The show market in Sibiu is under the sign of alternative

Romania is a paradoxical country even when it comes to theatre. Most theatres are an endangered species, striving to subsist. The lack of funding for maintenance and production, the offending salaries for the artists and auxiliary personnel, the intestine struggle for power, the ancient mentality and poor management are just the top layer of troubles the Romanian theatre has to cope with. Still, from time to time, like a pearl in the mud, a good show surfaces. Like any pearl in the mud, such occurrences pass unnoticed.

However, we have good festivals. They put the rusty blood of theatre in motion and some even gain a well-deserved fame. Among such cyclic events we count the Sibiu International Theatre Festival - 26 May - 8 June, at its seventh edition. Seven years ago, in 1993, an initiative group led by Constantin Chiriac, actor at the Radu Stanca Theatre in Sibiu, decided to give back to the city some of the glamour and brilliance it lost with the exodus of the German residents. He thought the best way to do this would be to have a theatre festival that would be, in time, worthy of European exposure. He got help from Romanian cultural personalities like Nicolae Manolescu, the regretted Cristina Dumitrescu, Marina Constantinescu, Silviu Purcarete, Tompa Gabor, Victor Ioan Frunza and even from some abroad: Prof. Kenneth Campbell- artistic director of the "Blue Ridge" Theatre Festival, professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University in the US, Prof. Noel Witts- Director of Studies at De Montfort University in Leicester UK and several other. In 1993, the participants were Romanians. In 1994, a few shy foreigners came (the festival legend goes that they slept wearing garlic strings around their necks lest they be bitten by Dracula). Finally, this year the festival hosts participants from over 50 countries. So it can be done. All it takes is a few stubborn managers who like to gamble their future. Such a man is Constantin Chiriac. At the beginning of 1990, after the big fire that destroyed the Radu Stanca Theatre, he left the country and in 1992 he started in Germany a foundation called "The rebirth of theatre in Sibiu." Around that time, in Anvers, he was appointed Theatre Representative for Eastern Europe. That gave him the chance to meet a lot of festival directors. In 1998, due to his experience and international contacts, he managed to inaugurate the Show Market, the first of this kind in Romania. Although a noble initiative, the market is still a new comer and people are still resilient when dealing with something new. The Sibiu festival is under the sign of alternative. New solutions must be found and culture is the place to look for them. The change must also include the managerial skills, currently inefficient and faulty. "I do not believe there was a reform. Nor do I think that the repertoire theatre must be torn down. What we need is an alternative that will put in motion the rusty cogs of the state institutions and offer the artists a bit of mobility as well as the ability to feel creative," Constantin Chiriac maintains.