We are constantly thinking about the things we create, and we absolutely love sharing our thoughts with you! We truly believe that the beautiful bond between creators and theatergoers like you continues long after the final applause. We want you to discover what inspires us during our creative journeys, the exciting challenges we face, and how the magic of the shows you see comes to life. That is why our #blogreactor section is here to bring you lovely texts, collages, and heartfelt thoughts from the wonderful artists behind the scenes!

Diana Dragoș has been a collaborating director at Reactor right from its very first projects, experimenting back then with rearranging spaces in the show "The Whispered Empire of Turandot" or the roaming horror-theater show "The Monstrous Tale of the Virgin Who Waited for the Sun to Rise." We invite you to read below all about how her upcoming show, "Finally the End," premiering on September 29th in video format, came to life, alongside the exciting challenges of creating theater during a pandemic!

It was quite a complex journey, starting way back in February 2019 as a work in progress, and continuing in rather spread-out stages. With every fresh start, we felt like we were beautifully beginning all over again! Aside from having plenty of time to dream up new themes or test exciting approaches, events were happening all around us that mirrored our show's themes perfectly—and we simply couldn't ignore them. That’s why the recurring joke between me and Brîndușa was probably, "We’ll never finish!" or "It’s never-ending!" It was definitely an incredibly intense experience, both because of those amazing coincidences with reality and because it kept our creative spirits wonderfully alert and open. We had this almost constant feeling of being inside an infinite matryoshka doll, or carrying a beautifully stubborn, wild creative child who was taking their sweet time to be born. In all of this, our wonderful "Papa Reactor" played an essential role, always searching for every possible option and creative solution before ever giving up. That's why, looking back, I see it as such a privileged time—truly the most authentic period of creative searching and artistic experimentation I've ever had!

We set off from an intriguing theme proposed by Brîndușa: the inner workings and influence of mystical cults. We then expanded this concept to social tribes—groups of people gathered around ideas or causes in whose name they are ready to surrender their individual identities or personal views. Because we were fascinated by the deep human need to belong and the phenomenon of tribalism, rather than criticizing any specific real-world group, we decided to create a fictional cult! We drew inspiration from the Church of Euthanasia, an extreme environmentalist group founded by Chris Korda in the '90s, known for promoting anti-humanism through playful, Dadaist performance art. Seeing humans as the only species consciously destroying the planet, they viewed voluntary human withdrawal as the only way to heal ecological disasters. We happily chose this cult as our inspiration because it kept us away from being overly preachy, while beautifully introducing an ethical and existential layer to the social story.

In the next exciting phase, the talented scenographer Gábor Zsófi joined our adventure! She came to the rescue with a brilliant spatial concept that perfectly captured the isolation and claustrophobia of the characters—the exact anxieties that make joining a cult feel so appealing. Her design sparked wonderful new challenges for us! We experimented with two different performance styles before discovering a wonderfully Brechtian formula, coded in a way that lets us play with different layers of reality and open up the characters' inner worlds. Luckily, we worked with an exceptionally creative team of actors who are incredibly professional, receptive, and possess powerful stage presences. It truly felt like a dream-come-true, professional laboratory setting—a luxury I never thought I'd get to enjoy!

As scary as the lockdown period was—when we had to pause rehearsals without knowing if we would ever resume, and our fictional apocalypse seemed to be overtaken by a real one—the absolute greatest reward was the incredible generosity with which we kept working once restrictions lifted. Both our artistic team and producers poured their hearts into it! Creating art without knowing when or if we could share it made us all realize how wonderfully fragile our craft is, and we responded with deep care and dedication. I am so proud that, by trusting one another and believing in our work, we successfully built a beautifully complex show during a complex time. It is a piece designed to be felt and embraced, above all, as a shared experience!

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