced that at some point I will, because there is a territory there waiting to be discovered. I like film as much as I like painting or music and I think it has its own language, extremely inviting, which I feel the need to get closer to more and more.

RN: How did you think about the directorial vision for "D-ale carnavalului" and what elements did you choose to emphasize? Why did you choose this direction and what do you think it reveals about the text's topicality?

OT: Setting up the show Carnival's gentlemen was born in a laboratory state, where the entire team explored Caragiale's deeply human humor. His typologies do not just belong to the past, but breathe around us, people who burn at high temperatures, ready to explode at any moment, because their world – like ours – always operates on the edge.
Carnival becomes the metaphor for this tense universe, where masks, appearances and intentional confusions create a permanent danger of explosion. The laughter that the show proposes is not only comical, but necessary: a mechanism of liberation and recognition in a reality where human fragility and ridicule inevitably coexist.

It's an important bet, especially because we are in Transylvania, and the show has a southern energy, very different in vibration. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but it's clear that Nenea Iancu was inspired by the specifics of the south, where the fuse is shorter and burns faster. However, the explosion occurs here too, it's just that sometimes we have to shorten the fuse a little.

I wish it weren't contemporary, but Caragiale is terribly current – too current – and that's because we need it. Usually, we find it hard to laugh at ourselves. We end up paying psychologists to help us see ourselves more clearly. But theater holds up a mirror to us and makes us laugh at our own weaknesses. It helps us recognize ourselves and have the courage to say: "Yes, that's exactly how I live. I face this too." Carnival's gentlemen it's not just about lovers, but about a deeply mercantile world, which Caragiale captures with extraordinary finesse and depth.

Of course, the show is a comedy and I want the audience to laugh. But the text also has a deeper dimension. The wonder of Caragiale is that it doesn't directly moralize, it doesn't say "Don't do that again!", but makes you laugh until you realize for yourself – sometimes even after you leave the theater – that it's not so good to laugh. Because, inevitably, you realize that the situations on stage are yours too. And then it becomes a little personal. But it's nice to make this discovery through laughter, it's healthy, and I think society really needs this type of exercise.

I don't think that theater necessarily has to be pedagogical, but I think it can help. And not just the spectators, but also us, the ones who do it, because it gives us a greater meaning. Obviously, we want people to enjoy it, to have fun – after all, it's a comedy. But Nenea Iancu doesn't let us stop at just having fun.

If there's one thing I want the audience to leave the room with, it's this thought: "I hope it's not me, and if it is me, I'll fix it."