Why Does the Child Boil In The Polenta

by Aglaia Veteranyi, directed by Radu Afrim

Opening night: April 23, 2003

It’s a charming story about a family of circus people, who spend their life on the road.The performance tells the story of this family seen trough the eyes of a child whose existence becomes a gigantic circus show, performed on the earth and in the sky, a voyage with guardian angels and terrifying threats.
It’s the story of a little girl who fears continuously that her mother, the woman with the steel hair (who hangs by her hair from the top of the circus) could die. The child’s fears are annihilated by her sister’s tales about the child who boils in the polenta. The director manages to render the essence of the novel, its lyrical and philosophical tone, the discontinuous narrative flow.
The dramatic moments are not ostentatious or pathetic. They have depth and power. It’s a dynamic and moving staging.
In the performance, music isn’t just a support, designed to make the performance accessible or pleasing, but a decisive element for rendering the message. Ada Milea’s songs are neither nice, nor harmonious. They translate the weeping of the child in the polenta. Antoaneta Zaharia has found the feature that brings together child and adult, namely fear. She lives in a terrible world, but the thought of losing it terrifies her. Adriana Trandafir, Oana Stefanescu, Gabriel Pintilei and Pavel Bartos combine the grotesque of the circus performance with dramatic reasons.
The staging exults humour and playfulness.
Why does the child boil in the polenta ? Because we are afraid. Horror, as the source of the dream, is Afrim’s key to Aglaja Veteranyi’s poem.