GAMES IN THE BACKYARD

GAMES IN THE BACKYARD
  • by Edna Mazya
  • Translation: Ada-Maria Ichim
  • Musical Illustration and Directed by: Diana Mititelu
  • Set Design: Răzvan Bordoș
  • Lighting Design: Cristian Niculescu
Premiera: 29 February 2020
Duration: 1h 10min, no intermission
14
nerecomandat sub 14 ani - limbaj licențios ocazional

Edna Mazya not only does the reconstitution of the trial of an extremely violent event that occured in the lives of some young people, but also analyzes the psychological mechanisms that allowed it to occur. "Games in the Backyard" is a performance about cruelty, an x-ray of the adolescent psychic, a story about four boys and a girl living their last day of freedom, of childhood, of innocence. Last day without consequences!
The play has enjoyed enormous success both in Israel and in other countries where it was set up, especially because it transposes a true story, of the trial of the aggressors in the case of a rape of a 14 year old teenager, which happened in a rural community in the north of the country. The case shocked the Israelis, and the initial acquittal of the perpetrators triggered massive protests throughout the country. The publicity surrounding the trial prompted several women to gain courage and report various forms of aggression held in silence.
 

Cast

Tours

Awards

Photo Gallery

GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD GAMES IN THE BACKYARD

Video

Reviews

The performance signed by Diana Mititelu in Constanța touches the audience with patience and depth. Intense through the problematic addressed, it acquires a symbolic value through the directing and set design options. (...) "Games in the back yard" by Edna Mazya, the debut performance of the young director Diana Mititelu, set up at the State Theater in Constanta, carries a very special universe. From the Israeli story that shocked an entire people, Diana Mititelu chooses to highlight the relationships between teenagers and the reasons why, under the pretext of an erotic-aggressive game, they destroy their own destinies. (…) A performance to be seen and thought about coldly, minding the relativity of our acts and the things we should discuss with teenagers. A meditation on sex as a form of power… sometimes out of control. (Elena Coman, „(Ne)vinovat! Jocurile continuă în curtea din spate”)

Elena Coman / Amfiteatru

https://amfiteatru.com/2020/03/04/nevinovat-jocurile-continua-in-curtea-din-spate/

Clearly, this is a performance that doesn’t aim to please in the conventional sense. Why? Because it’s an unsettling production that stirs emotions, challenges perspectives, and leaves you speechless by the end, with many silent, unspoken questions. Only after the stage is empty, after you shake off the initial perplexity, do the questions start seeking answers. "Games in the Backyard" is not a play you forget as soon as you leave the theater. In a way, it haunts you. It’s the kind of performance you feel compelled to watch again. Especially since the female role is portrayed by two actresses with distinct personalities, making it seem, despite the identical lines, as though you’re watching two entirely different shows if you see both interpretations. (Mirela Stîngă - “Games in the Backyard” or When Innocence Vanishes with a Toss of a Ball)

Mirela Stîngă / Cultura Constanța

https://culturaconstanta.ro/jocuri-in-curtea-din-spate-sau-cand-inocenta-dispare-la-o-aruncatura-de-minge/

"Games in the Backyard" is a performance that should be seen by children, parents, and teachers, then analyzed and dissected with a cool head. It highlights how relative our actions can be and sheds light on the relationships between teenagers and the motivations behind their decisions, which, under the guise of an erotic game, end up destroying their own futures. It delivers a harsh lesson on premature maturation, manipulation, and responsibility. (Teodora Ghica - "The Repercussions of the Game - "Games in the Backyard" at DbutanT, 2020")

Teodora Ghica / Liternet

https://agenda.liternet.ro/articol/24996/Teodora-Ghica/Repercusiunile-jocului-Jocuri-in-curtea-din-spate-la-DbutanT-2020.html

I’m not sure if the fact that the director is a young woman influenced the tension of the drama. It is simply a performance constructed with the precision of a surgeon who knows exactly where to place the scalpel and make the cut... A young girl, Dvori, 14 years old, is raped by three 17 years old boys... The fourth one, more pervert than the others, incites, but does not take part in the action. A three-sided space, enclosed by fences and often lost in darkness, serves as both an isolated courtyard and a courtroom. The set and costumes by Răzvan Bordoș, along with Cristian Niculescu’s remarkable lighting, contribute significantly. The scenes alternate between a raping process, which opens the performance with voices lost in a menacing shadow, and several scenes of games that precede the raping at the end, set in the confined space of a courtyard between buildings. Transitions between the trial and the courtyard or crime scene are seamless, with actors changing costumes in the dark. The performers alternate roles, playing both the lawyers defending the accused and the unruly teenagers in the backyard. The girl, or victim, transforms into the prosecutor, delivering the verdict and sentencing those condemned to prison. However, the performance ends with the haunting image of the girl lying silently, crushed in the darkness, as if nothing has been resolved—or perhaps nothing should be forgotten. In the role of the girl, I watched Cristina Luca (and I hope to see the performance again with the other actress, Ecaterina Lupu). Cristina Luca’s character is a rebellious, provocative teenager, both innocent and concealing a deep emotional void. She later becomes the prosecutor for the case, sharp, precise, and convincing. The boys—Andrei Bibire, Cătălin Bucur, Theodor Șoptelea, and Ștefan Mihai—deliver energetic performances that incorporate nuanced portrayals of their characters, ranging from cynicism and bravado to repression and cowardice. Diana Mititelu’s directorial debut undoubtedly signals the promise of many more performances under the spotlight.

Mirella PATUREAU - Observator Cultural

https://www.observatorcultural.ro/articol/intre-teama-si-speranta-la-cluj-teatrul-a-ales-definitiv-speranta/

Games in the Front Yard - Games in the Backyard at Interferențe, 2022 Mihai Brezeanu, November 2022 A real case. Israel, the 1990s. Seven teenagers, one girl, three nights. A first-instance decision: acquittal. Massive street protests. An appeal decision: convictions. A play. Games in the Backyard by Edna Mazya, 1993. Four teenagers, one girl, one night. Four defense attorneys, one prosecutor, a trial. The same five actors playing both casts (the first act - the day before and the night of the rape, the second act - the days of the trial). A famous staging. Bobi Pricop. A graduation exam performance at UNATC, later picked up by Godot and Act. 2011. Another famous staging. Diana Mititelu. 2020, Teatrul de Stat Constanța. UNITER Award for Best Debut at the 2021 Gala. Two performances at Interferențe 2022, on November 25, 2022, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Diana Mititelu mixes the two acts. A scene from the trial follows a scene from that same day. The rape and the trial of the rape become one. Multiple rapes. The physical, the judicial, the moral. A gang of 17-year-olds, led/ manipulated by the diabolical emerging Asaf (Andrei Bibire, 28), accompanied/ followed by Gidi (Cătălin Bucur, 26), Sela (Theodor Șoptelea, 24), and Șmulick (Ștefan Mihai, 27). A pack of lawyers without a leader (the same four), seated on chairs as if in a bar at the corners of a ring, in the center of which is she, Dvori (Cristiana Luca, 26 / Ecaterina Lupu, 25). A wild prosecutor (Ecaterina / Cristiana) spinning around the four accused, standing back to back, forming a perfect circle / ring, seemingly waiting for a match to burn. A swing on which Dviri mostly swings, but also Șmulick (the one at the age where love manifests rather through its opposite, the one who understands what is coming, the one who tries to oppose the game orchestrated in the shadows by Asaf, the one who fails in aggression and asthma attacks, the one who first throws himself into the arms of the sin he tried in vain, alone, to prevent). The arena / courtroom designed by Răzvan Bordoș brings everything to light. The audience, seated on bleachers surrounding three-quarters of the playing space, has high-definition access to the events and their interpretation and is called to deliver its own verdict. Not by chance, in Edna Mazya's text, the character of the judge is missing. At the end, we hear the sentences, spoken by Cristiana / Ecaterina as a re-living of the original rape (only now, at the moment the final sentences are announced, Diana Mititelu brings to the stage visually part of the horrors of the suffering from which everything began, in the actual scene of the assault, the lights, expertly coordinated by Cristian Niculescu, mute), but the real trial plays out in our minds. How does an ultra-infatuated teenager (Șmulick played by Ștefan) come to reverse his moral poles? How do two football-obsessed kids (Theodor's Sela in the Argentina jersey) and the appearance of being cool based on alcohol (Cătălin's Gidi, who brings the beer but doesn’t rush toward it) come to embrace the darkest of darkness? What traumas push a teenage girl who does not relate to the other girls of her age (the balance of ingenuousness and rebellion, timidity and provocation proposed by the two actresses is the great winning bet of both Ecaterina and Cristina, as well as of the entire production directed by Diana Mititelu, who refuses any easy resolution of guilt and causality, managing at the same time to expose crystal clear the guilt and causality, though not everything that’s clear is easy to understand/internalize/accept) to throw herself with terrible self-destructive craving into the arms of the genius of evil? What stops him, the absolute black (note how Andrei’s Asaf presses on every syllable of the questions with which he asks Dviri for her consent to descend, step by step, seemingly based on her own will, toward an irreversible hell), from accepting her incredible post-rape proposal (the most powerful scene of the performance) to bury her forever? Mazya, Mititelu, Bordoș, Niculescu, Luca, Lupu, Bibire, Bucur, Șoptelea, and Mihai play with our minds, because life plays with our minds. Whether we realize it or not. Performances like Constanța’s Games in the Backyard, conceived/designed by manager Erwin Șimșensohn as a hook to attract teenagers and young people from Constanța to theater, which has one of the youngest, if not the youngest professional theater troupe in the country (the ages listed above are current, don’t forget the show was made in 2020!), are, in fact, hooks capable of unlocking anyone’s mind (young or old, teenager or adult, from any part of the world) who has the openness to understand that it is within their power to judge (meaning to understand) the world around them, to uncover manipulations, to stop evil, to not do the evil that exists within us at any age, in any family or social context. In the backyard, there are sometimes fragilities, bravado, uncertainty, the desire to belong, the need for exploration (including sexual), the hunger for affection of adolescents. In the front yard, besides judges, prosecutors, and lawyers, we are always us, jurors in our own lives, passing sentence with every gesture, turned glance, complicity, surrender.

Mihai Brezeanu - LiterNet

https://agenda.liternet.ro/articol/26974/Mihai-Brezeanu/Jocuri-in-Curtea-din-fata-Jocuri-in-curtea-din-spate-la-Interferente-2022.html