A theatrical play based on the true stories of a man and two women deported to Siberia will be staged at the Mihai Eminescu National Theater in Chisinau. The first performance will take place this evening, July 5.
Petru Hadârcă, director of the Siberian Files, told IPN that he came up with the idea for the play quite late, despite having worked before on several radio drama pieces in Bucharest on this same subject. “If we had tapped deeply enough into this subject 30 years ago, in the middle of the national revival wave, today we would not have had such nostalgia for the Soviet regime,” the director said.
Petru Hadârcă added that the play is not meant to put the deportations on trial, but rather to keep the story of the play’s three protagonists alive. "It tells the story of Ecaterina Chele, taken away to Siberia in 1941, in the first wave of deportations, Margarita Spanu Cemartan, deported in 1949 in the second wave, and the political prisoner Ion Morari, who was convicted in 1951. They all teach us that we must not seek vengeance for their suffering and at the same time that their suffering must not be forgotten. This is the core idea: we must not forget,” said Petru Hadârcă.
According to the director, the show lasts for two and a half hours with a pause and consists of two parts: the first part is about the women who survived in the Gulag, and the second part tells the story of men who lived with the stigma of being deportees.
Petru Hadârcă said that after the premieres of July 5 and 6, the next performance will be played on September 16, when the Theater reopens after the summer recess.
