Toscana
produced by Toaca Cultural Foundation

by Vladimir Holan
translated by Sorin Paliga

Cast: ªerban Pavlu, Anca Androne, Liliana Gavrilescu, Ioan Brancu, Laurentia Barbu
Directed by Nona Ciobanu
Set and Costume Design: Iulian Bãltãtescu, Ana Olteanu
Choreography: Laurentia Barbu
Video & slides: Cãtãlin Vãstagu
Light Design: Adeline Pater

The performance was presented at Toaca Studio (May 2000 - Febr. 2001), in Aquarius Era Festival — Bourgas, Bulgaria (June 2000) and in National Theatre Festival, Bucharest (November 2000).

Sponsor: Gim Rom Holdings

Press Reviews

… just what do we see? Two superimposed heads framed by feet, which seem to have lost their anatomic origin: is it a family portrait, a potentially offensive love scene, the staging of a fetish or a premonition of mourning?
In Toscana, desire, or obsessive desire, neutralises these differences and blends them into the search of delusive satisfaction. Obsessions have their own space and time which they impose upon whatever circumstances have triggered their enactment. Obsessions carry their own screen of carnal opaqueness, unto which anything can be projected - previous or virtual fragments of reality.
The poet is a spectator, fascinated by the power of his fixation. He is a supermarket Adam - his dubious, triple Eve is born from a frozen rib (next to a frozen snake). They travel through the derisive Tuscany of supermarket products, play on the surface of eroticism, convert their perversion into philosophy, exhaust themselves in compulsive repetition and lose the coordinates of their bodies.
The finale will necessarily be open, formless. When one reminisces of Tuscan glory or lost virility, one cannot really decide between eggs, toilet paper, raw meat or beauty & love lotions.
Mihnea Mircan - Evenimentul zilei (Daily Event)

Coming of age as a theatre director, Nona Ciobanu confirms with every show the praise that met her early exercises. After a long trail of prizes and European collaborations, her cultural foundation and the Toaca theatre have found in Casa Eliad a perfect setting to develop and broaden the scope of those early ideas.
Nona Ciobanu's vision of Toscana enhances the particular aura of Vladimir Holan's texts that lingering holiday sadness described by one of the characters. Holan unfolds the avatars of an essentially masculine sadness, as the narrator/poet realizes he is but a phantasmatic construction of femininity, a projection of his muses. Initially, the three women seem to be only the mobile background of virile exploits, perhaps even film stills of manly anguish, as their grace brings forth an undertone of suffering. But, as the play brilliantly shows, the text is actually in its turn generated by this live context, by the energy and enthralled dance of feminine bodies.
This humorous play on consumerism and destiny, confusing buyer and product, the gaze of man and that of woman takes place in the remarkably ingenious set designed by Iulian Baltatescu. The frantic movement of three trolleys articulates between the first room, corrupted by the images of the supermarket, and a kind of Venice of the subconscious, a subterranean world of seduction. ln their passionate drive through these spaces, the male characters appear as modern versions of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
The joy of deciphering the text gives way to the joy of seeing and hearing. Interpretation is replaced by touch and the poet abandons his noble quest, enmeshed in the sensuous meanderings of Venice.
Doru Mares - Observator cultural (Cultural Observer)

Toscana belongs to the international trend of theatrical projects crossing the boundaries of dance and multimedia techniques. Nona Ciobanu gives equal importance to text and movement, as she seems progressively interested in exploring the body's inner freedom, the pressure exerted by the body upon the words that attempt to hide it, to keep corporeality from becoming ob-scene.
What we do see on the stage is a play about writing poetry, about silencing with words the pulse of the body. The poet is relegated to the task of an actor who continuously rehearses the role of writing, the dazzling moment of inspiration. But the reveries of the actor render ineffective the search for ideal form of the poet. The women are an unsettling presence, never deciding between the stance of the muse and that of the wife. The monologue changes into a dialogue about the difficulties of communication and the poet loses his way in the supermarket where memories are on display, on colorful shelves.
Claudia Lipan - Teatrul azi (Theatre Today)