Silviu Purcărete

silviupurcarete.art

To celebrate Silviu Purcărete’s 50 years of work for the theatre, in 2024, the Vis-a-Vis Cultural Association initiated a grand scale project dedicated to the theatre maker: „Silviu Purcărete – 50 Years of Theatre“, a photography exhibition, curated by Adriana Moca, and a showcase website dedicated to the director.  Both events were made possible through the support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund – AFCN. We invite you hereby to discover or revisit a protean personality and the performances imagined by the „poet theatremaker”, as George Banu called him.

Purcărete directs without taking refuge in anonymity, but neither does he narcissistically, conspicuously impose himself. Resistant to excess, he instils his melancholy as a sceptical artist who finds a palliative in the communicative delight of theatre, somewhere beyond existence. A kind of theatre in which I recognize the peaceful and melancholic spirit of a great essayist of our times, of my youth, Roland Barthes. Just like Barthes, Purcărete cultivates a very nuanced look over the real, as he, too, repudiates intensely emphasized contrasts. If one wrote Le plaisir du texte, the other signs a similar profession of faith throughout his career, which could be defined as The Delight of Theatre. Purcărete’s theatre disorganizes genres and adopts the malleability of an oneiric wanderer about  the nightmares or errancies of our times. These are the origins of his uniqueness.

George Banu

Silviu Purcărete envisions aesthetic spaces and impish emotional geographies, sprinkling fine humour even on the most cruel and tragic texts. He is a creator of hypnotic – though not unreal – realms. In his performances, he creates impressive galleries of paintings, juxtapositions of shadows and lights. A master of the chiaroscuro and a painter of the destinies from the classical texts he (re)visits with passion and curiosity, Purcărete appears to be a collector of beauty. This showcase website, as well as the travelling photographic exhibition and other events related to this long and generative life in theatre are, beyond a simple back-up for the imagery of the theatre and opera performances from these 50 years, an opportunity to rediscover the joy of theatre and the spirited generosity of the director Silviu Purcărete. It is a reverence and an expression of gratitude for such a personality, distinguished with countless important awards. A mandatory admiration practice.

Adriana Moca