Vacanța Mare

Vacanţa Mare, or The Great Holiday (referring to the summer break), was a Romanian humour group. The group was established in 1988 by Dan Sava, Mugur Mihăescu and Radu Pietreanu. In 2007 the group is formed by Mihăescu, Pietreanu and Florin Axinte Petrescu, but also includes some co-workers: Iulian Frankfurt Ilinca, Emil Mitică Rădinoiu, Mirela Lila Stoian and George Romică Robu.

The beginnings

Vacanţa Mare was formed as a student hobby group in the late 1980s. At first the group was made up by five, but it was not very popular. After two members left the group, Vacanţa Mare started to have shows by the seaside, especially during the summer holidays. In 1992, at a non-professional stand-up comedy contest, the group came in second for the "Burduful de Aur" award, where they were spotted by talent hunter Nicu Dragosin.[1] He determined them to continue their stand-up comedy acts (they wanted to give up their routine at that point), while transforming them from amateurs into a professional group. Their first motto was Noi nu suntem normali (literally "We're not normal").

The group became famous and began staging 4 tours yearly: two national tours in spring and autumn and two at the seaside and sometimes in Bucharest. The three used to do parodies of songs, changing the lyrics and replacing them with political events sung alongside a guitar. The group made a signature entrance on stage, with a soundtrack based on "The Final Countdown" by Europe. Furthermore, their exit was always done on a remix of Floare de Iris of the Iris band and on the folk song Ţăranul e pe câmp ("Peasant on the field"), the spectators being invited to sing along. The show consisted from a series of 5-10 sketches and stand-up routines, 5–10 minutes each, followed by 5–30 minutes of song remixes playing satirizing a political or cultural event. Many of the sketches featured common Romanian regional or cultural stereotypes (such as the stupid policemen in Garcea, the stereotypical countryside fools, always drunk and fighting each other in Leana and Costel, or the not-so-successful thieves in Crapu and Menumorut).

TV shows

After Dan Sava's death in 1999, the two remaining members continued to activate, in the autumn of 1999 the group started a weekly show on Pro TV. The shows had a running time of one hour, being aired at prime-time (8 PM). The rival TV station Antena 1 responded with a similar show from Divertis, a remarkably similar group, that inspired the formation of Vacanța Mare in the late 80s. The show format consisted of two parts - half an hour of comedic sketches such as Râdeţi cu oameni ca noi, ("Laugh with the likes of us"), Spectacol Vacanţa Mare, ("The Vacanţa Mare Show") and Stăpânii Manelelor, ("The Masters of Manele" - a pun on the The Lord of the Rings translated in Romanian as Stăpânul Inelelor). This part of the show is somewhat similar to BBC's Little Britain show. The second half of the show it was reserved to a theatrical comedic series (Leana and Costel), featuring the life of their famous characters in the village of Sadova, Dolj.

A few years in the collaboration with Pro TV, the show started to lose audience, being moved to a later time segment (10 PM). However, the group made two movies: Garcea si oltenii (2001) and Trei fraţi de belea (2006). Both movies where heavily promoted by Media Pro Pictures, a subsidiary of the company that also owns Pro TV, and "Garcea și oltenii" grossed the highest box office figures for a Romanian movie after 1989 (almost 290.000 spectators viewed the movie in Romania).[2]

At the beginning of 2007 the group left Pro TV for Kanal D for a salary of 300.000.[3]

Characters

Cultural Influence

The group had an important influence amongst the Romanian public - a traffic policeman is commonly referred to as "Garcea", while some of their tag lines became common phrases in the urban vocabulary (such as iezista o esplicatie - a grammatically incorrect form of există o explicație - "There is an explanation" for a stereotypical explanation). Also, a Hungarian is commonly referred to as "Pishty", a Magyar character played by Mugur.

Shows

Notes

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