SEASIDE STORIES

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SEASIDE STORIES, a succession of stories with different characters, with lightning encounters, short intense slice-of-life moments, perhaps some of those we have all lived, with feet full of sand, with wrinkled skin on which the sun dried the sea water, with senses constantly perceiving, beyond the events, in the background, the ripple of the waves, the mirror of the water with its never the same shades, the horizon, the stillness of the deep, the salty taste of the air, the smell of rotting seaweed and shells, the repetitive music of the terraces, the bright colours of the beach toys. 
The common thread running through the stories is that feeling of a seaside holiday, which is shared, though not always realised, by those who live near it and those who return here year after year or at least from time to time.
And in all of them there is the sea, like a mythological character that fills all stories with its meaning. 
Seaside Stories make us recall our own long-forgotten stories and understand what keeps us here or brings us back.

CAST:

RUNNING BEAUTIFULLY, HIGH KNEES by Tudor Ganea

Tudorel – Ștefan Mihai

Mother – Laura Iordan

Father – Iulian Enache

Cătălin – Theodor Șoptelea

Haughty Lilly  – Liliana Ghiță / Mirela Pană

Bitălz – Marian Adochiței

Thugs – Andrei Bibire, Alexandru Burcă, Cătălin Bucur

Rockeritzele – Anaïs Agi-Ali, Mihaela Velicu, Lana Moscaliuc, Alina Manțu, Cristiana Luca

FRAGILE by Simona Goșu

Girl – Cristiana Luca

Mother – Nina Udrescu

VIENI QUA by Marius Chivu

She – Cătălina Mihai/Cristiana Luca

He – Theodor Șoptelea

Paco – Ștefan Mihai

Monica – Liliana Cazan

ALL THE EARRINGS IN THE VAMA BEACH by Lavinica Mitu

She – Mihaela Velicu

He – Marian Adochiței

Couples: Alina Manțu și Andrei Bibire, Cătălin Bucur și Cristiana Luca, Lana Moscaliuc și Anaïs Agi-Ali, Alexandru Burcă si Cătălina Mihai

The weird one out: Laura Iordan

AT THE SEA EAGLE - FISH IN ITS CLAW  by Marius Chivu

The Boy – Andrei Bibire

Thugs – Cătălin Bucur, Alexandru Burcă, Ștefan Mihai, Theodor Șoptelea, Remus Archip

SHE USED TO LIKE THE SEA  by Nicoleta Dabija

She – Lana Moscaliuc

Them: Alina Manțu, Laura Iordan, Anaïs Agi-Ali, Mihaela Velicu, Cristiana Luca, Lana Moscaliuc

WYOMING by Marius Chivu

Cezar Dumitrescu – Cătălin Bucur

Mother – Liliana Cazan

The Girl – Anaïs Agi-Ali

Minions – Mihaela Velicu, Cătălina Mihai, Andrei Bibire, Alexandru Burcă, Theodor Șoptelea, Cristiana Luca, Ștefan Mihai

Poem: YOU ARE DRIFTING AWAY​​​​​​​by Nina Cassian

Nina Udrescu

Other texts by Radu Afrim:

MC Seaside Stories – Cătălin Bucur

Pegas – Ștefan Mihai

Relu Pescărelu - Theodor Șoptelea

Haughty Lilly – Liliana Ghiță / Mirela Pană

Albano și Romina Power - Lana Moscaliuc & Marian Adochiței

Nana Mouskouri - Marian Adochiței

Bitălz' fans – Lana Moscaliuc, Mihaela Velicu, Laura Iordan, Alina Manțu, Cătălina Mihai, Cristiana Luca

The Punk – Cătălin Bucur

Monica – Liliana Cazan

Cast

• Lili Aroganta: Liliana Ghiță ,Mirela Pană
• Tudorel, Pegas, Patroana, Farmacista, Bunicul, Paco, Golan, Minion: Ștefan Mihai
• Cătălin, El, Golan, Minion, Relu Pescărelu: Theodor Șoptelea
• Golan, El, Cezar Dumitrescu: Cătălin Bucur
• Bitălz, El, Romina Power, Nana Mouskouri: Marian Adochiţei
• Ea, Minion, Fana lui Bitălz: Cătălina Mihai ,Ecaterina Lupu
• Tatăl: Iulian Enache
• Mama, Desperecheata, Ea, Fana lui Bitălz: Laura Iordan
• Monica, Mama: Liliana Cazan
• Rockeritza, Ea, Minion, Fana lui Bitălz.: Mihaela Velicu
• Rockeritza, Ea, Fana lui Bitălz: Alina Manţu
• Rockeritza, Fata, Ea, Minion, Fana lui Bitălz: Cristiana Luca
• Rockeritza, Ea, Albano, Fana lui Bitălz: Lana Moscaliuc
• Mama, Nina Udrescu: Nina Udrescu
• Bărbatul, Golan: Remus Archip
• Golan, El, Băiatul, Minion: Andrei Bibire
• Golan, El, Minion: Alexandru Burcă
• Rockeritza, Ea, Fata: Anaïs Agi-Ali

Tours

• Festivalul Internațional de Teatru de la Sibiu 2023
• Festivalul de Teatru Piatra Neamț -Zona de Siguranță- 2023
• FITO- ORADEA INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL 8TH EDITION 2023
• Reuniunea Teatrelor Naționale Românești la Chișinău 2023
• FESTIVALUL INTERNAŢIONAL de TEATRU pentru PUBLICUL TÂNĂR Iași, Ediţia a XVI-a, 2023
• Gala Premiilor UNITER 2023- Programul Timișoara – Capitală Europeană a Culturii în anul 2023, Timișoara, 2023
• Festivalul Național de Teatru, București, 2023

Awards

• Nominalizare la Gala Premiilor UNITER pentru Cel mai bun actor în rol secundar Theodor Șoptelea pentru rolurile din spectacolul „Seaside Stories”, 2023
• Nominalizare la Gala Premiilor UNITER pentru Cea mai bună actriţă în rol secundar, Nina Udrescu pentru rolurile din spectacolul „Seaside Stories”, 2023
• Premiul pentru Cel mai bun Debut la Gala premiilor UNITER, THEODOR CRISTIAN NICULAE pentru scenografia spectacolului „Seaside Stories”, 2023
• Premiul pentru Cel mai bun Spectacol la Gala premiilor UNITER 2023

Reviews

Style is a trademark that can become a noble seal. From a scribbled signature on piles of papers in adolescence, one can reach a personal calligraphy that indicates, with a single glance, the high rank of a sophisticated maturity. To have style means to define a well-established identity around a true reality. It’s increasingly difficult to find your authentic vein and the comfort of a self that is unimpressed by the ever-seductive variables. However, to desperately impose a style as a universally valid truth is a trap that no longer leads to the lofty peaks of elegance and refinement but rather plunges threateningly into a fall into self-citing mimetism. Radu Afrim manages his stylistic exercises with pleasure. His perfected tools confidently describe thin or thick strokes through the lyricism of short prose pieces, accompanied by a dense sound universe, tragic-sensual whispers spoken in deep-lascivious tones into microphones that reverberate with the emotions of shaken consciences in full confession, zoomorphisms filled with humor, and screens on which video images are framed and edited with high-quality sensitivity and undeniable skill in capturing souls in images. "Seaside Stories," the performance he staged at the Constanța State Theatre, is the youngest member of the family of this saga of stories with a shared paternity. The puzzle principle centered on a given theme—the sea/coast in this case—could already be extrapolated to more performances. Sufficient material can be gathered for a 12-hour marathon, possibly, totaling scene by scene compositions generated by the same stylistic approach and the same creative will. The risk of this very calculated approach of replicating tools across various text mediums is that once it becomes a style in itself, it may gradually lose its freshness, the impact of primary emotion, and transform into a beautiful but devitalized aesthetic expression, no longer driven by that authentic impulse. The nine scenes tied together in the framework script written by Radu Afrim compose an unequal symphony of rhythms not always harmonized. The aim is to create a state, to bring into the theatre the nostalgia of our past loves in Vama, the sand that wiped our tears, the maternal or paternal attachment washed by waves, and the famous refrains of yesterday's and today's models. The quantitative excess, however, works against this summer reverie. Not all scenes have the same impact, although the aesthetic means are used without restraint. Perhaps the most beautiful image in the performance is the moving tableau in "As Beautiful as My Sister's Death" by Nicoleta Dabija—a funeral silhouette multiplied on a desolate beach; a soul held in check by a buoy of sorrows, becoming the shroud of its own dead soul in a sea that cannot wash away painful memories, spoken with thoughtful clarity by Lana Moscaliuc. With the same sensitivity and intent, the monologue "Fragile" by Simona Goșu was constructed—a confession of the loneliness of a daughter for whom her mother expresses care and love only by performing a stereotypical maternal action, not noticing the symbolic death of her own soul. The theme is beautiful, all the pieces in the puzzle are in place, but once the beautiful images from the screen are put aside, the cavernous effect of the voice processed through the microphone and the manipulative sounds of the ambient music remain a spoken text devoid of virtues. "All the Earrings from Vama" by Lavinica Mitu is the most functional scene. Besides the story choreographed around the couple of former lovers burying their love on the beach in front of everyone, with suffering and cynicism, there is also a consistent relationship between the two actors. Mihaela Velicu and Marian Adochiței develop a labyrinth of feelings, memories, and emotions beneath their words, contained in the nuances of simply spoken words. They look at each other, listen to each other, and transmit a profoundly authentic vibration kept under control. In "A Dreamy Union" by Dan Alexe, the exaggerated proportions of comedy, the deliberately crude humor, and the laughing at altered stereotypes lead to caricature and the actors' performance. Liliana Ghiță and Remus Archip seem like characters from a comic book in natural size, but still trapped in 2D and constrained by restrictive lines from speech bubbles above their heads. "A Beautiful Run with Knees to Chest" by Tudor Ganea is the most complex scene. The recital by Ștefan Mihai, well-supported by the entire domestic universe brought to the rubber-sand beach in the Studio Hall, is impactful not only at the declarative level. The disorientation of a young boy who matures by practicing guitar chords to impress girls shifts into the fear of losing his father with much tenderness, in a crescendo that makes you see with the mind's eye the soul’s collapse suggested by a paper airplane buried in a pile of sand. "Vieni qua" by Marius Chivu adds nothing to the slide of summer experiences, while Tudor Șoptelea uses his potential with more success and credibility in the role of the seagull Relu Pescărelu. "Seaside Stories" is a performance likely intentionally constructed as a buffet à la "Lili the Arrogant" on a non-European resort beach, still, from the wild Romanian capitalism of the '90s-2000s. Between a Nana Mouskouri hit and another by Al Bano and Romina, there’s silent suffering under punches and kicks given for a few lei. Coca-Cola light and Coca-Cola normal become the lyrics of new TikTok-certified hits of beaches where minions trained to twirl in the sun accompany an innocent dialogue from yesterday but dangerous today. The stories, mixed like shells among seaweed, may taste like oysters, or just salty water. The unequal ode dedicated to the coast is like any suite of waves. Emotion, however, seems to drift further and further from solid ground, aboard a rowboat heading toward the horizon of a style at its zenith.

Alina Epîngeac - „Seaside stories” pe nisip de cauciuc

https://epingeac.com/2022/11/07/seaside-stories-pe-nisip-de-cauciuc/

AFRIM AND THE COASTAL FEELING OF BEING After 15 years, director Radu Afrim returns to the State Theater in Constanța. Since "Inimile cicatrizate" (Scarred Hearts) in 2007, countless waves have washed over the sand on the central beach, but in essence, both Afrim and the sea remain much the same. Unpredictable, often spectacular, sometimes misunderstood, occasionally adored, always with inner turmoil and noisy storms, constant in their swaying, in departures and returns... After 15 years, Afrim presents a show in Constanța about coastal geographies and the emotional landscapes of those who, locals or tourists, engage with the sea. "Seaside Stories", tales from the shore, evoke vacation feelings with cross-generational nostalgia, an summer season that leads to death, to regret, but also to certain external and internal uncertainties… Like the sea, the dramaturgy… This isn’t the first time Afrim has played with the idea of vacation. He’s fascinated by this “lightness of being,” by the way people change in a time assumed as “unofficial,” a parenthesis in the everyday that opens mysterious valves to deeper layers that allow themselves to be viewed in their full vulnerabilities and anonymous beauties. The directorial discourse in "Seaside Stories" is no longer solitary but accompanied by voices such as Marius Chivu, Simona Goșu, Tudor Ganea, Dan Alexe, Lavinica Mitu, Nicoleta Dabija, and Nina Cassian. Apparently democratic in its composition, this plural dramaturgy is carefully controlled by a director who knows how to bind it together and integrate it into a broader script, using his own “writing for the stage,” as he has so often done before. From this, a charming literary-theatrical landscape results, with delicately conducted alternations between comedy and tragedy, sensuality and violence. Listening to and "watching" this dramaturgy gives the sense that it mirrors the sea, with its multiple voices, its diversity of appearances and manifestations, but especially with that natural flow, that ease and vitality of life… The overall tone Afrim imposes seems to be confessional: the confession of a father in "Alerga frumos cu genunchii la piept" (Tudor Ganea), the alienation from a mother in "Fragil" (Simona Goșu), the explorations of that phenomenon of taming arrogance in "O împreunare de vis" (Dan Alexe), the beautiful poem-like tale of the sea and death and of “the man as beautiful as my sister's death” in *Îi plăcea marea* (Nicoleta Dabija), the public display of a love relationship fading in "Toți cerceii din vamă" (Lavinica Mitu), the incursion into the nocturnal violence of "La vulturul de mare cu peștele în gheare" (Marius Chivu), the infinite delicacy of uncertain territories like those in "Wyoming" by the same Chivu, etc. These are incredibly intimate first-person accounts, sometimes barely sketched, of wounds whose ambiguous, rose-like nature disturbs and saddens you in a complicated way… Afrim connects these floating islands through linking characters (Relu Pescărelu, Lili Aroganta, a former BTT member who runs the beach bar “la aroganta,” Pegas the entrepreneur, and so on), born from his own dramaturgical material. Afrim's humor coexists with his signature dark, and the commentary on the present is sometimes crossed by the melancholic breezes of a foundational past (old music, caricatured evocations of famous characters, allusions, and various other solutions for turning what has passed into what remains). Undoubtedly, the world Afrim has created, starting from Constanța, from the 120 steps, from the stalls and bars in Vama, and from..., is familiar to us and, moreover, contains us. In the stories we listen to, we recognize fragments, flashes of personal relationships we have with the sea and what we generically call "vacation at the sea." Perhaps because the dramaturgy successfully accesses that Romanian specificity, strong enough to make you accept that these situations could only be lived out on the Romanian coast, and never in Bulgaria or Greece... Between the beginning and end of the season, the two polarities of the show — the exuberance of the first day on the beach and the sad monsters the October sea brings ashore — hide our secret selves, selves in the nude or covered in sunscreen, to be re-disguised with autumn, along with the bar that has closed… Video-Sea, the screen as a window, and other images hard to forget… The set design by Theodor Cristian Niculae recreates the image of a beach, bordered by changing cabins where actors enter and exit (an excellent solution), or from which the magnificent Relu Pescărelu (Theodor Șoptelea, one of the best non-human characters I've seen in theater) shouts his cries. Miniature stabilizing poles, of course, reference visual markers of the Romanian coastline, while the beach bar, with bottles of cola, with Aunt Lili and neglected apples in plain sight, dominates the right side of the stage. From the bar, not only Aunt Lili but also the radio of "Seaside Stories" emanates. The performance takes place on a sand floor, which gives movement particularities that I would have liked to see more carefully explored. The most spectacular element, however, is the striking opening to the outdoors, through a screen wall through which we watch a beautiful video-sea, sometimes on standby with floating seagulls, sometimes crossed by bodies swimming or dying, or viewed from above, or poetically distorted (lighting design by Cristian Niculescu, video by Andrei Dermengiu, Marian Adochiței, and Radu Afrim). The screen as a window, the screen as an extratext, the screen as a meta-text... Later, other maritime objects come into our line of sight: for instance, the buoys, poetically highlighted in what, for me, is the most beautiful image of the show: six black-clad female silhouettes, holding a red buoy in their right hands, plastic hearts that will later be rearranged into a suggestion of a dress… The gallery of characters resulting from "Seaside Stories" is charming in itself, but also benefits from outstanding acting performances.

Călin Ciobotari - Teatrul Azi nr. 11-12/2022

https://www.7iasi.ro/afrim-si-sentimentul-litoral-al-fiintei/#

The Beach. The Shore of the Sea as Magic. The Edge of the Liquid Planet as a Homeric Vocation, the one that tells stories (undoubtedly stories that happened precisely because they have been filtered through the lens of fiction), stories that may one day become myths. If not, perhaps it is the myth that gave birth to them long ago, when Constanța was still called Tomis, even earlier. A myth that happens right at this very moment (of the unfolding performance, but also of an eternal, meaningful presence), in the vicinity of other towels/chaise lounges/bars at the edge of the sand/changing cabins in the uniform of the marine being that lives on land and dreams of flying, with rooftops from which sunbathers might seem like seagulls (Arkadina, Treplev, Zarecinaia & Co. are surely among them), and especially of the sea-window (or vice versa), which undulates like the narrative threads of each of the six young writers whom Radu Afrim has taken as fellow travelers among the "hundreds of masts" of sensitivity. Somewhere, among the currents of tenderness, playfulness, and attempts to trample the rhythms of a daily grind grinding where the sea can neither be seen nor heard, you could hum quietly, with the old rockers from FFN: "Behind you, sand remains in the trail of your steps..." "Seaside Stories..." Well, right?

Doru Mareș, scriitor, critic de teatru, traducător, jurnalist - Zile și nopți, iunie 2023

https://issuu.com/zilesinopti/docs/zile_si_nopti_iunie_2023_brasovweb/s/25223157

"APPLAUSE IN THE FORM OF A SEAGULL'S SCREAM" The staging serves as a collection of emotions swallowed by or witnessed by the sea, depicted in its continuous duality: the sea with boiled corn, colorful bikinis, mounds of sand swallowed, hangovers, and loves that melt like ice cream; and the threatening sea, in its infinity, made of tears and salt, drowning, in which you fear getting lost. Like all the postcards sent from Constanța during a summer season, the moments weave together a theatrical essay about people, exposed only in bikinis, in the midst of a personality test ripped from a beauty & lifestyle magazine. People who remember, who feel, who change like the endless waves. "Seaside Stories" is as much a marathon of vibration and tireless color, of playful desires, pop culture, and youthful pulsations, as it is an open wound of what it means to be human, offering pieces of intimacy with leniency and depth from the depths of the sea, perhaps. Fresh like lemonade with mint and like a meme, referenced with aplomb and comic genius, but at the same time, this transformative, sensual, and strange experience, this bundle of fluid monologue-poems, becomes, thanks to the dynamism and remarkable presence of the acting troupe, true ping-pongs of acting and stage movement—contradictory and of a violent beauty, both burlesque and poetic—therefore unusually sincere and comprehensive. The production has in its DNA something of an unaltered life, of lyricism stripped of loops, not hiding behind rhyme. It almost smells of salty air and overpriced juice in the theater. Almost, feathers begin to grow on Theodor Șoptelea (who periodically portrays a seagull, the mascot and leitmotif of "Seaside Stories"), in a metamorphosis-species composition that leaves caricature far behind, with extraordinary humor born from devilish dedication, becoming what Nina Zarecinaia could never be. The sun-reflector almost burns Cătălina Mihai, a whirlwind of charm and chemistry with the stage, with an irresistibly disarming self-assurance and real talent. The altercation that Andrei Bibire goes through almost slaps you, delivered like a punch with such verisimilitude. Brief, but captivating and ethereal, Nina Udrescu interprets, without words, with delicate gestures, and with the hint of the little finger, a mother trapped in her own head, at a beach picnic, who, in her ignorance, in her incapacity, doesn’t even notice that her daughter is drowning. The scene, lucidly narrated by Cristiana Luca, reveals a piece of emotional and subtle truth about our relationships, about closeness and distance, and about the ways in which we fail to see and help each other. And it is just one of the many traces left by "Seaside Stories" in the sand of the soul. Constantly present as the patron of the bar "La Aroganta" on the beach, Mirela Pană (Lili) hosts us, equally skilled in marketing (for just 15 lei more, she can open your bottle with her eye), humor that demands attention, and, under the trench coat of a businesswoman toughened by life, sensitivity and generosity. All of this happens on the beach of Theodor Cristian Niculae, who has scenographically synthesized the coastline, from Năvodari to Vama Veche, in a well-distributed and perfectly functional piece of stage. The six screens that serve as the sea, winking at convention and digitalization, but projecting a valuable environmental universe, are proof of rehearsals on the beach between actors and Radu Afrim—rehearsals that seem like a special and formative memory, at the base of a special theatrical experience. In a slippery ball of sand, joy, and innocence, the "Seaside Stories" artistic team manages to bring a fraction of the Romanian coastline across the rainy weather of this early summer in Timișoara, making the best advertisement for our Black Sea. Nothing more fitting for the repertoire of the Constanța State Theatre than this show as a business card for such a fresh troupe; a performance like a holiday, like a lifebuoy for the heart, with a fine balance between comedy and emotion—both undeniably Afrimian in charm.

Raluca Cîrciumaru / UNITER.ro

https://www.uniter.ro/aplauze-in-forma-de-tipat-de-pescarus-trecere-in-revista-a-reprezentatiilor-spectacolului-seaside-stories-la-gala-premiilor-uniter-2023/