A delightful showcase of acting multitasking with Alina Mișoc and Zsolt Csepei!

This wonderful October brings us the exciting premiere of the show Beyond the Golden Hour! This beautiful project was created within "Fágáș. Multicultural Perspectives – strengthening cultural entrepreneurship in Cluj-Napoca in a Romanian-Hungarian interethnic context", a program funded by the EEA Grants 2014-2021 within the RO-CULTURE Program. The show is a delightful co-production between Reactor and Váróterem Projekt, bringing multicultural coexistence to the spotlight with a fantastic mixed cast! To share some behind-the-scenes magic, we invited the lovely Alina Mișoc (Reactor de creație și experiment) and Zsolt Csepei (Váróterem Projekt) to tell us all about their joyful journey.

What are you working on right now? What is the beautiful context of your artistic journey? What excites you and what do you hope to discover in your work as an actor/actress?

Zsolt Csepei: Oh, exciting times! Right now, I'm working on the surtitles for "Beyond the Golden Hour". A bilingual text surtitled in two languages means bilingualism squared! (laughs) That's keeping me busy at the moment. Lately, thanks to some lovely plays I translated for Reactor, I've started doing more translations. I discovered that I absolutely love it—it has a wonderful creative spark, while still keeping me beautifully grounded.

Otherwise, in my artistic life lately, it feels like a wonderful active pause. I think there are two projects that I’m not working on physically, but they are constantly playing in the background. I want to learn to work independently, to carry a project to completion all by myself, to learn to plan, and to rewire my creative mind a bit. Until now, I’ve always worked in a group or with someone else, which made it so much easier to make decisions, overcome blocks, and find confidence in an idea!

On the other hand, also playing in the background, is another project that I've tried a few times, but is quite a thrilling challenge. It will be a show/exhibition/board game/performance—I don't know exactly when I will start working on it, or if it will take one year or ten. It's a very personal project, so it deserves all the time in the world!

Alina Mișoc: After a long break from children's theatre, at the end of August, I started working on a delightful project—a playful rewrite of the story of Păcală, together with a wonderful independent company I’ve worked with before. It is always a fantastic challenge to perform for a young audience, who are so wonderfully honest and direct! The rhythm, the play, and the presence are so different for an actor who also does adult theatre. That's why I love mixing the two—it keeps you on your toes, adapting and finding that perfect balance. Beyond the great technique that children's theatre brings, I find it incredibly essential because it helps shape future generations of theatre lovers! In this project, I work both as an actress and a puppeteer, which beautifully develops my precision and object work.

Right after the premiere of "Beyond the Golden Hour", I’ll start rehearsals for a exciting new Reactor project. I am absolutely thrilled to work with Dragoș Mușoiu, a director I’ve wanted to collaborate with for a long time, and I love that it will be a collective creation rather than individual parts. I adore the fairytale setting of the text, the themes, and the all-female cast. The visual world created by Mihai Păcurar is incredibly captivating and wonderfully creative, relying beautifully on suggestion.

You’ve had so many wonderful stage experiences in shows with very different creative processes. For "Beyond the Golden Hour", the project included a laboratory phase, and the text is inspired by the cast's own stories. Tell us more about this collaborative magic! How does it compare to other projects, and what are the joys and challenges?

Zsolt Csepei: What was delightfully unusual for me was knowing from the very beginning what the set and stage design would look like! Often, we start only with ideas, and it takes weeks to decide on the space. This wonderful opportunity allowed us to adapt our movements to the specific space from day one. Aside from that, we had a fantastic few days of workshops, and our personal stories became the foundation of the script. At the start of rehearsals, we improvised without text, searched for what moves the characters, found their essence, discovered relationships, and had a wonderful time playing around with the material!

Alina Mișoc: The project began with a wonderful casting workshop where we shared our thoughts and personal stories about interethnicity, emigration, and how these topics were discussed in our families. Our brilliant playwright expanded this workshop beyond the artistic team to gather a rich variety of stories and perspectives. By the time we hit the stage, the script was ready, requiring only tiny adjustments. Since the stage concept was presented to us on day one, it was so easy to jump right into the spirit of the show! The most exciting challenge for me was performing in Hungarian—since I don't speak the language—and learning to interact with the surtitles as if they were another actor on stage!

How was this theme of interethnicity explored in the show? In what ways did you bring it to life?

Zsolt Csepei: The real question is whether we could have avoided it! (laughs) We have three Hungarian actors and three Romanian actors, each speaking our mother tongue, and occasionally we try to interact in each other's language. Sometimes we are narrators, sometimes fictional characters with fictional lives in a fictional society—which is a wonderfully playful mirror of our reality. Since the show is built on personal connections, interethnicity shines through these relationships, and we have a lot of fun playing with clichés and stereotypes!

Alina Mișoc: The theme of interethnicity remains an incredibly delicate and important topic. I think we approached it in very diverse ways! Sometimes, we chose to treat it with a lighthearted touch, using comedy and irony to look at stereotypes. On a personal level, it made me beautifully aware of what it means to live within another culture. As for the Hungarian language, it is still a wonderful challenge, but I have truly fallen in love with its beautiful musicality!

How do you hope our wonderful audience will receive the show?

Zsolt Csepei: I can't wait to find out! I hope everyone comes ready to have fun and doesn't take the theme too seriously!

Alina Mișoc: I hope our audience finds it to be a wonderfully funny show, filled with touching moments, that opens a warm and joyful dialogue on topics we often avoid!