the barefoot bride/mireasa desculță

 

 

Part of an installation about censorship that was showcased at Atelier 35 gallery in Bucharest.

Contains a 3 portrait story about the censoring of a Romanian play in 1958. Based on some 15 inter-

views, recollections, collected archive documents and biographies, this comic booklet took 1 month

to make and print. The concept belongs to Alexandru Berceanu, who was the coordonator and

gatherer of suspect materials. The event was initiated by Ofensiva Generozității Organization and

published thanks to the kind back-up of the National Cultural Fund Administration (A.F.C.N.).
One month of everyday drawing altogether, and a fucked up month that was...but it was worth it.

 

 

In 1956 the Romanian Workers' Party (P.M.R.) decides to open a theatre in Galați (a small city on

the banks of the Danube). They bring together a fresh batch of graduates from the National University

of Theatre and Cinematography in Bucharest, a small team of technicians, who've just finished their

studies at the local highschools, and two directors in charge of running the show: Ștefan Iordănescu

and Crin Teodorescu. They deicide to invite the young and up-rising director, Valeriu Moisescu, to

handle most of the spectacles. The outcome of this initiative was hard to put together. Questions around

the Fani Tardini Theatre in Galați got us few and very blurry answers. The story of the comics was

pieced together around one play in particular from 1958. Directed by Valeriu Moisescu, and featuring

Gina Patrichi in the leading role, Mireasa Desculță was a play advertising the agricultural cooperativi-

zation that was commenced back in 1949 by the P.M.R. party. The preceding movement in agri-

culture put together by Stalin meant that around 15 million peasants were deported. In Romania the

results were less dramatic, however, back then the country's population was formed by some 75%

peasants. Party officials regularly ordered this sort of plays from writers as a means to educate villagers

about the "unity" and "richness" of their collectivization efforts. Theatre companies frequently made

tours around vast areas promoting the Party's precious teachings. Ironically, Mireasa Desculță, a play

of the Communist propaganda, wound up being censored.

 

 

We met up with 3 former electricians from that time, an upholsterer and one souffleur, but they

couldn't recollect much, except for some technical details. A few had fond memories of their youth

yet despite their efforts to remember this play in particular, none were able. So we finally traced the

last living actor from the cast, one 82 year old Leonard Calea. He and his wife managed to add a few

more valuable pieces to the growing puzzle. In the end we visited the director himself, the secluded,

quiet but charismatic Valeriu Moisescu. He still kept an incredible amount of newspaper clips from

that period, photos and detailed sketches of sets. Still, he had difficulty remembering. He told us that 

the play was run only 10 times, and terminated after being showcased at the Bucharest Drama Festival

of 1958. Also, Mr Moisescu filled us in on his unlikely interpretation of the text of the play. Originally

written by Suto Andras, Mireasa Desculță was a boring, uneventful and tedious 70 page play. Moisescu

cut it up, added dynamic through the use of a turning stage and contrived a mechanism of hypnotizing

the villagers through speakers. Rumour was started by the art-critic of that time, "God" Dumitru Popescu,

that a play with speaks and a turning stage had nothing to do with the image of the peasant of that time.

So Moisescu was fired but hired by the Theatre in Oradea, the press had few words of praise and almost

everyone forgot the play.

The 32 page booklet came out on newspaper, in 1000 copies, and features a silkscreen printed layer on the last inner

cover. This layer is meant to be peeled off, under it rest the real facts about president Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej's

cooperativization campaign, which was completed in 1962. In the installation, that contained this booklet, visitors were

expected to censor the text and images from the comics. Each censurer had 1 hour to complete his cultural mission.

The collection of corrections was displayed in November 2012 at Atelier 35 Gallery.