Interview taken from LiterNet.ro

Razvan Rocas: This is your first time staging a Chekhovian text. What has kept you away from it so far and what made you choose "Uncle Vanya"?
Cristian Ban: I feel like saying that youth. In recent years I have been rereading his texts and I have probably reached the point where I resonated with them the most. I remember that a few years ago, at a rehearsal, the actress Elena Popa asked me if I didn't want to play Chekhov because "I feel something" and I think she was right. I was fascinated by the rehearsals and the way this text challenged me as a director. I don't feel that it was difficult, I feel that it was intense.

RR: This is also your first collaboration with the Regina Maria Theater. How has the entire working process been with the Oradea team so far?
CB: It was very relaxed, serene and efficient. Usually, at the end of the season it's harder, people are more tired or thinking about vacation. I was at the fourth premiere of the season, but it was a beautiful spring that charged me more than tired me. And I felt the actors connected all the time, interested in what we were doing. I also add the fact that we had an assistant director (David Constantinescu) and a technical director (Diana Sîrghi) who were extremely intuitive and attentive, which helped a lot. So both Andreea Sândulescu and I left Oradea with a smile on our faces.

RR: In your portfolio of performances you can also find classic texts reinterpreted in your own way. The same thing happens with "Uncle Vanya", where you choose an approach with a more relaxed, comical and human touch. How did you arrive at this direction and
What do you want to highlight through the show?
CB: I didn't set out to follow a direction or modernize for the sake of art. I work extremely intuitively and that's how I did it now. I believe I did what the text says and I'm surprised when people perceive the show as a reinterpretation or modernization. It's simply a show of our times, made by people who have never used a samovar in their lives.

R..R: What are the main difficulties and challenges when approaching a classic text, such as "Uncle Vanya", and how do they manifest themselves in the working process?
CB: I didn't finish this project with the memory of some difficulties related to the text. It's a text that gave me the feeling that I was safe because everything I needed was there. Whether in words, or in pauses, or in the captions. There are dozens of ways in which one line or another can be said and, implicitly, dozens of ways in which it can contribute to the whole. So it was challenging, not difficult, to choose the exact measure. There's a very mathematical process behind it, but I liked that.

RR: How necessary do you think such revisitations of classic texts remain?
CB: I honestly don't know. It's also important how and why and with whom these revisitations are made. I felt in this case that this classic text is like a longer and sharper knife than in other cases, a knife with which you can reach deeper and more precisely where you want to go. But today it seems to me that the way you tell the story is more important, not the year in which the text was written.

RR: You said in the introduction that Uncle Vanya „has a lot to say about us and those around us.” Today, when it seems that we are increasingly dispersed from each other, do you think that theater still has the power to bring us together and generate a
real dialogue?
CB: For at least two hours, the duration of the show, we stay together, whether we want to or not. We cough, a phone rings, we see how others react to what we see, we laugh, maybe we cry, there's that magical silence when everyone is paying attention to the same thing. Then, when the show ends, I don't know what happens and I wonder if anyone really has a real and honest answer to this question.

RR: Of all that you set out to do with this show, what would you like the audience to be left with when they leave the theater?
CB: Empathy towards the characters, empathy towards their own weaknesses, and a story that I hope will help them see the people around them differently.