SET AND STAGE MOVEMENT IN ION BĂIEȘU’S THEATER

Abstract: The plurivalent meanings of the dramatic text allow the transcendence of the textual and the interaction of the characters who populate the scene, allowing the representation of the meanings of the fictional universe on another level, imagistic and aural. In this context, the aim of this article is to replay the role of scenery and stage movement in Ion Băieșu’s work, an author who temporarily remained in the backstage of late 20th century theater. My intention is to reveal, first and foremost, the way in which the scenery supports the dynamics of dialog, offering another level of interpretation, constituting a new world against the background of which the story unfolds. First of all, the performance moves naturally forward amid the sinuosities of verbal interactions that verge on the grotesque and absurd, giving the director the possibility of giving the set elements various forms. The reader-spectator is not put in the position of decoding, but learns the lesson of reception as simply as possible, without this lessening the impact the display of meaning. Everything breathes decadence, ruin. It is a roller coaster of emotions that unravels the character, imprinting a laziness of living, of discovery. Examples are organized in a crescendo, from the monotony of a decadent universe, to the terrifying simplicity of others, which become the scene of atrocities: accidents or premeditated murder. Nowhere else is it so well this inclusion of the grotesque in the anguished and banal everyday. Factually, Băieșu's world is made up of gestures that are meant to be definitive, final, masterfully projected into apparently insignificant backgrounds. It is a tragic farce-comedy of the communist world in which the means of expression are but a world that does not lack tragedies. But secondly, the stage movement is eminently allied to dull and bizarre, psychologically and mentally defining the distorted identities of some abulic individuals. The spectator is easily enlightened as to the nature of their experience and savoring every moment, following the chaotic, sometimes extremely slow, almost stagnant gestures. He seems to become a third actor who empathizes with the living situation, Băieșu reconstructing with humor and irony fragments of contemporary existence. The cuts are vivid and memorable, exhibiting not only a bitter taste of collective unhappiness, but also a sense of helplessness, coupled with the hope of possible moral and social rehabilitation. The exterior breathes the same domestic air and is an extension of the interior. Monotonous and dangerous, exterior spaces are repulsive to the truthful, they are populated by criminals, people with double identities, who wear, up to a point, the mask of bonhomie. The station platform or the tram station, the plain, the forest or the street itself become prototypes in which the object is confused with the human, in a game embedded in an insipid and improper nature. Therefore, this article-reflection aims to shed light on representations not of bitter but of an authentic scene in which the scenery and the movement are pertinent ways of affirming the spirit of the author's era. Key words: duality, stage, grotesque, masque, variety