Alexandra Caras and Emőke Pál - a delightful dive into accumulation and alternation!

The month of February brings an exciting new premiere to Reactor—the sensational show Wonders of Transylvania! This production was created as part of the project "Fágáș. Multicultural Perspectives – strengthening cultural entrepreneurship in Cluj-Napoca in a Romanian-Hungarian interethnic context". The show is a wonderful co-production between Reactor and Váróterem Projekt, bringing to life the co-existence of these two vibrant communities in a fictional, yet beautifully self-referential context. To find out more about this creative journey, we invited the fabulous Alexandra Caras (Reactor de creație și experiment) and Emőke Pál (Váróterem Projekt) to share their experiences with us!

What are you working on right now? What is the current focus of your artistic journey?
Alexandra Caras: We are just a week away from the big premiere! The show is called Wonders of Transylvania, directed by the fantastic Martin Boross, whom I met a few years ago at a workshop. The play explores the interethnic relationships between Romanians and Hungarians, highlighting the cultural, social, political, and personal differences that tend to arise between us. For me, this project is absolutely wonderful for so many reasons! First, the team is so diverse, colorful, and partly new to me... I remember that at the beginning of rehearsals, the breaks were quite quiet, and you could feel a bit of distance because we didn't know each other yet. But we slowly opened up, and now it's a joy! Second, I love the alternating artistic layers—one on stage and one on film. I’ve always been drawn to working with the camera, so I’m thrilled to combine them here. And third, it was a great way to dive into information about these cultural, historical, and social differences that I hadn't explored out of my own curiosity before. This project reminded me of how much I still have to learn, and that it's a topic I had bypassed simply out of ignorance.

Emőke Pál: Wonders of Transylvania is going to be a brilliant mockumentary, and we are using various fun techniques to bring this to life, including multiple video projections! The videos were filmed beforehand, which gave us a lovely chance to practice some screen acting during the process. I think mockumentary acting actually demands an even more naturalistic, micro-realistic style from an actor than traditional film acting. Our director, Martin Boross, suggested two wonderful approaches before filming. One was to learn the text super precisely and then play with the rhythm during filming to create a very natural, everyday speech pattern. The other method was to memorize the structure, internal logic, and key words, while leaving plenty of room for improvisation so that spontaneous ideas could spark on the spot. I chose this second path! It definitely required a lot of inner calm and courage. Lately, as an actress, I’ve been working on maintaining my inner peace, keeping my playful spirit alive, being brave, and daring to make mistakes despite any external challenges. In this project, I feel I’ve truly managed to keep those positive vibes going! I also realized how much strength and energy you get from fully trusting your creative team. I think I used to underestimate just how powerful that is!

You’ve had all kinds of wonderful stage experiences so far, working on shows with very different creative processes. In the case of Wonders of Transylvania, the project started with a laboratory phase, and the text is inspired by the team's own stories, then fictionalized with lots of fun meta-theatrical layers. Tell us more about how you worked! Was it different from other projects you've been part of? What were the challenges and joys?
A.C.: We had a wonderful week of what you might call a workshop, where we did improvisations on various themes based on the show's core subject. It was a bit funny at first because we were often asked to look for potential conflicts between Romanians and Hungarians. I was so cozy in my bubble that I couldn't see past my own reality, where we are all just relaxed and great colleagues! I didn't quite get why we had to invent conflicts we had rarely, if ever, experienced ourselves. But once we dove deep into the research and documentation, I realized I had just been incredibly lucky not to face those situations, and that reality looks very different for others. We worked on the show in English, which I absolutely loved because I've always felt English has a very relaxed and natural flow for acting—and honestly, I still do! I remember one day we had to translate and perform a scene in Romanian that was originally in English, and the words felt so unusual in my mouth!

E.P.: I absolutely love working with the devised theater method! As an actor, you get to be an active creator and shaper of the show, because your ideas and the material from your improvisations become an integral part of the final performance. Documenting together and immersing ourselves in the subject makes us so much more invested, and it gives the actors a real stake in the play. There is something incredibly liberating about knowing that our ideas and materials will be curated by our brilliant playwrights, Alexa Băcanu and Martin Boross, so you can freely throw out any fun idea knowing they will select the very best pieces!

I have never worked with so many props and costumes before! You have to be super disciplined to get every object and costume in the right place at the right time. That is definitely going to be a thrilling challenge!

How was this theme of interethnicity approached in the show? In what ways did you connect with it?
E.P.: Over the last 10 years, I've worked on five different projects starting from this very theme of Romanian-Hungarian co-existence, and each time I discover beautiful new layers to the subject. Initially, I wanted to join this project more for the amazing team than the subject itself. But then I had two days off, and I spent them watching documentaries and reading articles about Romanian-Hungarian relations from morning till night. There are so many repressed grievances and deep emotions to talk about, and this resonates perfectly with my character, Andrea—a director from Budapest who wants to bring these repressed transgenerational traumas to light. Those two days of intense research gave me a massive personal boost and made me realize just how important this topic is!

A.C.: Starting from everyone's personal experiences, we expanded into universal realities lived by both groups. We researched the historical side quite a bit—which is a topic I am usually terrible at! That was my biggest challenge in terms of generating content. Luckily, I had much better-informed colleagues, so I listened closely, took notes, stole ideas and perspectives, and tried my best to understand them.

How did the collaboration with the artistic team go, considering you worked in three different languages?
E.P.: I’ve been working with the Reactor team for four years now, so every year it gets easier and easier to rehearse and perform in Romanian! I haven't used English as much lately, so I'm absolutely delighted to have a trilingual project to polish up my English. Sure, I might use both foreign languages a bit incorrectly and speak with an accent, but I’ve learned to embrace it and stop stressing over it! At the start, switching between languages was a bit tiring. In a foreign language, you often say what you *can* say rather than what you *want* to say, which can be a bit frustrating during improvisations. But at the same time, it was such a relief that our director is from Hungary, so if anything was unclear, I could easily ask in Hungarian!

A.C.: I thought that was incredibly cool because it helped me flex some muscles I hadn't used in a long time! There were days when not being able to make myself understood was a bit frustrating, but that frustration quickly turned into laughter, and by the middle of the project, I noticed a huge improvement! It was so funny because after rehearsals, I’d find myself replying to people at the store or on the street in English. I felt like I had caught some glamorous international artistic vibe! So, yes, I was very happy to work like this! Thank you all for this opportunity! Love you, kiss, next one let’s hope is French!

How do you think the audience will receive the show?
A.C.: With lots of humor! I think people will leave questioning certain preconceptions, feeling happy that we are opening up topics that are rarely spoken about, and feeling a warm sense of empathy for both communities.

E.P: I would love to quote a short, beautiful passage from my character Andrea's final monologue: "I hope this encounter has made you see yourselves in a different light." That is exactly what I hope for!