ABOUT SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER
Octavian Neculai (born in Iasi, Romania, 1941) is a Romanian architect, set designer and costume designer. After graduating Architecture studies, he projected as architect many and significant building projects in Romania and abroad (theatres, hotels, office buildings, department stores). He is Professor at the University of Architecture in Bucarest.
He approached Theatre in 1972 with a substantial collaboration with Liviu Ciulei one of most important Romanian stage director and stage designer by creating the stage design for a lot of plays in Romania at Bulandra Theatre in Bucarest, Germany and United States of America.
In 1998 he created the stage design for the play A Stormy Night by the famous Romanian comedy playwright Caragiale at the Odeon Theatre, Bucharest, stage director Mihai Manutiu.
In 2000 creating the stage design for Hamlet by William Shakespeare, at the L.S. and in 2005 for Henry IV by L. Pirandello at the Bulandra Theatre, Bucharest, he continued the collaboration with the stage director Liviu Ciulei.
In 2002 he created “Bucharest No where” an urbanistic and political manifesto film together with the stage director Alexandru Dabija and the famous actor Marcel Iures, at the theatre ACT.
Colaborating with Alexandru Darie, they both enter a new era of thinking about theatre, about conceiving and perceiving the world of movement and image and space, a theatre of vision and thought. He went further with hisstyle of creating scenography: dynamic, virtual architectural. They created together in Bulandra Theatre, Bucharest a trilogy of love in different ways, times and messages, 3 different shows connected in very subtle and powerful ways:
in 2005 stage designs for The Triumph of Love by Marivaux;
in 2007 stage design and costumes for Pity She’s a Whore stage version by Oana Turbatu after John Ford;
in 2008 stage design and costumes for Orpheus and Euridice a new musical version written by the composer Adrian Enescu after Gluck themes.
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PRESS REVIEWS
Passionate Scenes Raised the Temperature
Temptations, jealousy and revenge in hard a confrontation happens on the stage while the battle for the Triumph of love is going on(...) La Dispute may also be considered as a story about Adam and Eve in „Eden’s garden of desire“ and of indecency as well. This is a story of the dangers that come up in youth. “
S. Pavlović, „Strasne scene digle temperaturu“, Dan, 30th July 2009
Pain as the Meaning of Life
Excerpts from ‘Philosophy in the Boudoir’, a collection of dialogues by Marquise de Sade (1795) were included into the playtext of ‘The Dispute’, directed by Alexandru Darie, and based on the Marivaux comedy of the same title, thus interpreting Marivaux’s disidealised, unsettling ideas about love, narcissism, fidelity, innocence, sinfulness through a yet darker, more brutal, more cynical discourse. Darie’s staging of ‘The Dispute’ has thus become a dense anatomy of the flipside of human nature, a piercing exposition of temptation, weakness, passion, staggering and crashes of man, which by no means lets Marivaux down, but instead makes him more up-to-date, current, hopeless and all the more thought provoking for that. Appearance of the stage in Darie’s production is reduced and conditional, determined by a series of mirrors, effective on the visual plane of the production, enabling an interesting play with reflections (set and costume design by Octavian Nekulai). This aspect of set design is also of consequence on the plane of idea, bearing multiple meanings. Characters keep staring at their own reflections in the mirrors, in admiration, consumed by their own selves. This narcissism prevents realisation of heartfelt love for other persons, i.e. suggests the notion that being in love itself is a form of covert narcissism, that people are in love with their own reflections, and that love is but a mere illusion, a fickle, vanishing feeling, an idealised projection of individual desire. Protagonists’ fascination with their own reflections suggests an extremely materialist mindset – they can’t see beyond their own bodies… It is interesting to note that audience also has the opportunity to see their own images in these mirrors, thereby, discretely, becoming a part of the play, its symbolic participant. Apart from the mirrors, the play space is framed by Leonardo’s drawings of foetuses and anatomy of human body, which is grounded in the play’s subject matter – anatomy of human behaviour. Images of foetuses also indicate the initial, gentle and vulnerable innocence of beings; in the context of action, it provokes a feeling of nostalgia, a latent and muffled pain stemming from innocence betrayed.
Acting styles in the production are varied and changeable, corresponding with characters’ functions, their traits and transformations. At the beginning, two young couples, Egle (Maša Dakić) and Azor (Marko Janjić), as well as Adine (Suzana Lukić) and Mesrin (Radovan Vujović), objects of an experiment performed by the Prince and Hermiane, were shaped as pronouncedly naive, simplified, but also mildly theatricalised. This established a distance that clearly addressed their youthful naiveté, a beautiful, but illusory, faith in infinity of love. These two pairs of lovers initially appear naked on stage, which in a delicate and symbolic way indicates their fragile innocence. By getting to know the world, selfishness, jealousy, possessiveness, the acting style of these four actors becomes more realistic, their naiveté wanes, making room for realism which, therefore, clearly denotes the unpleasant maturation.
Goran Šušljik and Hristina Popović play the characters of Prince and Hermiane with a moderate outward expressiveness, and with much more internal zeal, marked in reduced and yet convincing fashion. Sonja Vukićević and Anita Mančić form Mesrou and Carise quite a bit more stiffly and theatrically, functionally pushing their expression towards grotesque. This rough and more caricatural acting comically exposes the faith in infinity of love and disperses illusions. The fact that Sonja Vukićević plays a male character and that Anita Mančić limps as she walks deepens the grotesque and comic potential of the characters. A group of apparitions is also introduced in the play, six figures clad in capes and masks, with candles in hands, all the while loitering and sneaking about, observing the course of action (Miljan Prljeta, Iskra Brajović, Ivan Pantovićc, Kaća Todorović, Branislav Jevtić, Jelena Angelovski). Their introduction is a very suggestive way of expressing the plane of the irrational, fatal, otherworldly. These masked apparitions remind of the material, visible world not being the sole form of human existence, but rather a small part of a universe not subject to all encompassing rationalisation and control. Man is a mixture of his own choices and fate, of the rational and the irrational.
‘The Dispute’ by Alexandru Darie is a production of a really unique director’s poetics, a high degree of aesthetisation of form, inspirational metaphorics and complexity of meanings, precise choreography (Sonja Vukićević), refined, symbolically potent use of lighting and music (composed by Irina Dečermić). The production gives a de-romanticised view of love depicted here as pure fiction and striving for the ever elusive. We only love the ones who evade us, the ones who slip through our fingers like a handful of sand. Due to this fickle, ethereal nature of love, the play’s characters cynically suggest we cast it away and instead accept disposable passions, instant adventures that are more concrete, rational and probably more simple. This suggestion is, of course, an implicit call for discussion. That love is painful like an open wound slowly vanishing once it’s healed is beyond debate. However, the very process of wounding and healing may constitute the very meaning of our lives.
Ana Tasic, Politika, 4th August 2009
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