Join the excitement: Research Spaces [SHOWCASE]!

From May 8th to 10th, 2026, we joyfully invite you to the Reactor Showcase – Research Spaces! Over three delightful days, we are bringing together the very latest Reactor productions. We'll be chatting about the wonderful importance of artistic research frameworks in theater practice and brainstorming how these exciting processes can become even more visible and accessible to both theater-makers and our amazing audiences.

Alongside the spectacular shows in the lineup, we are thrilled to host the "Research Spaces" conference at Reactor from May 9th to 10th. This conference shines a bright spotlight on fascinating artistic research methods, brought to you by our wonderful guest speakers: Adriana Gheorghe, Monica Olivia Grecea, Alexandru Berceanu, Roxana Lăpădat, and Ilinca Tamara Todoruț.

A warm invitation to this event is open to artists, researchers, industry professionals, our beloved theater-goers, and anyone who is curious to learn more! No reservation is needed to join the conference—just bring your enthusiasm!

We can't wait to see you there!

Conference Schedule: Research Spaces

May 9th, 2026
11:00 – 11:10
Conference Opening
11:10 – 11:40
radical, vulnerable, authentic, relevant, and other creative aspirations, Monica Olivia Grecea (director, university lecturer, clinical psychologist)
The creative process is a beautiful journey of establishing, reaching, shifting, and letting go of personal and collective projections and boundaries. In my current practice, I strive to cultivate a relaxed and mindful presence amid the natural anxieties of creating.

Monica Olivia Grecea is a theater director, researcher, and lecturer at the Faculty of Theater and Film at Babeș-Bolyai University, where she loves working with theater directing students and, since 2022, with Master's students in the Theater in Education program. Her research focuses on the independent scene and fresh creative paradigms. She is passionately interested in performativity, interdisciplinarity, feminist and collaborative artistic practices, autofiction, and practice-as-research.

11:50 – 12:40
Feminist Dramaturgies Against the Theatre, Ilinca Tamara Todoruț (university lecturer at the Faculty of Theater and Film, UBB) – presentation in English
I propose a wonderful way of understanding dramaturgy as a process of structuring not just texts and bodies in performance, but also production models and organizational forms. I explore how feminist dramaturgies beautifully transcend existing theatrical institutions, relations, and aesthetics forged within androcentric, capitalist, and imperialist states and modeled after authoritarian, racist, sexist, and classist patterns.

Ilinca Tamara Todoruț is a lecturer at the Faculty of Theater and Film at UBB, where she happily teaches courses on theater criticism and contemporary theater in relation to today's sociopolitical, economic, and technological landscapes. As a theater scholar and production dramaturg, her work wonderfully combines practical knowledge of theater-making with a theory anchored in the realities of both artists and spectators. Ilinca has studied, taught, and worked in theater across three continents—from Norway to the United States and China—and holds an MA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, as well as a PhD in Theater from Yale University.

12:50 – 13:40
In past years, I talked about the Institution of Performance and Sublunar. I take it all back, Adriana Gheorghe (artist, initiator of Teatre)
I will start with the inspiring idea that artistic practice, especially performance, meets artistic research through its counterintuitive potential to intervene in and playfully participate in reality. Carefully choreographed, verbal language makes and unmakes worlds, and the mechanisms of performance become gestures that can beautifully shape our presence in the world according to our needs and desires.

Adriana Gheorghe began her journey in literature and art theory, and for about ten years, she has been choreographing verbal language in the context of contemporary dance—in its many wonderful variations, on the border with post-dramatic theater, poetry, theory, conceptual art, and the many relationships it builds with situated knowledge, all to make language feel alive and sensitive once again. For the last three and a half years, she has transformed her artistic practice into a physical space – Teatre, in Bucharest. In 2025, she was joyfully awarded the Gheorghe Iova prize for literary experiment – for the Teatre space.

May 10th, 2026
11:00 – 11:10
Conference Opening
11:10 – 12:00
T-NET, LIMINAL-VITAL, Alexandru Berceanu (director and associate professor in the Animation and Interaction Department of UNATC)
Starting from a series of heartfelt workshops on the theme of loss in 2021, I developed a personal, improvisational practice dedicated to emotional development and building resilience, called T-NET. The process of developing T-NET beautifully weaves together artistic research and interdisciplinary art-neuroscience-psychology research. Through exploring the development of T-NET over five years, we observe the exciting challenges of blurring the lines between research and creation methods within Romania’s cultural-creative-research ecosystem.

Alexandru I. Berceanu is a director of mixed realities and an associate professor in the Animation and Interaction Department of the National University of Theatre and Film „I.L. Caragiale” (UNATC) in Bucharest, where he also teaches in the Community and Therapeutic Theater Master's program. He conducts fascinating interdisciplinary research at the intersection of art and neuroscience. His research focuses on aggressive and prosocial behavior, using theater and immersive environments as wonderful tools to investigate the development of emotional regulation through gamified approaches and theatrical representation. He happily initiated the International Center for Research and Education in Innovative and Creative Technologies (CINETic) at UNATC, as well as the Interactive Technologies Master's program. 

12:10 – 13:00
The Archive: the experience of the document as a performative gesture, Roxana Lăpădat (creator, artist, researcher, and cultural manager)
This presentation shines a light on how physical and personal archives are dynamically activated as performative formats, exploring the wonderful connection between recent history and contemporary experience through three artistic journeys created within the Horizon Europe NARDIV – United in Narrative Diversity? project.

Roxana Lăpădat is an energetic creator, producer, and cultural manager working at the exciting intersection of performing and visual arts. She has a rich, multidisciplinary background—with degrees in philology (German-English) and performing arts (acting), as well as an MA in communication and public relations. Currently, she is conducting doctoral research exploring the impact of foreign cultural policies as a form of soft power in times of crisis, with a special focus on German-Romanian cultural exchanges between 1968 and 2007. Since October 2023, she has been a joyful member of the artistic collective Postnational Interphonic Theater, and since 2024, she has been an associate lecturer at the West University of Timative (German-language Acting department).

A cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the project results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.