Youth Everlasting And Life Without End: Flogging the mechanical horse in Timișoara

Like your best friend at a party, fairy tales are always with us – even when we need them to get lost. 

Petre Ispirescu’s fairy tales, collected from various folk tales (à la Brothers Grimm) and published by him in the 1800s, are a source of Romanian national mythology – appearing countless times as puppet shows, on television, or in school curriculum. Though as fairy tales they are saturated in Romanian culture, there is simultaneously a lack of specific or critical perspectives on them. In this way, they sit under the surface like crocodiles, unquestioned, dormant, yet filled with a certain type of potential.

Performed for three sweaty July nights in public space in Timișoara, Western Romania, Youth Everlasting And Life Without End revives one of Ispirescu’s most loved stories about a prince temporarily escaping the problems of the real world.  It's all part of Europe’s Centriphery project – a roaming, multi-year project that develops site-specific events across ‘peripheral’ locations of EU states. Romania’s entry to Centriphery, which also forms part of Timisoara's hosting of the Capital of Culture, takes the form of a spectacular live-action puppet extravaganza, with gargantuan characters parading around Piața Libertății (Freedom Square), to the sound of a wailing, multi-harmony, live, rock-inspired soundtrack.

 

Photo: Flavius Neamciuc

There’s a lot to like about the outcome on a local level, even if the network of partners and stakeholders that creates it is pretty complicated. For one thing, the situation offers the artistic community of Timișoara a chance to strut their stuff on a big, big stage. The costumes by Lia Pfeiffer are a highlight, as are the gargantuan puppet-heads made from recycled materials by Ciprian Tauciuc. The music by Sol Faur, with sound by guest artist Connie Zenk, pulls you along in its ebbs and flows, incredibly supported by a quartet of vocalists (led by Choir master Beatrix Imre Leila) that begin in the first minute of the performance and do not stop singing until the 90^th.