Eugene Ionesco Theatre will open on September 17 its 17th season with Matei Visniec’s “Joan and the Fire”, the first performance to be ever played in the Romanian language, Info-Prim Neo reports. Speaking at a news conference, Ionesco’s director Petru Vutcarau offered a synopsis of the play. Many of the things that happen to the heroine – Joan of Arc – are not brought to the spectators’ sight, but are narrated by other characters. “It is a play about our belief in heroes, about sacrifices and disappointments. From this perspective, the title “Joan and the Fire” could as well be “Joan and the People” or maybe “Joan and the Rest of Us”, says Vutcarau. According to him, the play is conceived as a mixture of dramatic and puppet theater, a theater of masks and shadows. Add expressionism to this combination and you will have a performance of traditional Japanese theater, Vutcarau said. And indeed, Joan and the Fire is a joint production by Ionesco and the Tokyo-based Kaze troupe, a fruitful relationship for several years now. In April, when Joan and the Fire was staged in Chisinau in the Japanese language, Kaze’s director Yoshinara Sano said his intention was to produce a play with historical features and fundamental human values. After starting to work on the play, he realized Vutcarau was the best man for the project. Sano considers Vutcarau to be in the world’s top-five theater directors, one who can realize a performance of quality, and “Eugene Ionesco” one of Europe’s most valuable theaters. Besides Joan and the Fire, Ionesco promises three other premieres as well. On November 12 and 13 this will be Constantin Cheianu’s “Corruption in Moldova” (“Corupţia în R. Moldova”), directed by Petru Vutcarau. Another play, “The Taste of Honey” (“Gustul mierii”), directed by Vitalie Drucec, will be on stage by the end of January 2009. The last premiere of the season will be played in May and it will be a Georgian drama. Also in May, the Japanese “Theater 1980” will come to Chisinau to re-perform “The Story of a man Found Dead on the Street”, produced in Tokyo. “The play has a modern script that addresses issues like the role of women in the society, abandoned elderly, medical assistance”, says Vutcarau. The play will be performed in Chisinau thrice, during May 1-10, followed by a tour in the Danubian countries: Austria, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria.