Fresh Start: on the collective and on decisions

The ninth Fresh Start edition is nearing its end with the public presentation of the show „OLIGAR-HI-HI”, which will take place on August 30 and 31, at 7pm, at Reactor. The team of 9 residents is hard at work on the show, and in the meantime we asked them a few questions about how this two-month residency period has gone.

Keep an eye on Alexandra Catrina (actress), Ana Felman (actress), Vicențiu Grama (playwright), Briana Gruici (cultural manager), Duncan McKee (actor and musician), Daria Nicu (set designer), Ana Salomia (actress), Dragoș Stoenescu (director) and Andrei Tcaciuc (choreographer)

1. You started working on this show in a somewhat different context than how rehearsals for a show usually begin. Looking back now, what was the first stage of work like for you, with the residency and the workshops at Reactor?

Alexandra Catrina: I didn't know what to expect from the workshops at first, but I discovered a lot. Through play, some things I need to work on in myself were brought back into focus, even though it's a bit unpleasant to run into what you need to change. One of the most important being: patience. I learned to breathe. To take a pause and stop letting all kinds of parasitic thoughts jeopardize my process. It's pretty hard, though. :)

Ana Salomia: For me, this way of working was ideal. The workshops at the start of the residency were a bridge that let me truly get to know, observe and listen to the others. It was a period when all I had to do was be as open and as curious as possible. To give, to receive and just to listen. We didn't know each other before the residency, and we don't even know the criteria by which we ended up together in this team. The start of a residency is like a trust exercise, a leap into the void — the more trust you allow yourself to fall back with, to be vulnerable, the richer you come out on the other side. In a paradoxical way (or rather, not surprising at all) I also did a lot of introspection. Even though at first my goal was to focus my attention on the group, on the people around me, I had to listen to myself too, to get to know myself again. So I could become a more up-to-date version of myself, so I could contribute to the good of the group. It had been a long time since I'd asked myself the questions I asked in the first weeks, a long time since I'd looked inside myself with such a fine magnifying glass. Or dared to analyze my tendencies, prejudices and automatisms — and maybe even try to unlearn them. And all that because I was aware that we were building, in real time, the foundation on which we'd set off on quite a complex journey of collective creation. Looking back, I miss the early workshops and that period of getting to know myself and others terribly. I would linger in that bubble of time from the past for a long, long while.

2. How did working together go, given that the proposal was to work with devised theatre methods, in a more non-hierarchical format? What challenges/satisfactions come up and how do your roles shift?

Ana Felman: At first, working together didn't work. We tried to generate material from improvisation, brainstorming, dictée, but none of it bore fruit. We opted for a hybrid working style in which we chose the theme, and the playwright wrote the text. The challenges that came up along the way had to do with communication — everyone had an idea, but we weren't listening to each other. The satisfaction comes in the work itself, when a scene works.

Alexandra Catrina: It was a bit chaotic at first. Until we got to know each other, until we figured out how each of us works. But it was a really good opportunity for creativity. When you let yourself think outside the "mold", you become inventive, you see new perspectives. The difficulty comes when you have nine creative people, with hundreds of very good ideas. How do you manage to agree? What do you choose? That's where the work comes in. I found that you can only succeed by trying. I was glad to have the chance to search and discover in a different direction than I usually do, even though it was a challenge.

3. How is this way of working reflected in the content of your show?

Briana Gruici: I think it's pretty clear that the show keeps the traces of how it was made. The process started as a devised one, where everyone came with ideas, but along the way it hybridized and became more hierarchical. We split up quite a bit into little fiefdoms, and each of us took ownership of a direction or a type of material, which I think still comes through in the show. Maybe this division ended up being too clearly defined, and it shows, because everyone worked in their own direction, and then everything got negotiated based on "what the collective wanted". At the same time, this way of working is also reflected in how each person who took part in settling on the theme resonates with it.
In theory, we started from a series of interviews, and fragments from each of us show up in the text, alongside pieces from our discussions and dictées. It's hard for me to say exactly what I can identify as coming from me, but I know it's there. Or at least, I hope so. Still, I think what shows through the most is the difficulty of a collective process. It's very hard to make decisions among nine people, and it takes forever. Many times I had the impression we spent more time discussing how to decide than actually deciding. That's why we ended up choosing the hybrid version. For me there was also quite a big fear of taking on too direct an authority role. I think the others felt that too, in one form or another, so we always preferred to push things toward consensus. Sometimes it was real consensus, other times maybe it was just the answer of exhaustion after hours and hours of debate. But even that is part of the show. The fact that it was built from so many voices, contradictions and compromises, not from a single perspective, also created the starting point for everything.

Daria Nicu: Even though the play was written entirely by our playwright, he took all our discussions into account, and parts from each of us are subtly woven into the scenes presented. We had a series of dictées, working on different themes, before settling on the one we kept. For about two weeks we thought the theme we wanted to work with was "from the end of my world to the end of our world". I think that's the one we worked on the most, looking for a shared form of expression. We played a lot with dictées, improvisations, discussions, and we centralized everything online so we could have access anytime to everything each of us had thought about any given exercise. Then we gradually moved away from that theme and chose the current one. Even the show's current theme was voted on and chosen by everyone. It's a little funny that in the end the other themes we'd juggled with along the way also got folded in. Of course they're not the main ones, but traces of them can be found in the show's 6 tableaux.

Duncan Mckee: The process went like any other: with ups and downs. Still, for me at least, the final result will be a universe made up of the elements born over the time we spent together, both at work and outside the workspace. It's not about a balance between positive and negative, but rather an accumulation of memories. Of course, the text doesn't talk about that, it's not something you'll see on stage, but that's how I see the result, that's what it means to me, and I'm glad it's that way.

4. What do you want/expect from meeting the audience?

Andrei Tcaciuc: Honestly, I'm very curious to see how the audience will react to this show. In these two months we've built a lot together, and now I'm looking forward to the moment when what we've worked on reaches people and we get to see how it's received. Of course, I want everything to turn out as well as possible and for the audience to resonate with what we've created. For me, as a choreographer, it's important to feel that the energy, emotion and message we tried to convey through movement reach the spectators. But we'll really find that out once we get the audience's feedback.

Daria Nicu: It's very hard for me to answer this question right now, a week before the premiere. I feel that every day brings a new key to the show, so every day feels extremely different from the one before. I think once we finally lock things down the answer will become clear to me too. But generally speaking, I'm always curious what the audience understands, whether the team's intentions came across to them, and what new interpretations can be found in the same material. Naturally, when you have 50-plus pairs of eyes, everyone sees and perceives according to their own subjective universe. I'm always intrigued trying to understand each spectator's subjectivity. Besides that, I love feedback from spectators. It helps me enormously to grow and refine my craft too.

Dragoș Stoenescu: I think meeting the audience should go beyond the actual time of the show. I'm not necessarily interested in spectators leaving with a shared conclusion or in them decoding our intentions exactly, but rather in the show leaving a trace in each of them, a question, an image, maybe even a form of discomfort that keeps working. The conversation afterwards can then become a space where we discover together what remained, what changed, and what new meanings the show took on.

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

Project carried out with the support of the Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Local Council.

Cluj County Council - Main Partner.