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ioana serota - on humanity and autofiction
We are slowly preparing for the premiere of the 11th edition of Drama 5, which will take place in November. The show “Păpădii și veronici” (Dandelions and Speedwells) is based on the text written by ioana serota during our residency and selected to be staged by director Elena Morar. While awaiting the premiere, we talked with Ioana about the process of working on this text.
What was the context of your artistic research for the text Păpădii și veronici?
ioana serota: During my master's degree in Playwriting, I had to write a monodrama. I started with thoughts of my grandmother, who was, in many ways, a soulmate to me. The narrator's initial voice was that of a granddaughter who wasn't me, but whose grandmother was my grandmother. And that's where I got quite tangled up, of course. This slipping between fiction and autofiction, without fully committing to either, all within a single voice, became too difficult to rein in. But there was a lot of emotion there, and I felt there was a character with a stronger will than mine who wanted to come into the light. And so it was. During the residency, under the guidance of Maria Manolescu and in discussions with colleagues, I managed to find a way to juggle biographical elements as well as purely fictional aspects, breaking down the monodrama into a story with multiple voices. Grandma remained, of course, that central character with whom I started, with a will of her own, who wanted to tell her story, merging the voices of several women I had interacted with over time. The fact that the character suffers from dementia also became the motivation for this "broken time machine" structure that takes Ana, the granddaughter, through several decades. Ana, like me, has many "whys" in life. We resolved some of them together, by better understanding the history of the women in our family.
You work in a field different from theater, but you also recently completed a master's degree in playwriting. You've had all kinds of experiences so far, your day-to-day work, but also the artistic experience in theater. What is your relationship with playwriting? How do you view this mix between medicine and theater? Do the two fields contaminate each other in any way?
i.s.: I chose medicine out of a kind of arrogance, I admit, but also because it seemed to me a field as "humanistic" as it gets. When we were told in the first classes of medical school that we were "scientists," shivers ran down my spine; I suddenly realized what I had gotten myself into. It took me about fifteen years to realize that it is, after all, a humanistic profession, or that you can very well look at it that way. My medical practice gives me daily life lessons and is an endless source of "inspirationality" and inspiration. I like writing about people, about the relationships between them, about fragility, miracle, and resilience, and I don't think any other profession would have given me the confidence to write about what I understand by humanity. Plus, it disciplined me, and I really needed that.
Of course, nerd that I am, I also needed formal training to sit down and write; I needed theory, bibliography, people from the artistic field around me, to gain the confidence to do this. And that's how I ended up in the Playwriting Master's program in Târgu Mureș, which gave me perhaps some of the finest two years of my life; I discovered a joy that I still search for whenever I sit down at the keyboard.
And I believe writing also makes me a better doctor, maybe not by the standards of a scientist, because it's clear that my time for medical study is increasingly limited, but humanly, I think I am a better doctor. I learned the value of stories, and the value of a story is not only when you listen to it, but also when you tell it. People need to tell their story; sometimes there is medical information useful to me in there, most of the time not, but a person who is listened to will leave the clinic more relieved, perhaps more confident, and certainly more compliant with recommendations. And the fact that I write about people forces me into a continuous exercise of empathy, and that is something you always have to take with you into the consultation room.
What do you hope to get out of the working process in this project?
i.s.: Since this is the first play of mine being staged, I wanted to be as close as possible to the process of building a show. And not to stand guard over my text, but for the joy of seeing my "fledgling" take flight thanks to the whole team involved.
And to become a better playwright, to better understand the needs of the stage, an area where I know I had room for improvement.
Do you view the role of the playwright differently after this experience?
i.s.: It wasn't very clear to me how the text makes the transition from my mind onto the stage and how I would perceive that. I already saw dramatic writing as an exercise in humility because the story that emerges on stage will not be mine alone, and secondly, because there is an intentional ephemerality in making theater. It's not like when you write a novel and you can imagine how it will be read and admired generations later. A dramatic text is written now, for now, to be staged as a team and received together with the audience. Your contribution as a playwright is significant, but you are just one cog in the machine. And there is something beautiful and alive in that.
In this specific case of the text "Păpădii și Veronici", where there is a lot of personal history, I aired a lot of dirty laundry, and, even worse, not so much my own, but my grandparents'. I was very anxious about my ability to detach myself from all this emotional weight. But I discovered with joy that when each member of the team brings their creative contribution, the story becomes something else. The grandmother in the play, with her universe, becomes a compilation that blends fragments of the actors' grandmothers, of the childhoods of Elena who directs, Bianca who designed the set, and Oana who creates the soundscape. The magic happens in the discussions beforehand, during rehearsals and, I hope, during the performance, when each spectator will project their own experience. The magic is no longer just in my head, and that is both a relief, because I can detach myself and enjoy the experience, and the fascination of witnessing something new.
How do you think your text / the message of this text will be received? I'm thinking about the fact that you bring women from different generations into dialogue, producing a certain discourse in relation to the present.
i.s.: I really don't know. But I'm not anxious about it; I have great faith in what I see already being built under Elena's baton. Now I am rather curious about what will happen when the final piece of the show is added—the audience. Whether they will resonate with the story too, whether new emotions will be created when the story passes through them as well.
And if I were to wish for something from this show, it would be to bring a thought of reconciliation. We live in times where it seems we find more reasons to distance ourselves from each other than to come together. And my play seeks to rebuild bridges between generations, acknowledging both the shortcomings of those before us and the positive things we received from them. I would like all of us to seek more of the aspects that bind us together than those that separate us.
Cultural project co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. 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 for how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding beneficiary.
Cultural project financed by the Ministry of Culture.
Project carried out with the support of the Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Local Council.
Cluj County Council - Main Partner.
