In The Shackles Of Siberia, based on the documentary short story Children In Shackles Of Siberia, written by Spiridon Vangheli, is a play performed by non-professional actors, children who work within the Cortina Studio, established ten years ago, the first theater play staged in the Republic of Moldova, which talks about the deportations to Siberia.
MoldArte, the project developed by the Romanian Cultural Institute in the Republic of Moldova, stopped for two days in Soroca, at the Veniamin Apostol theatre. Specialists in the field of culture wanted to see on the spot how things are going in the field of culture in a small town, far from Chisinau, how people live the phenomenon, what are their needs, worries, hopes.
Director Petre Popa, writer and director, the one who laid the foundations of the Veniamin Apostol theatre in 2009, keeps alive in Soroca the only project theater in the Republic of Moldova.
The idea of staging such a play came mainly from the desire of the director of the Veniamin Apostol Theater to promote Soroca authors, and for those from Soroca, Spiridon Vangheli is theirs, although the writer is "claimed" and by those from Balti, because his place of origin is somewhere on the border between the two counties.
"I wanted to make a surprise for Spiridon Vangheli. When there was a week left until the premiere of the play, I went to Chisinau, we met and told him that I had a surprise, but he didn't even want to hear it . He said that only Ion Ungureanu (actor and director from the Republic of Moldova, ed. n.) could do this show. I told him then that the show was ready, I had set the date on which it was going to be played. I urged him to see me like a mindless child and to give me two slaps, because I was on the same page as his son, a cardiologist, but I asked him to come and see the show and he told me that he wouldn't come. I had done everything possible, I asked him, I gave him an invitation, I told him that I would send a car to pick him up from the stairs. The next morning he tells me: 'Petrica, I gave it a thought last night and I'm going to come, I'm going to come, because it's people's work!' I filmed the whole show with his presence. He was crying and couldn't open his mouth, he was finished. He remembered how he wrote the book crying at every word, how every phrase was bathed in tears and he told us that he didn't think such a show was possible," Petre Popa testifies.
Regardless of those who came to power, Petre Popa says that he did not know the hand of censorship and that he always had the freedom to choose which plays were played at the theater he coordinates.
He speaks fondly of the children he took to the theater. He sees them as his sons and daughters, guides them, helps them, scolds and praises them, he is their pedagogue, but also a friend.
"For a very long time I wanted to be active in the Cortina Studio, but I was very busy and didn't have time. I plucked up the courage, I came to the preselections, there was a competition in which I presented some poems of mime and I was told that I was welcome here. I tried it, I saw that it was good and I stayed," says Valeria, a high school student who joined the band this spring.
Sofia Spinei is almost 25 and continues to play. In the play In Shackles Of Siberia she plays the main role, that of Olguta - a girl deported with her parents to Siberia, matured before her time, who goes through a lot of trials. She has been active in the troupe of small actors since her 6th grade and stayed at Cortina, helped by her childlike face and talent that some professional actors would envy. Now she is a student at the Academy of Arts and a teacher at the Nicolae Botgros College of Arts in Soroca.
Over 80 children have passed through the Cortina Studio over the years, and in the ten years since its establishment, several generations of children have already passed by. Now, 16 kids of different ages participate in rehearsals, prepare thoroughly and play.
With the play "In Shackles Of Siberia", the child actors from Soroca were well received everywhere. Until them, no one had presented on a theater stage the horrors to which the Bessarabians deported to Siberia were subjected, the unimaginable humiliations experienced by those people. Many years after the play adapted from Spiridon Vangheli's short story began to be performed in Soroca, the Siberian Files was staged at the Mihai Eminescu National Theater in Chisinau, based on the testimonies of several Bessarabian Romanians who lived in torment the Siberian camps, a piece that enjoyed great success.
However, the road had been opened a long time ago, by some children from Soroca, who in the meantime have become adults and whose place was taken by new and new dedicated, disciplined and wise child actors, who can fill theaters by telling the shocking stories of their ancestors, but, between the lines, and their own story lived today.AGERPRES
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