MARINA AND ULAY

9th November 2018, Galery of “Matica Srpska”, 15h (Duration 1,30)

About the play

With an exceptional cast – MAIA MORGENSTERN and MARIUS BODOCHI – “Marina & Ulay” celebrates the overwhelming personality of the superstar Marina Abramović in a dramatic mythology of his extreme, exciting artistic creation. Her life and her work are fascinating. Beyond the strongest and most ambitious achievements in which the artist is always present and “walks through walls”, Marina dares to expose her deepest wounds and bleeds for the love of her life. Together with Ulay, Marina is everything.

The love story, the artistic mood, the remembrance of some of the most influential artistic performances in history, of the Marina Abramović and Ulay is coming to Synergy World Theater Festival.
Which actress could better express the creative force and spirit of Marina Abramović than Maia Morgenstern, who is herself a perfect artist, an impetuous presence and exceptional talent of the Romanian and international theatre and film?
So did Ulay, Marina’s former life partner, a true artist, but whose work has always been overshadowed by the scandals of his ex-lover, played by Marius Bodochi, a famous well known actor and a landmark of the Romanian theater.
The reading performance brings to Synergy Festival’s audience the relationship and the personalities of two important artists of the international contemporary stage

This performance was performed in September 2018 within the exhibition Woman, all too woman at the Art Museum in Timisoara. At this exhibition, Abramović’s famous art installation Balkan Baroque was presented.
At the end of September, the text of Marina and Ulay was read in Bucharest as part of a workshop at the Romanian Playwrights’ Theater during the Bucharest Days.

From the press

“An outstanding performance featuring Maia Morgenstern and Marius Bodochi. They were fantastic. An enchanting coherence in dialogues, obvious talents, mid-scene applause … An exceptional moment in Romanian contemporary culture.”
(The Art Museum of Timisoara)

“Marina and Ulay, a text by Edit Negulici, performed on the scene by two excellent actors, Maia Morgenstern and Marius Bodochi, who in an authentic and emotional way conjure up the love and artistic troubles of the couple Marina Abramović and Ulay. An Unforgettable night with an undoubtedly very strong emotional impact in the organization of the exhibition #WOMANALLTOOWOMAN.”

“Unforgettable evenings are very rare, and those under the clear sky, while listening to the love story that has changed the course of performance art, are truly unique. The performance Marina and Ulay by Edit Negulici has presented us with two striking names from the Romanian theater, Maia Morgenstern and Marius Bodochi. Marina and Ulay, representing the moments from the lifes of two artists, are part of the exhibition Women, all too Woman.”

Marina and Ulay

…Together, Abramović and Ulay made scores of artworks. They include Incision (1978), in which a naked Ulay runs toward a clothed Abramović, only to be pulled back by an elastic rope and, in the same year, AAA-AAA in which the pair scream at one another. Their relationship is symbolised in 1977’s Relation in Time, in which they performed bound together by their braided hair while facing away from one another – for 17 hours.

More recently, Ulay reappeared in Abramović’s performance of The Artist is Present at MoMA, where visitors queued (for hour upon hour) to sit silently opposite her and simply share eye contact. One day, Ulay showed up as a surprise. Both grew teary as they sat staring at one another and the moment was captured on film. It went viral, and has now been seen by millions on YouTube. The background music and explanatory text make it seem like the reunion of long-lost lovers. But the truth is rather less romantic.“

(The Guardian)