Below Figueras (2006)
„Valentin Nicolau made himself remarked as a new name in the theatre arts after the Ceausescu epoch rather late”, this is what the well-known literary critic Dan C. Mihăilescu wrote in afterward to The Photographer of His Majesty. As for Nicolae Manolescu, another key figure in the contemporary literary criticism in Romania, after the playwright’s first book was published he rated Valentin Nicolau as a fully-fledged play writer and “a master of dialogue, of the natural in speech and an artist resourceful for theatre.” A few years later, after most of his plays were staged, Valentin Nicolau published Below Figueras. The three plays included in the volume consist, in fact, in a meditation on loss and disappearance and, after all, on false self-accomplishing. Trajan, the man who wants to commit suicide in Room service, a contemporary replica of the legendary emperor, perched on top of the new hierarchy, made of boxes full of strawberries, as well as the pregnant prostitute in A Little Rust are images of a world turned upside down. “This book is dedicated to those employed in the field of cultures, working on politicians’ plantations”, this is what the author has written on the front page.
Content
Below Figueras
- a play in two acts –
So far there has been just an attempt to stage this work. It happened in 2006 at the Comedy Theatre in Bucharest. But the performance was put to a stop when it was being rehearsed.
Somewhere in Spain, in a place where strawberries grow as big as melons, Trajan, the new successor of the great Romanian emperor who bore the same name, is the leader of a community of Romanians who left their native country to make a fortune abroad. Among boxes full of strawberries, Trajan binds and unbinds people’s lives and he intends to build a new country, the greater small Romania. By means of blackmailing and threatening, the new “emperor” is in control of the whole community, in which adultery and rape make the rule and nothing happens without his knowledge. What happens in the end? Mimi, the prostitute who dreams about becoming a kindergarten educator, has her dream come true. She establishes a kindergarten with nighttime hours for whores’ children. And Trajan rules the world perched on a pile of boxes near the imperial strawberry tree.
Undeva, în Spania, într-un loc unde căpşunile cresc cât pepenii, Traian, noul urmaş al marelui împărat roman, este şef peste o comunitate de români plecaţi din ţară ca să se îmbogăţească. Printre lădiţele de căpşuni, Traian leagă şi dezleagă destine şi-şi propune să construiască o nouă ţară, Românica Mare. Prin şantaj şi ameninţări, noul „împărat” ţine sub control întreaga comunitate în care adulterul şi violurile sunt la ordinea zilei şi nimic nu se întâmplă fără ştirea lui. În final? Mimi, prostituata care se visa educatoare, îşi împlineşte visul. Deschide o grădiniţă specială cu program de noapte, pentru copiii târfelor. Iar Traian împărăţeşte lumea cocoţat pe columna de lădiţe de lângă căpşunul imperial.
A Little Rust
- a sketch for stage or screen –
In the dead of night, “when loneliness haunts the streets or hides in rooms”, a woman comes home. During the day she works in a kindergarten teaching children, but after the night falls she is a prostitute. She lives her own life again, she has gone a little old, no one cares about her any more and she is pregnant. She sells her body again, then she is raped, but she goes on selling herself in despair, but she always gets turned down. “There are professions in which you can’t resign. There is no one to agree to your resignation. Just like in life.”
Room service
- a monologue in one act –
How many options have you got available when you want to kill yourself? A man hides himself in a hotel room, in search of an answer to this question, pondering all this while on the life he is determined to leave behind. He considers all the possibilities: rope, frying, throwing himself from somewhere, cutting his veins, gun and sleeping pills. And he likes none. But hazard gives him a hand that is an unpredictable answer…