PRIDE

In the year 7534 since Adam, or 2026 since the salvation of the world, we're haunted by the glory of national history and by pride in being descendants of the ruling princes. 

In a collectively created mockumentary, we question and demythologize the stories of four Romanian voivodes: Mircea the Elder, Vlad the Impaler, Stephen the Great and Michael the Brave, as well as of four characters who never found their place in the pantheon (Ana Chiajna, Radu the Handsome, Maria Voichița and Lady Teodora). Who is the woman in history, and to what end is she there? How does the peasant write history without counting for it? What makes you a hero? How did pride travel down from the voivodes to us? With a spanky, trans-historical atmosphere, we try to understand how various ideologies and later periods have taken up the image and narratives of these rulers to legitimize their own acts and manipulate, all the way up to 2026, when these princes are still used in election campaigns. So what do we do with this pride now? What lies beyond it?

The show contains references to/quotes from texts by: Grigore Ureche, Miron Costin, Mihai Eminescu, Vasile Alecsandri, Andrei Mureșanu, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Marin Sorescu, Dumitru Almaș,  as well as references to/quotes from several interwar and contemporary politicians, and to scenes from the film Mircea, by Sergiu Nicolaescu.