Devil’s rehearsal is a show directed from Radu Afrim's own idea, and the creators of the text are members of the cast themselves. The story is rooted in the world of socialism and extends into the world of today. It is about a suddenly rich businessman, Miklós Levente Ördög, who wants to organize a memorable birthday performance for his son, little Ricsi.
The birthday gala is preceded by casting and a series of rehearsals, the location of which is the now dirty and run-down former cultural center in Görcsszentmiklós, where Miklós Levente Ördög, Ricsi's father, once celebrated Ceaușescu's birthday as a child, which coincided with his own birthday. As we learn from his memoirs, he experienced his birthday as a trauma, since the celebration of Ceaușescu's birthday overshadowed his big day and destroyed it with one blow. This trauma is the reason why Ördög wants to organize a memorable birthday party for his son, which his son will remember happily in his adulthood.
Radu Afrim was born in Betlen, Romania in 1968. In 1995, he obtained a liberal arts degree in Romanian-French, and then studied theater direction at the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj.
Known as the prodigy of Romanian theater life, the creator became known for his bold directorial adaptations of classics, as well as his staging of Russian, Danish, Swiss, German, French, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian contemporary texts, mostly in adapted form. Some of his works are based on improvisation, so-called 'author's performances', for which he often writes the text together with the creative team.
He has directed in most theaters in Romania. He won the UNITER award for the best direction twice, and the most recent award from the Romanian Theater Association was for the performance A nyugalom.
