Selma Dragos - A GenXer meets four GenZers in a dark room!

This summer we worked on the very first cont.rar productions, as part of the exciting "In Dialogue" project, implemented by Reactor with the wonderful goal of bringing together a fresh group of emerging young artists. Two fantastic devised creations, featuring two passionate artistic teams tackling brave and deeply relevant themes for today's society, are set to premiere this September in Cluj-Napoca!

The first show, Casio, has already made its grand debut to a wonderful audience on September 13 and 14, and is now happily preparing to tour the country. Selma Dragoș, who brings her creative vision as the playwright and stage director of the show, shares some cheerful insights about how the rehearsals unfolded.

You started the creative process for this show in a rather special setting compared to other Reactor projects, enjoying a series of wonderful workshops with the artistic teams. How was this first stage of work for you—both the engaging workshops and the exciting journey of creation and research with each unique team?

Selma Dragoș: For me, this setup, where a talented troupe of actors already has a theme and a passion to create a show and I get to be their guest, is the absolute dream premise for a less hierarchical and wonderfully flexible way of working. During the first two weeks in July, we got to know each other beautifully. Starting from the existing text, we had lively discussions about what they wanted to keep and what they envisioned for the show we were about to create. In those first meetings, I found myself joyfully oscillating between listening as an adult queer woman who accepted this about herself later in life—filled with admiration (and a touch of envy!) for these vibrant, colorful, and powerful young queer people—and as a mother who deeply understands what a parent feels when their child blossoms into an independent person with their own boundaries and dreams. It quickly became clear that the magical lens through which we would view the world in this show is love—in all its beautiful manifestations! I also felt a wonderful bond forming among us. We did playful writing exercises on the theme of love—first love, parental love (which exists even before we are born and which we cherish even when new loves enter our lives), first romantic love (a love we actively choose, not just one that happens to us), friendship, camaraderie, and the special love for brothers and sisters. I suggested conducting interviews with adult queer individuals who are no longer dependent on their parents. My cheerful hope was that, while financial dependence in youth can sometimes make open discussions a bit risky, once independence is achieved, a beautiful new relationship can blossom between parents and their queer children. I thought these interviews would infuse the material with a bright sense of hope. Little did I know… Călin, Ana, Ilinca, and Mara came back with deeply moving, bittersweet stories. We shed tears together listening to how those who loved each other so deeply in the early years can sometimes lose touch, even if a shadow of a relationship remains. This is where my connection to the process shifted for the first time. Normally, I would have taken the material and quickly written a summary to capture the first impression. But because we were in a collaborative workshop, I proposed free-writing exercises based on the interviews, with the fun rule: "write fast, in one breath, whatever feels most alive to you in this interview!" The responses of my four colleagues were so incredibly diverse that I was both thrilled and delightfully challenged. How on earth was I going to weave these four unique voices into one beautiful tapestry?

How did working together unfold, especially since you set out to build the artistic concept using collaborative, devised theatre methods? What wonderful challenges and joys came up, and how did your role evolve?

Selma Dragoș: The very first exciting challenge was that big question after a week of work: "How do I unify these four voices?" I felt it was my responsibility, wearing so many hats, to digest their writings and happily deliver a unifying framework like a creative Santa Claus! I even suggested two days without meetings to work on this, cozying up alone with my laptop.

What came out was quite nice, but it definitely carried a tone I recognized very well—my own! :) I felt a tiny bit silly, like a bit of an impostor, but I reassured myself that this is just how it feels when you shape material that isn't originally yours. We read it, we discussed it, and I felt a wonderful wave of trust from them. Then came the second turning point! The next day, Ilinca (I want to mention her name because her artistic "radar" is so wonderfully important!) mentioned that she felt a bit uneasy, almost as if she had betrayed someone's trust. We had two days of workshop left with Mihai Păcurar before taking a month-long break to start rehearsals. I felt incredibly relieved by Ilinca's honesty, then a little panicked, but then I happily remembered: I didn't need to be the single artist who blends everyone else's voices into one flat note. Instead, we are five distinct artists joyfully searching for a shared space where we can celebrate our wonderfully diverse perspectives on queer identity and the material itself!

After that eye-opening moment, I realized that my role in this collaborative setup was to be more of a gatherer than a hunter—to say a big "yes!" to suggestions for scenes, music, and text without demanding immediate justifications. It was all about trusting that everyone represents themselves beautifully through what they bring to the table, and if I didn't understand it right away, that was perfectly okay!

I used my role to gently nudge us towards putting together a rough run-through as early as possible, so that everyone could get a wonderful sense of the big picture. It was clearly the best way for us to make decisions we all believed in!

From a certain point on, we all felt beautifully "in sync." Anyone of us could instantly tell when something clicked perfectly. Trusting this collective intuition is a true act of love, and I really think that warmth shines through in the final show!

How does this collaborative approach reflect in the content of the shows and the themes you explore? What exciting discoveries did you make while working with these teams?

Selma Dragoș: The two-day workshop with Mihai Păcurar at the end of the first stage was pure bliss for our project! Having a moderator allowed me to be safely and happily puzzled alongside my younger colleagues, embracing that creative curiosity as our best tool. On the second day, I brought in an overhead projector, and Călin suggested using phones to shoot live video. We spent hours in the theater, playfully combining the retro projector images with live video projections on the white screen while Mara played awesome music. What started as a fun gathering turned into a magical scene of a mummy waking up! We all instantly felt that the style of our upcoming show would be this wonderful, high-energy stimulation of sights, sounds, and emotions—a world where anything can happen, but in the end, everything connects beautifully. I like to think of the show as "a GenX meets four GenZs in a dark room," and I am absolutely thrilled with how it turned out!

How do you think this show will be received by the audience, especially since you will be touring towns where theater access is limited, and the show is lovingly created with teenagers in mind?

Selma Dragoș: One of our favorite shared thoughts was: "we made the exact show we wished we could have seen when we were teenagers!" Of course, Călin, Ana, Ilinca, and Mara were teenagers much more recently! :) But I feel that even my teenage self, trying hard to fit in back in the '90s in a small provincial town, would have loved to see it—it would have warmed my heart. The bold theatrical language might have surprised me at first, and I might have gone home feeling energized by all that creative anarchy, but I would have remembered those lively scenes, the great lines, and the questions asked directly to the audience for months! Seeing these four young actors with so much love in their hearts would have made me feel a lot less out of place. :) I truly hope our teenage audience (16+) in the tour towns will embrace this vibrant, fast-paced show, connect deeply with it, and leave feeling wonderfully seen and understood!