The German State Theatre Timisoara and the Jewish State Theatre Bucharest invite you on Saturday, November 4, 2023, to the premiere of Sidy Thal, a co-production that re-enacts the anti-Semitic bombing of the Palace of Culture in Timisoara in 1938. The performance starts at the Synagogue in Cetate (Mărășești, nr.6) at 7.30 pm and continues in the TGST hall.


The Bucharest premiere will take place on 12 November 2023.

On November 26, 1938, two hand grenades exploded in the hall during a guest performance of the Jewish-Bukovinian singer Sidy Thal and her ensemble at the Theater in Timisoara. Four people were killed and 70 injured in the anti-Semitic attack by the far-right nationalist Iron Guard.

The Timișoara assassination in 1938 should not be taken out of the context of political developments in Romania, but also in Europe. After the First World War, Romania was granted large territories and the proportion of the Jewish population doubled to almost 800,000. Although Jews were able to acquire citizenship under the 1923 Constitution, a few years later about a third were again deprived of it.

At the same time, the Legionary Movement and later the Iron Guard developed into a mass movement comparable to the Italian National Fascist Party or the Nazi Party of the so-called Third Reich. The ideology included anti-Semitism, mystic-orthodox fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism. The fascist dictatorship established in 1940 made Romania an ally of the Axis powers.

The systematic extermination of the Jews followed. After a horrific pogrom in Bucharest in early 1941, Romanian security forces, together with the Wehrmacht, killed some 13,000 Jews in Iași that same year. Those from the east of the country were deported to Transnistria, while Jews from areas previously belonging to Hungary were killed in extermination camps. According to researchers, about 350,000 Jews died violent deaths in areas of Greater Romania by mid-1942.

The event, little known in the city of Timișoara, the European Capital of Culture 2023, was researched by playwright Thomas Perle and director Clemens Bechtel with the help of Maria Mădălina Irimia of the “Wilhelm Filderman” Center for the Study of the History of Romanian Jews and created a documentary play from it.

What is true? What really happened? The play and the production are an attempt to reconstruct the attack and the time when anti-Semitism and fascism became part of everyday life in a multicultural society, leading to the horror of the Second World War and the Shoah.

Sidy Thal is the first cooperation between the German State Theater Timisoara and the Jewish State Theater Bucharest. The multilingual work will be performed in Yiddish, German and Romanian.

With: Enikő Blénessy, Viorica Predica, Maia Morgenstern, Silvia Török, Katia Pascariu, Daniela Török, Olga Török, Oana Vidoni, Radu Brănici, Rareș Hontzu, Mircea Dragoman, Richard Hladik, Mihai Prejban.

Directed by Clemens Bechtel - Set and costumes: Șteff Chelaru, Ioana Groza - Music: Dan Simion - Documentary: Maria Irimia - Dramatic collaboration: Dan Druță - Assistant director: Isolde Cobeț - Make-up: Bojita Ilici, Aurora Spasinovici - Technical direction: Ovidiu Radu, Aurel Cristea - Recordings for audio-walk & Video Design: Alex Halka - Musical preparation: Roxana Ardeleanu

Clemens Bechtel has been working as a director since 1995 and is best known for his research-based works. He has staged performances in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Romania as well as in Burundi, Mali and Malawi. His production Staatssicherheiten (State Security) at the Hans-Otto-Theater in Potsdam, in which former prisoners talk about Stasi prisons, was awarded the Friedrich Luft Prize in 2009. Hunger for Trade 2015 at Schauspielhaus Hamburg was also an important work for him. In this project, theatres from four continents came together to produce eight plays about global food markets. In recent years, Bechtel has staged many shows in East Africa and Eastern Europe, as well as in Wiesbaden, Mannheim and Freiburg.

About this project he said: "What particularly interests me about this work are two questions: How do we reconstruct the past? From which perspectives? I am even more preoccupied with examining the value of theatre. Why do we want to keep playing when the world is collapsing around us? What is culture actually worth in such moments? For us as creators of culture, but also for others: for perpetrators of violence and victims of violence. When would it be better for us to stop, to become silent?"

Thomas Perle was born in 1987 in Vișeul de Sus in Romania and emigrated to Germany with his family in 1991. He studied theatre, film and media at the University of Vienna and gained experience as an assistant director at the Schauspielhaus Wien. In 2013 he was awarded the prize for exile literature. In 2018, his prose debut wir gingen weil alle gingen./we left because everyone left was published by edition exile.


In 2019 he received the Retzhofer Prize for Playwriting for his play karpatenflecken/carpathians as stains on my skin. This premiered at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in 2021. The performance opened the TGST's Eurothalia Festival in 2022. In the same year, his play ein jedermann/domnul iedeman premiered at the Radu Stanca National Theatre Sibiu. In 2022, karpatenflecken was performed at the Burgtheater Wien in Austria, and in 2023 it received the prestigious Nestroy Theatre Award for best play of the year. Thomas Perle was the Timisoara Chronicler in Residence at the German Cultural Forum Eastern Europe, during which time he co-wrote the play Sidy Thal with Clemens Bechtel for TGST.

See you at the premiere!