UT production links art, politics to real lives

The sights and sounds of revolution came to 17-year-old Valentin Robu from his family’s television. He recalls the 1989 overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu’s government in Romania as a joyful time, full of hope and possibility.

“I’m from a small town, Piatra Neamt in Moldavia, in northeastern Romania. In my town everything was quite quiet,” since most of the action took place in the capital city of Bucharest, about 200 miles from Piatra Neamt, he says. “My friends and I were really excited, and we started to dream a lot about our free future. One of my dreams was to study in the United States, and here I am!”

Student actors Aaron Mize, Jason Schumacher and Miles Hartley rehearse a scene from the new University Theatre production of “Mad Forest,” an account of the Romanian revolution by Caryl Churchill, opening Friday, March 3. Photo: Courtesy University Theatre Details “Mad Forest” runs March 3-5, 8, 9, and 23-25 in the Mitchell Theatre of Vilas Hall. Tickets, $10 general/$7 students, are available at the Vilas Hall Box Office, (608) 262-1500.

Robu has been a UW–Madison graduate student in physiology since 1998. These days he also is an adviser to the cast and crew of “Mad Forest,” opening Friday, March 3, at the University Theatre.

British playwright Caryl Churchill created the play in a year after the overthrow. To find the stories that make up the play, she combed the streets post-revolutionary Bucharest to examine the coup’s aftermath.

According to Robu, the overthrow had been an exercise in deception. “Some people call it a ‘stolen revolution,'” he says. “I was amazed at how well the play got at the truth, given the time in which it was written — a lot of Romanians didn’t realize they had been lied to and that the path the country was on was false.”

Fellow “Mad Forest” adviser Alexandru Dinu, a UW–Madison graduate student studying anthropology, has a different take on the play, believing it cuts too narrow a swath through Romanian society a decade ago.

“I hope that both the cast and the audience will understand that the playwright spent only a short time in Romania, and had only a small number of informants belonging to only a single social group. Their ideas were not necessarily shared by everyone, and what is said (in the play) should not be generalized,” he warns.

Last year presented Dinu with his first opportunity in 14 years to visit his family. Like Robu, he had watched the revolution on television. Like Robu, Dinu feels a sense of betrayal by the changes that the uprising brought.

“Today, it is the general consensus that life was much better under Ceausescu, which I found to be true when I went home this winter. The revolution gave great opportunity to the lowest elements of Romanian society to take over and destroy our culture, economy and the historic legacy left by our heroes. It seems true that the only solution will be another revolution,” Dinu says.

Such powerful sentiments have not been lost on the “Mad Forest” cast and crew. Stage manager Antigoni Sander, a UW–Madison junior majoring in theatre and drama, says the presence and guidance of the Romanian advisers will lend the production emotional depth, historical context and cultural authenticity.

“Many of us on the production knew very little about Romania. Having them come in really helped us view the revolution as something that actually happened,” rather than an abstraction in a news account.

“It really would have been difficult to do this play at all if it hadn’t been for our Romanian students,” Sander says.

“Mad Forest” runs March 3-5, 8, 9, and 23-25 in the Mitchell Theatre of Vilas Hall. Tickets, $10 general/$7 students, are available at the Vilas Hall Box Office, (608) 262-1500.