Interview with Director Mihai Constantin RANIN, Artistic Director of the Art Theatre Deva

“Making theatre is as if instead of planting a tree, you are planting an entire forest”

Director and stage designer Mihai Constantin Ranin has been leading for some time the Theatre in Deva, after having led for eight years the Theatre in Târgovişte – he is still listed as director on the institution’s website (http://www.tmtgv.ro/tonybulandra/contact.php ). If the relationship with local funders was a scandal in Târgovişte, in Deva things seem to have started well. What Ranin aims for the new theatre is the theme of this interview.

After the experience in Târgovişte, you got to lead a new theatre in Deva. Why are you, again, a theatre director?
I am not the manager of the institution; I'm only the artistic director. A director must give directions, he can’t get presumptuous in his position... this position suits me greatly because I deal with the actors, the repertoire, the audience, communication... but less with the administrative matters... Now I have the freedom that I lacked during my last years in Târgovişte, where the newly elected, out of contempt for the artistic act, for art, considered that theatre can be a section of the municipality... I resisted through protests, through a sustained unfunded activity for two years ... then they said I was incompetent and I was dismissed with the help of key people in theatre, although I filled halls, organised an international festival ("Babel" it was called) with zero budget, eleven international participations with one performance and an award at the Apostrof Festival in Prague. Nothing mattered to these corrupt and cruel politicians... sick and mediocre natures. But that was a life lesson. Even actors I employed, some of whom were former students of mine decided to trade a pact with the devil... I laughed the way I laughed when V. I. Frunză, who had staged two shows in Târgovişte at my invitation, "gifted" me with mark 1 (one) in the evaluation... The hilariousness of it amuses me. If these things had not happened, I would not have staged about ten productions, I would not have taken a different theatre from scratch to consolidate it on a healthy basis, with new people ... as a continuation of what I started in Târgovişte... In a way, I can seem to be impish like actor Iancovescu or V.I. Popa, but I, in my bourgeois and comfortable nature, I am condemned to perpetual restlessness ... "Some fate you had, dear Ranin”, Florica Ichim told me, "making theatres..." Making theatre is more important than making one show. It is as if instead of planting a tree, you are planting an entire forest. I find it fantastic.

What was the circumstance that made you a theatre director in Deva?
I got in Deva at the recommendation of the master Mircea Diaconu, who had seen and watched the theatre in Târgovişte... I also worked at the Nottara. He suggested the authorities to call me.

As I was working in Hungary at that time, I pulled over for one hour ... I spoke to them, wrote a project in the following two weeks and I convinced them... The president of the County Council, Mr. Mircea Molot was the one to make the decision. Since December 2010, I am only exercising and organise demonstrations with a company of young people, on marketing and on the stage... We will succeed in the shortest time to emerge on the cultural axis leading to the Vienna-Prague-Berlin-Paris-Madrid-Lisbon. I do not think that a theatre located in the province must be provincial in its options and performance. A Capital of Culture is where capital theatre is made, where soul is invested. From the experience I gained in Paris, where I led for several years the Company Anamorphoses Spectacle, then the experience gained in Sibiu and Târgovişte, I may claim to be the owner of the recipe for success... The difficulty is to turn this success into performance for the longest possible. It will be difficult in such a remote place, but Las Vegas was at first a building in a desert without water... You must have the faith and the perseverance of the water seeker... I must have has a well sinker ancestor who transmitted this gift to me. It's a good thing, a wonderful thing for which I praise God.

Deva Art Theatre is a project based theatre, so it has no actors or stage staff permanently employed. How does a project based theatre manage the legal context in Romania?
The repertory of a project based theatre should be one that rivals prestigious large theatres. It is an experience made in Romania with the "project based theatre" to "allow artists more freedom, more mobility". Sadly, the legislator didn’t provide anything for the unemployment period, which is out of the general framework, as the French provided, defectively but nonetheless provided "intermittent" artists...The intention does not look bad on paper ... but because of general impoverishment, it is better for artists to be under the roof of the theatre as permanent employees... We’re replicating like monkeys what is wrong in the West, and I know what I’m talking about as I lived there for over a decade, and we ruin what goes well...

Deva Theatre is called Art Theatre. Why "Deva Art Theatre”?
I confess to be among the ones to blame for the theatre’s name. When I got here it was called The Hunedoara County Theatre which sounded quite ugly... as if was a hospital.

The building had been called in the past The Arts Hall... which was copied by a nearby cafeteria... There were other proposals too. I initially meant to call it Theatre 1911, but they thought it was too abstract. I am happy with its current name, because one almost immediately thinks of the Moscow Art Theatre and what it meant for the culture of humanity... The name should suggest about what is in inside the package, namely big texts or themes of humanity, staged in a modern way. Today, art has a much broader meaning to me, although I have a certain dose of conservatism and I was raised into the idea of beauty, purity... where there is room for compromise. Nina's definition in the "Seagull" by Chekhov has been instilled to me from school and is difficult to apply in to Romanian reality. I confess that it is quite hard to zigzag among the jagged rocks thrown by some on the stage, for the sake of art... According to them, even a manele singer is an artist - and perhaps this is why Salam teaches ... manele at the National Conservatory in Bucharest. If you look around too much, even in the small and unhappy world of Romanian theatre, you can fall into depression. Then you can only go back to basics, the masters who trained you​​... to major theatres and European personalities - and you feel like play the Don Quixote again.

Drama is an art of synthesis. Maybe that's why we decided to screen films here for the Polish Film Festival, and will soon premiere "The Bear ", directed by Dan Chişu. Everybody knows that, especially in Romania, the best film actors are working in theatres, that American actors studied Stanislavski - so there was always a relation with film, at least at this level. I also brought contemporary dance performances, such as "The Ionescu Trilogy" from Sibiu...  where we see how the dramatic text can influence a ballet performance... Jazz, as well, in an effort to shape and to satisfy the elites. Poetry. The hall of the theatre is arranged like a gallery... So far, it hosted two painting and sculpture exhibitions organised by the Artists Union of Romania, Deva subsidiary, and a Romanian-American photography exhibition. Theatre is not created and does not survive in a cultural desert... Theatre fertilize the desert through science and patience, it must nurture a phenomenon... Locals begin by being occasional consumers and end up becoming "accro"... Theatre thus becomes a need which that must be satisfied immediately...

What is the long-term vision that you want to imprint to the theatre in Deva?
So far they we staged Wedekind, Marin Sorescu, Frida Khalo, Georg Staudacher, J.C. Carierre, and next are Moliere, Shakespeare, A. Linghen... To me, it is important to link the scenic act to the great ceremonial and education acts... Theatre must bring the great universal literature to the youth, in order to complete their education from the text to the act, the attitude... because everybody else will give them entertainment... Theatre must regain the role it had in ancient Greece, when it was in the middle of the citadel... an attractive, magic and solemn place. This theatre must be inspired by people not only talented, but with a high idea of art, aware of its educational role in public space.