"Why are You Wearing that Stupid Man Suit?"

Last weekend, the twelve Fulbright grantees converged on Bucharest. On Saturday, Mihai Moroiu and Loredana Bucuroaia met the bulk of us at the Peasant Museum. A gray noon, chilly, but not too cold, we wandered the museum, gawking at the old peasant outfits and trippy outsider artwork, the transported wooden huts and handmade religious icons. Afterwards, we went around to the back of the museum and into the open market. On a grassy field, drunk men in bear costumes stumbled around and held each other up and tried to dance. Other men with dark circles under their eyes solemnly played drums and woodwinds. One very big man sat dazed in front of the reconstructed village hut.
Later, the Fulbright commission threw us a holiday feast. A fun time was had by all. Outside on the steps of the place, I met Iona Moldovan, cultural manager of Act Teatrul in Bucharest. We spoke briefly, she told me who she was, I told her what I was doing in Craiova, and she said that she knew somebody who might want to translate Mercury Fur into Romanian for me. I had brought a couple of copies of the play with me, and on the way to her rehearsals, I stopped by the Hotel Casa Victor, ran upstairs, and grabbed a script. We walked across town and she toured me through her theatre, a really hip underground place where my friend Mihaela Sirbu regularly acts.
Iona gave the script to Ionut Grama, an actor who has translated other plays into Romanian. This week, Ionut and I swapped emails and he has now agreed to translate Mercury Fur. A first step. Iona has said that if I mount the play here in Craiova, that maybe in late spring we could move it to Bucharest.
Returning to the Fulbright Commission, I ran into Cristina Bejan, a Fulbrighter who’s just finishing up her extended gig here. Cristina left for Washington, D.C. this week, where she will spend nine months completing her PhD. However, she plans on returning to Bucharest and has asked if I would be interested in helping start an English-speaking theatre company there.
I realized earlier this week that I need to buckle down and write the new screenplay I've been outlining, and learn Romanian. And so I’ve set a schedule for myself. Early to bed, early to rise. Quiet times, good meals, music and the occasional play with a friend, write in the morning, Romanian CDs in the afternoons. Since it’s dark by 5pm now, I want to experience as much daylight as possible. No drunky bear dances for me. I’ll hibernate when I’m dead.