Aureliu Manea

Aureliu Manea (4 February 1945, Bucharest – 13 March 2014, Galda de Jos) was a Romanian theatre director, actor, and writer.

Aureliu Manea, c. 1968

Life

Aureliu Manea studied theatre directing under Radu Penciulescu (1930-2019) at the Ion Luca Caragiale Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography in Bucharest, graduating in 1968. The same year, he made his debut as a director with a highly original production of Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm at the State Theatre of Sibiu.

Ibsen, Rosmersholm, dir. Aureliu Manea, 1968

He went on to stage a large number of productions, including works by Shakespeare, Sophocles, Seneca, Chekhov, Arnold Wesker, Racine, Jean Cocteau, Racine, and Georg Büchner, as well as Romanian classics, such as Ion Luca Caragiale's A Stormy Night and Tudor Mușatescu's Titanic Waltz, and plays by contemporary Romanian dramatist Teodor Mazilu (1930-1980). Suffering from ill health, he withdrew from theatre life in 1991 and was a patient at the Neuropsychiatric Recuperation and Rehabilitation Centre, Galda de Jos, Transylvania, until his death in 2014. In 1993, he was awarded the UNITER (Uniunea Teatrală din România) Prize for Lifetime Achievement. In 2014, the Turda Municipal Theatre was renamed the Aureliu Manea National Theatre in honour of the director, who staged many of his productions there.

Work as a director

Franco-Romanian theatre critic Georges Banu likens Manea to Argentinian director "maudit" Victor Garcia and describes him as an exponent of "absolute theatre, incandescent theatre," whose genius was recognised and admired at the time by Jean Genet and Peter Brook.[1] Banu followed Manea's career from the very beginning, writing a review of his first production, Rosmersholm, staged at the State Theatre of Sibiu in 1968. According to Banu, Manea's production succeeded in creating an intense sense of unease in both cast and audience by embodying Ibsen as a ghostly presence moving among the actors on stage.[2] Manea continued to stage innovative, visually arresting productions at theatres around Romania, including Racine's Britannicus at the Piatra Neamț Youth Theatre in 1969.[3]

Racine, Britannicus, directed by Aureliu Manea, Youth Theatre, Piatra Neamț, 1969
Twelfth Night, directed by Aureliu Manea, Cluj National Theatre, 1975

In 1975, Manea's production of Twelfth Night, staged at the Cluj National Theatre, with sets by Paul Salzberger, drew standing ovations.[4] The following year, hisMacbeth, staged at the Ploiești Theatre in 1976, drew on Japanese Kabuki theatre, with a stark set that evoked a desolate, snowy landscape, dominated by a wooden throne symbolising Macbeth's barbarous, brutal power, "adorned with furs and animal heads, which were trophies of earlier conquests and omens of the death that was to come."[5] A contemporary reviewer saw the production as a "cosmic" clash "between Good and Evil, between Life and Death, between order and chaos, or between nature and the human being as a representative of social convulsion."[6]

During his career, Manea staged only one production in Bucharest, however, since he saw the actors there as "too big" and preferred to work with lesser-known actors, who were not given to displays of ego and did not contest his direction.[7] As a director, he saw theatre not as a vehicle for individual actors, but rather as the "art of solidarity", "a ritual of togetherness" uniting actors and audience.[8]

Constantin Drăgănescu and Aristide Teica in Aureliu Manea's production of Macbeth, Ploiești State Theatre, 1976

Writing

In 1983, Manea published Energiile spectacolului (The Energies of Performance),[9] a series of short meditations on directors (Liviu Ciulei, Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook) and directing; playwrights (Sophocles, Gogol, Shakespeare, Aristophanes, Racine, Strindberg, Carlo Goldoni, Brecht, Chekhov, Molière, Marivaux); actors and acting; the ritual and psychological laws governing stage properties; the mechanisms of attention during performance (the director is an "engineer of attention"); theatre as officiation of a sacral rite; directorial intention, improvisation, chance, and the "entropic phenomenon" in theatrical performance; and the fundamental enigma and ephemerality of the theatrical act. In Spectacole imaginare,[10] published in 1986, Manea takes nineteen plays by Shakespeare (Richard II, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, As You Like It, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labours Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, King John, Richard III, The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, Twelfth Night, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet) and imagines a production that might penetrate the enigma of each play, its timeless human mystery. The "Imaginary Performances" are followed by a series of "Confessions", in which Manea meditates on his work as a director, on his past productions and work with specific actors and playwrights, on the puppet theatre, on performance as a ritual of profound communion between audience and actors, on the giants of universal drama (Aeschylus, Goethe).

In 2012, Viorica Samson Manea, the director's sister, edited and published a collection of Manea's writings: the trilogy of plays Penelope Falls to Thinking, The Theatre Rehearsal, and The Fairy from the East, short stories, and an essay ("Man's Solitude, or Narcissus").[11] Penelope Falls to Thinking was presented in the Reading Performances section of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in 2012.[12] In 2013, the Cluj National Theatre staged a production of Manea's trilogy of plays, directed by Gábor Tompa.[13]

Sources
  • Georges Banu, "Un meteorit." In Manea (2012, 5-10)
  • Monica Matei-Chesnoiu, Shakespeare in the Romanian Cultural Memory, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, Teaneck, 2006 ISBN 0-8386-4081-8.
  • Aureliu Manea, Energiile spectacolului, Editura Dacia, Cluj, Socialist Republic of Romania, 1983.
  • Aureliu Manea, Imaginary Performances in Shakespeare, trans. Alistair Ian Blyth, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020 ISBN 978-0367498740.
  • Aureliu Manea, Texte regăsite, ed. Viorica Samson Manea, Casa Cărții de Știință, Cluj, 2012 ISBN 978-606-17-0124-7.
  • Aureliu Manea, Spectacole imaginare, 2nd edition, Editura Eikon, Bucharest, 2018 ISBN 978-606-711-801-8.
  • Nicolae Prelipceanu, "Teatrul Globus al lui Aureliu Manea." In Manea (2018, 13-16)
  • Paul Salzberger, "Creion." In Manea (2012, 11-12)
  • Viorica Samson Manea, "Foreword." In Manea (2020, xi-xii)
  • Sibiu International Theatre Festival 2012, Antologia, ed. Alina Mazilu, Editura Humanitas, Bucharest, 2012 ISBN 978-973-50-3627-0.

References
  1. Banu, 2012, 5.
  2. Banu, 2012, 7.
  3. Interview with Aureliu Manea by Martin Leibovici, Ceahlăul, 21 October 1969. http://dordeneamt.ro/2018/08/28/evocari-regizorul-aureliu-manea-la-teatrul-tineretului/
  4. Viorica Samson Manea. In Manea (2020, xi).
  5. Matei-Chesnoiu (2006, 176)
  6. Mira Iosif, "Macbeth de Shakespeare", Teatrul 5 (1976, 44), quoted in Matei-Chesnoiu (2006, 176)
  7. Viorica Samson Manea. In Manea (2020, xi).
  8. Viorica Samson Manea. In Manea (2020, xi).
  9. Manea (1983)
  10. English translation: Imaginary Performances in Shakespeare. Manea (2020)
  11. Aureliu Manea, Texte regăsite, ed. Viorica Samson Manea, Casa Cărții de Știință, Cluj, 2012
  12. Sibiu International Theatre Festival (2012)
  13. https://www.teatrulnationalcluj.ro/piesa-639/trilogia-aureliu-manea/
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