David SchwartzAn Encounter with the Outcast – An Account of the underGround1 Performance in the Jiu Valley

ABSTRACT: The article approaches various stages in the history of the documentary theatre and community art project SubPământ – Valea Jiului după 1989 (UnderGround – The Jiu Valley after 1989), an interdisciplinary project of research, theatre and community self-representation workshops, coordinated by Mihaela Michailov and David Schwartz in 2011-2012. In the post-socialist period, both the actual, economic and social circumstances and the reflection in the public sphere of the industrial workers, of miners in particular, declined progressively. In this context, the project was aimed, on the one hand, at retrieving in the public discourse the life stories, the opinions and the perspectives of an excluded and oppressed social category – the mining communities, and, on the other hand, at contributing to the increase of self-esteem and dignity among the Jiu Valley inhabitants, among the miners in general, by making visible these stories and issues.

This study focuses on the experiences and the dynamics of the interactions between the artists and the Jiu Valley locals, during the tour of the documentary theatre performance underGround in the six mining town in the area. The article is aimed at describing in as much detail as possible these experiences, which are rather rare in the Romanian context (in most of the towns in the area, a theatrical play had not been staged since before 1989), as well as at analysing the results of these encounters, which provides the possibility to create a new type of participatory theatre developed organically together with local groups. Furthermore, the cumulated history of the experiences in the six towns, gives a minimum image of the socioeconomic situation in the Jiu Valley, an area marked by unemployment, depopulation and marginalisation, as well as an image of the consequences the radical change of the economic-political system had.

Keywords: Documentary Theatre, Politics, Anthropological Research

Part I: The underGround Performance – Stakes and Structure

underGround, a project of oral history theatre about the socioeconomic realities in the Jiu Valley area (initiated and coordinated by Mihaela Michailov and by me in 2012, as an extension to the research conducted in the summer of 2011 in the Jiu Valley), was planned to include several components – the creation of a theatrical performance based on the existing documentary materials; a series of representations in Bucharest, followed by debates with the audience, relating to the socioeconomic status of the mining zones in the post-socialist period; a tour with the performance and public debates in the 6 mining towns in the Jiu Valley. The stated purpose of the project was: “a change of the opinion and self-opinion on the Jiu Valley, an area that is perceived largely unfavourably because of the events in the 1990s” (Under Ground – Oral History Theatre, 2011); the objective was twofold: first, to change the Bucharest audience’s perception of the miners’ work and of the Jiu Valley communities; second, to increase the Jiu

1 underGround, production: O2G Association, 2012. Text: Mihaela Michailov; music: Bobo Burlăcianu; set design: Adrian Cristea; video: Vlad Petri; cast: Alice Monica Marinescu, Katia Pascariu, Alex Potocean, Andrei Șerban. Premiere: Spațiu de Artă Contemporană subRahova, Bucharest, May 2012.

Valley inhabitants’ self-esteem and to restore their dignity, via the promotion of their own accounts and perspectives.

The project as such would accept one compromise alone – the rehearsals and the premiere would take place in Bucharest, because the available funding did not allow the payment of the rehearsals premises, the accommodation and meals in the Jiu Valley for a 9-member team, during the rehearsals. Thus, we decided to organise a new phase of research, which had to include the actors and the scenographer too, a phase that would take place close to the beginning of the rehearsals.

We obtained funding from the National Cultural Fund Administration for this project, but we received only two thirds of the required amount; this was why we had to cut some expenses, which had a direct effect on the impact of the project. The text was created by Mihaela Michailov, starting from the idea of a hypothetical Museum of the Jiu Valley and of mining, where four local guides introduce us to the personal accounts shared by various inhabitants of the area. The idea of the museum has a twice ironic connotation – first of all because it sends to the stillness (akin to the immobility of a wax museum) of the mining zone and of its people, treated by the Romanian public sphere as some sort of dinosaurs of the socialist period; second, because it is a direct reference to the idea of mining as tourist attraction – an obviously ridiculous and phantasmal notion (how could the 100 thousand inhabitants of the Jiu Valley earn anything from tourism in a barely accessible area that lacks consistent tourist attractions?) promoted, however, by at least three local mayors, in the interviews we made for research purposes. In this fictional museum, various people of different ages and of different social backgrounds (mineworkers, mine rescuers, pensioners, local entrepreneurs, mine security guards, women who earn their living by stealing coal from the mine, leaders of the 1977 strike) tell their personal histories and sing mining songs. The entire scenario (and performance) ends with a collective history of the children of Petrila, who “tell” their town and state their opinions on what the future holds.

Both the personal accounts and the children’s accounts and songs rely exclusively on the

researched material. The texts have been transcribed word by word, according to the verbatim method. The songs were gathered from the interviewees or from selections of mining folklore and then readapted for the stage.

The rehearsals and the first 6 performances of the project took place in Bucharest, at the Contemporary Art Space subRahova (today closed). The premiere of the performance was in May 2012.

Part II. The experience of the tour in the Jiu Valley.

In 2012, we had three smaller tours with the performance, one in the Jiu Valley, one in the industrial towns in the Hațeg area, and the third in the former mining towns in the Baia-Mare basin. All the tours were financially supported by the National Cultural Fund Administration2 and the audience had free access to the performance.

2 Owing to two winning projects during the two sessions of the national biannual competition: UnderGround. Oral History Theatre and UnderGround – A Travelling Museum.

The first underGround tour took place at the beginning of the summer of 2012, just after the Bucharest premiere, in the six mining towns in the Jiu Valley, most of which had also been the focus of previous research and workshops – Petrila, Petroșani, Aninoasa, Lupeni, Vulcan, and Uricani. For financial reasons (the National Cultural Fund Administration project did not provide for all the expenses), we decided to perform all the shows on consecutive days, in one week. In the period of research with the actors (April 2012) we had contacted some representatives of the local authorities, for the organisation of and the conditions in which the performances would take place. They included local community centres (Petrila, Uricani), schools (Aninoasa, Lupeni), the Union Cultural Centre (Vulcan) and the Municipal Theatre (Petroșani).

Because of the limited budget, we could not send a representative to deal specifically with the promotion of the events in the week before the tour. Another unfortunate coincidence was that the tour overlapped the period immediately following the local elections, when the town hall staff was on a break or was reconfiguring. Thus, the event promotion occurred on site and with help from the local partners, who at times were more active (in Petrila or Aninoasa, where we also had some closer contacts), other times were completely absent, such as in Lupeni. We promoted the performance both by posters and leaflets – in schools, at the town halls, at the pensioners’ clubs, at the mines that were still active and at the mine site mess halls, and in the street, in the public squares, or from man to man. The entire project team took part in the promotion. One of the main problems we had, starting with the dissemination of the promotional materials, was the distrust and the confusion of most of the people. They would repeat their questions, they said they were not interested in the event, that “it wasn’t for them” or they said they could send their children. At a point, in a pub, a miner approached one of the actors: “what do you know about being a mineworker? You’ve been there to see what it’s like?” The actor replied he had been in the mine and that was where an entire discussion began. But those miners did not come to the show. By and large, we could note two aspects since the first interactions of this kind. First of all, the idea most of the people had that theatre was out of their league or that it was something obscure, refined, something for either the elites or the children. Second, there was a fundamental doubt that a group of young Bucharest artists could represent the miners’ situation and problems in a valid manner with which the locals might identify. Finally, most of the younger residents did not have a specific insight into the theatrical experience, given that, with the exception of Petroșani and, to some extent, Petrila, the other towns had not seen the staging of a play for adults since before 1989.

Apart from this general mood, felt in all the six towns, the six experiences were completely different, depending on our personal relationships in the communities, on the degree of involvement from the authorities and on the location and the specificity of the performance stage. For this reason, I will try to approach them separately and chronologically.

a) The theory of recognition - Petrila.

We scheduled the first performance in Petrila, where we had the largest number of acquaintances and contacts and where we relied on help for the promotion of our efforts both from the group of the “I.D. Sîrbu” Memorial House and from the mine union. In fact, during the

last telephone conversation we had had, the union leader had ensured us the “hall will be packed”.

The performance took place in the town cultural centre, which had been reconditioned recently and rather poorly with European funds. Apart from the technical issues (very poor acoustics, natural lighting on the stage), there were other perturbing factors. First of all, the spectators were fewer than expected (approximately 100 people in a 300-seat hall), and many of the participants were children. Second, naturally, children talked, moved, commented throughout the performance. The most powerful moment was by far the final scene of the show, where children talk about everyday life in Petrila and try to envisage its future. All the children who had attended the self-representation workshop3 were there, with their schoolmates, teachers and, here and there, their parents.

Thus, the reactions were very strong, laughter, yelling and comments were stirred by the natural process of recognition. Nevertheless, overall, the number of adults was considerably smaller than we had anticipated and among them there were even fewer active miners. Generally, the adult audience included local intellectuals and pensioners. Furthermore, some of the adults whose histories were approached by the performance were also in the audience. The discussion that took place afterwards, which, in theory, should have focused on the local socioeconomic issues, shifted rather abruptly to the artists’ professional merits, because people were amazed at how they could recognise their stories, their phrases, language, and even relatives and friends in the performance. Obviously, from the viewpoint of the fidelity of retrieving the locals’ accounts and perspectives, the performance was a success and all the other representations in the former mining-industrial areas would confirm the same ideas.

Nonetheless, ever since this first performance, we had come across the main issue that would intensify, at least during the first tour – the local adult audience’s apathy and lack of interest in such a “cultural offer”. Indeed, when they came to see the performance, most of the people were deeply impressed with what they could see, and the play prompted their involvement in discussions, debates and in the description of their own situations and stories. Nevertheless, the difficulty we encountered was in fact the mobilisation of people to come to see the performance. While in Petrila the number of the adults was relatively satisfactory (more than 50 people), in the other towns they would be fewer and fewer.

b) The after-performance debate in the performance - Vulcan.

Vulcan is a fairly large town, the second largest town in the Jiu Valley, after Petroșani, with more than 24 thousand people4, where one of the initial mines is still active; hence, our tour was maximally interested in it. Regarding the promotion of the performance, apart from the local radio and TV instruments, we relied on support from the town hall and from the staff of the cultural centre, as well as on the advertising undertaken by the team of actors and actresses – in

3 Carried out in 2011, during our research for the performance, by Mihaela Michailov (dramaturge), by Vlad Petri (photographer and operator), and by me.

4 According to the 2011 census. Data available at http://www.recensamantromania.ro/rezultate-2/ (accessed on March, 2014).

the street, in the central square, from man to man. In Vulcan, the gap between the rich minority of the town, very well linked with the political networks, and the other people – poor and hopeless, was perhaps more obvious than anywhere else in the Jiu Valley. These striking divergences can be seen downtown, where, in squares, on tile structures, there is a number of idle display panels, while in the central square literally tens of people sit on benches, day after day after day, because they don’t have anything to work.

But the starkest contrast is the one between the town hall building, restored with European funds (just like the street that boasts squares and plasma display panels), and the Union Cultural Centre with the adjoining area. The town hall is actually gleaming through glass walls, marble and tile structure, exotic plants, an aseptic and utterly unfriendly space, which makes one think it was designed specifically to intimidate the poorly clad people who wait in front of closed doors to solve their administrative problems. On the other hand, the Cultural Centre, which is still owned by the mining union, hence cannot be restored from European funds, is situated in an obviously poor area, upon approaching a neighbourhood inhabited mostly by Roma people. It is seated in a former casino, reconverted in the socialist era; it is unrestored, unheated, many of the seats have been destroyed or pulled out, the stage floor is broken, there aren’t any floodlights or sound systems5. It is paradoxical, however, that this 400-seat, fully crumbling hall, has perfect acoustics, as opposed to the newly renovated Petrila hall, where a performance could barely be organised. It is obvious that the space is (was) quasi-unused, with the exception of union parties on holidays and, occasionally, children’s festivities.

Since the visiting of the hall and the prior discussions with the cultural centre consultant (a pensioner who worked half-time), and given the previous day experience, our hopes were rather low as to the number of spectators. In the end, we began with a longer than 30-minute delay, and with an audience of almost 50 people, many of them children, most of them Roma, as well as poor non-Roma people the consultant had asked to come. People went in and out during the performance, there was someone who even told us she would return after putting the children to bed; other people were having conversations, phones rang, music could be heard, in a context radically different from anything we had seen before, Petrila included.

In this context, the actors had the most difficult task; they had to readapt the show completely, from the acting style (which became exaggerated and a lot more direct, relying on permanent communication with the audience) to the management of the audience’s interventions and reactions and the condensation of entire fragments from the performance, which were completely irrelevant for the spectators. On the one hand, the structure of monologues interrupted by the frame of the narrator-guides and by songs turned out to be a very fortunate solution of popular theatre, to which the audience could relate. On the other hand, the monologues were too long and too static, particularly for an audience that included ultra-precarious and marginal people, rather uninterested in the miners’ problems. Thus, in order to get their attention, on the one hand, the actors restaged live the entire dramaturgic structure of the play, and, on the other hand, they replaced the convention of the performance, where they re-enacted a filmed interview, with a convention closer to the stand-up comedy or to the fair, where a narrator tells directly to the audience various stories. In retrospect, I think that somehow, with

5 This was the 2012 state of things. I have no knowledge of any subsequent potential improvement.

that performance, the team of actors passed brilliantly an extremely difficult acting exam. Andrei Șerban, one of the actors, summed up that experience:

“We could see the audience react directly; they would complete the texts, recognise characters and talk in a loud voice. The fact that they recognized their stories stirred them, they felt the need to tell their accounts, too. There was no boundary between the stage and the audience; to them, this was not a performance, this was an open discussion” (Sociu, 2013)

Regarding “recognition”, as perhaps expected, the most successful scene was that where a mine guard and a coal and iron “thief” recount, in parallel, the dynamics of the fight for the materials at the surface of the mine. These references were clearly the most familiar to the people in the audience, joined by the perspective of the Roma ethnic woman and the associated discussion on the absence of jobs, which pushes people to rely on the iron and coal taken from the mine structures. Starting from the beginning of the scene, laughter and approving murmur (“yes, that’s true!”) could be heard; most of the times, some people added accounts of their own similar experiences and, at a point in time, a man, aged approximately 40, engaged in an open debate with the actor Alex Potocean, who was in the role of the guard, and tried to explain directly the necessity that pushes people toward stealing. Alex understood quickly the circumstances, then adjusted the conversation and agreed with his interlocutor, without, however, withdrawing from character. Later, the man also asked for a song:

“He stopped me during the monologue and asked me to sing. These things can be quite uncomfortable, but you must find a way to manage them. You just cannot tell the man to shut up. He, too, is to be integrated in the performance, he, too, must understand what is happening”. (Sociu, 2013)

What the actors thought (and felt) was uncomfortable in a first phase was seen, from the outside, as one of the very few situations of actual, participatory communication between the artists and the audience. The audience awakens, no longer obeys the rules set up by the artists, takes active part in the reshaping or the undermining of these rules, and contributes creatively to the resulting performance-debate. This was how we tried out Boal’s forum theatre scenario, however without the integrating frame; theatre that sprang live, directly, from the meeting between actors and an open audience who does not know and, for this reason, ignores all the rules of the middle-class theatre. Mihaela Michailov looks at our experience in Vulcan and in other Jiu Valley towns in a similar way:

“The partaking spectator is no longer constrained socio-culturally, which could trigger a conformist and obedient behaviour and make him act in a theatre hall just as any other spectator in a theatre hall. On the contrary, this type of spectator looks at himself and looks at his fellows during the show rather than after it, actually living within the performed events” (Michailov, 2013)

We did not manage to organize the debate after the performance in Vulcan (after the performance ended, everybody left the hall as if they had been at the movies), but, as noted by

Mihaela, the spectators’ interventions and participation practically shifted the after-show within the show.

c) The children’s show – Uricani.

Uricani is one of the poorest towns in the Jiu Valley; it has only one partially operating mine that will be closed in the following years (until 2018); a large number of adults have left the town (between the 2001 census and the 2011 one the town lost more than 1000 inhabitants, i.e. nearly 15% of the total number of people). The cultural centre is downtown; it is managed by the mayor’s office and at the time of our tour it was going to be restored. The consultant was a young and very helpful teacher, who said would bring as many spectators as possible. And, in fact, at the beginning of the performance, more than half of the hall was occupied (almost two hundred people, the largest audience in all the towns). However, more than one hundred of them were primary and middle school children, 70-80 were adolescents and at most ten were adults. When the actors turned on the lighting on the stage, they found it impossible to begin the performance because of the noise, the whistles, the yelling, the applause, the commotion.

Many of the children were fidgeting, running, yelling, the older ones rustling bags of chips or corn-puff snacks, teenagers chatted or were on the phone, unaware that the show could not begin. Again, the dramaturgic configuration had to be changed completely, Andrei Șerban stood up and started to talk directly to the children, trying to cover their noise, explained that was a stage play, asked them if they were interested in seeing it and told them they’d have to keep minimally silent, if they wanted to see it. Everybody said they wanted to see the performance, tried to keep quiet, but rather unsuccessfully.

Once again, the actors changed the show on the spot, they abridged it massively; they delivered their monologues while standing up, in an attempt to be heard amidst the noises. We noted that in the hall, apart from the very noisy majority, there were some tens of children who were very interested in the entire performance, undoubtedly captivated by the experience of meeting living actors, actors on stage, rather than by the contents of the text. Nevertheless, everything changed radically with the last scene, the scene of the children’s accounts. The children began all of a sudden to relate personally to the events on the stage, to follow all the replies, to comment on them and respond in real time. Actress Alice Monica Marinescu tells how she saw it from the stage:

“The end was very touching. There’s a scene where we act children’s role and at that point everyone started shouting they too had parents working abroad, in Spain or in Italy. And there was another point where we asked what the future would look like. And they all [the children] yelled: Nasty! Nasty!! Ugly! Ugly!!” (Sociu, 2013)

Again at the end, there was another touching moment, when one of the child-characters on the stage asked: “Where abroad would you like to go?” Tens of children answered immediately, “Spain!”, “Italy!”, “Germany!”, “America!” etc. The final scene of the performance in Uricani is very significant from two viewpoints. On the one hand, it provides an exemplary understanding of the entire local socio-economic background. On the other hand, it is a lesson on the kind of play we could have performed there, which would have had, perhaps, a

greater impact than the play planned in Bucharest. If we had researched the circumstances more profoundly, we could have built a 30 or 40-minute version of the children’s scene in the performance, on which we could have developed an entire situation of participatory theatre.

At the end, we had an informal conversation with the few adult spectators, who were

impressed by the direction and by the message of the play, despite the perception overly contracted by the context. At the third representation of the play in the Jiu Valley, the miners’ absence was already becoming more and more obvious; I am not talking only about the audience, I am talking about the Jiu Valley in general6.

d) The guards’ show – Lupeni.

The most atypical, in a way, performance of the entire tour was in Lupeni, the third largest town in the Jiu Valley, a symbol of the miners’ resistance, of the 1929 and 1977 strikes, where one of the mines is still operational. Given these aspects and the fact that I talked personally with a mine union head who, at least at discourse level, was very cooperative, there were some possibilities we could organise a performance attended by a larger number of miners. The mayor’s office, however, did not cooperate at all, gave us the only available space – a classroom, and did not participate in any way in the organisation or the promotion of the performance. Another ill-boding coincidence was that the time of the performance coincided with an open air circus show. We hoped our disadvantage would be recovered by the fact the access to the performance was free.

In the end, the audience included only 7 or 8 people – a few teachers and a group of security guards, still active or retired, accompanied by their girlfriends or wives, and the school guard, who had to attend because of the job description. This was the performance that came closest to the Bucharest performances, in a small, intimate representation area, without any stage construction, in front of an adult, albeit very thin audience who watched the entire performance of the play.

At the end of the representation, we organised the after-show debate in a nearby sidewalk restaurant, over a pint of beer; we discussed the history of the Jiu Valley, we talked about the closing of the mines, the reconversion of the miners in guards and bodyguards (two of the spectators had worked in the mine) and about the local social-economic situation. As expected, for them, too, the most important scene was the one with the parallel account of the mine guard and of the coal “stealing” woman. Again, the guards confirmed what the character said, the fact that they understood those who stole coal and iron and that all these took place in perfect complicity within the community, of some groups of poor and desperate people who find their own ways of mutual aid, taking back on their own what they think is rightfully theirs. Another very important aspect we discussed was the absence of the spectators; they all confirmed it is very difficult to have people see theatre performances, because there is no longer a practice of going to the theatre, but mostly because regular people think (and one could hardly contradict them) that theatre in general is concerned with an intellectual and financial elite rather than with

6 While in 1989, in the Jiu Valley, 45,000 miners were employed, in 2012, only 5000 were still employed, which is less the 5% of the total number of inhabitants of the Jiu Valley.

them. The informal discussion ended with an exchange of contact data and with the promise we would see one another again; practically, a delayed smaller phase of the research process.

e) The rerun of the stories - Aninoasa.

Aninoasa is the smallest locality in the Jiu Valley, with little over four thousand inhabitants and the only town where there is no operating mine. The town is excessively deteriorated and poor, there is no business unit with the exception of two or three vending stalls and several second-hand stores; even the pubs are closed, because they don’t have clients. One of the strategies the town authorities had found for the control of the unemployment issue was to employ, in turns, some of the inhabitants as janitors at the town hall, three months each, by rotation. Furthermore, after Petrila, Aninoasa is the town where we had spent the longest time for research. We performed the show at the town’s primary school, in a classroom, because the cultural centre was rather derelict and about to be renovated. With the help of the school principal and of our acquaintances, we gathered nearly 50 spectators and thus had a full classroom.

There were many children, teenagers and young men, as well as two elderly people, retired miners, whose stories are told in the play. The two people – a former mine rescuer who tells the story of the harshness of his job, as well as of the happy and rich past of the town; and a miner who had protested and was arrested/interrogated at the 1977 strike – were in the front row, one meter away from the actors who were telling their life stories; the entire performance focused on this type of dynamics. Practically, the actors were communicating to the young and adolescent audience the perspectives and the opinions of the two elderly people. Andrei Șerban:

“These people did not have the opportunity to talk in front of and be heard by an audience. Our representation on the stage made them known to the others. Many of the young people did not know much about (...) the time before 1989, about the 1977 strike etc. The performance was also a source of information” (Sociu, 2013)

It seemed that, indeed, via the performance, the stories of the “village elders” (whom no one listened to any longer) were reaching the younger ones. The two pensioners reacted fundamentally differently to the performance, particularly at the encounter with their own stories. The mine rescuer, taken aback, watched the entire performance and was moved to tears by one of his own replies. The fact that, by an extraordinary chance, he wore a t-shirt identical to the one of his “character” on the stage7, and thus everyone in the room could recognize him, intensified the emotional element of the monologue. In any case, his text was very touching because it would talk about a happy Aninoasa that hosted parties, dances, celebrations, popular culture activities – a living, active town, strikingly different from the current bleak circumstances. The other retired miner reacted completely differently: he talked during the entire show, approving everything the other characters said or adding details, and thus undermining the convention of the actor-

7 The decision of our team, particularly of our choreographer Adrian Cristea, was to find costumes that would look as much as possible like the clothes worn by the people we had interviewed during our research. For this miner, the first coincidence was to find a nearly identical shirt, in the same colors with the one he wore at the interview. The second coincidence was that he came to see the performance in the same shirt he wore at the interview.

spectator relationship. Furthermore, he immediately acknowledged his “character”. Andrei Șerban, the actor who played his “role”, remembers what it looked like from the stage:

“He recognised his character after the first reply and he said, “That’s me!”. And he was sitting right in front of me. It was very touching. He recognised his story and wanted to add more to it. I had the feeling the text was somehow being written right there, right then, with input from both of us. At times, he would approve of what I said, “That’s true! True!” It is indeed a great responsibility. (...) I understood then my goal as an actor, and saw it’s not just about me, it’s about the other too.” (Sociu, 2013)

The man did more than intervene and approve; he recounted another episode of the strike and sang an additional song, which turned him into an integral part of the performance. This type of frankness, of direct relating to the show, ignoring any kind of spectator-actor boundary, was similar to what had happened in Vulcan.

“The spectator is no longer passive, he is not the individual who attends, culturally inoculated, a cultural reality to which he cannot relate; he intervenes and he changes, on the one hand, this reality and, on the other hand, those who are part of this reality. The subsequent question concerns (...) the extent to which a performance should lack self-centering in order to assimilate the existence of the people who intervene in its dynamics” (Michailov, 2013)

I believe the answer to Mihaela Michailov’s question depends primarily on the survival and aim of a theatre with and for such a social group. And these questions should be the starting point of any similar future project.

The discussion after the show was also very interesting for all those attending; we talked not only about the performance, but also and mostly about the potential solutions for the Jiu Valley. The two men tried to identify solutions that were perfectly doable and logical, but (or precisely because of it) perfectly opposing the ideas of the town authorities and the neo-liberal strategies required by the Euro-Atlantic structures. The proposals considered, on the one hand, the re-industrialisation of the area, and, on the other hand, an incentive to the keeping of livestock, especially sheep, which would fit the local background. All in all, the Aninoasa event was the most potent and most meaningful of the entire tour.

f) The undermining of the state theatre – Petroșani.

Although chronologically the Petroșani experience was at the middle of the tour, I am talking about it at the end because it took place on a completely different ground and very little can be said about the actual performance. The logistics, the organisation and the approach of the municipal theatre deserve, however, special attention, because it is extremely indicative of the situation and significance of local cultural institutions.

Ever since the funding of the project had been confirmed, we talked with the theatre management about the possibility of performing the show at the theatre; we were given guarantees everything would take place in optimum conditions and we were told particularly that

the theatre would not request rental pay. The director seemed unable to understand any idea of collaboration for a joint purpose, any idea relating to the necessity of a locally performed show about the circumstances and the problems in the Jiu Valley. Her approval of the performance at the theatre was a favour rather than a mutually beneficial partnership, a partnership important first of all for the audience of Petroșani.

Although the date and time of the show had been agreed on mutually three months ahead, in the week of the tour, when we wanted to make a simple call confirmation, we were told that we had to reschedule the representation from Friday to Thursday and from 19.00 hours to 17.00 hours. Of course, we had already promoted the former date and time. Finally, one evening before the performance, we found out that on that Thursday, at 18.00 hours, a children’s music and dance performance was scheduled in the theatre lobby. What followed was a process of negotiation, on site, with the musicians and with the children’s parents, to have their concert postponed after the end of our performance. Of course, the sudden change of the day and the completely inadequate hour (on a working day) limited the number of the spectators.

The performance as such took place without many incidents (with the exception of the constant pressure and agitation in the lobby), somehow following the pattern of a regular performance, with a focused and passive “theatre” audience that included approximately 50 people, mostly local students and regulars of the municipal theatre.

Nevertheless, the attitude and behaviour of the theatre management are indicative of the interest of a local cultural institution that, ideally, should be in the front rows of the debate on the acute issues of the area. But the I.D. Sîrbu Municipal Theatre, like many other theatres all over the country, schedules almost exclusively classical play performances, in which most of the local audience does not have any interest. The natural consequence of this approach is that the plays are performed five or six times and then are terminated because there is no audience, and the theatre team is perfectly resigned to this situation. At a slightly broader level, the behaviour of the municipal theatre is not different from that of most of the local state institutions which are focusing exclusively on a reproduction of the power positions of their own management and which are completely absent from the daily life of most of the citizens.

To conclude, beyond our logistic and organization mistakes, from which we would learn for our future tours, the experience of the first Jiu Valley tour was particularly important at a number of levels. First, for the team, at the level of the actual experience, beyond the theoretical support, it paved the way for a new understanding of participatory theatre, of the actor’s role and of the actor-spectator relationship, in the specific circumstances of the interaction with groups marginalised in/by the economic processes and completely excluded from the state funded cultural phenomenon which should be directed at them. Second, we obtained a more complex understanding of the type of exclusion and of the actual, real, human dimension of the consequences of the abandonment of a huge number of citizens by the state. Finally, for the team of actors, the tour was both an opportunity of experiences defining for their goal and role as artists, and a significant trigger in the comprehension of the political-economic dynamics.

References:Michailov, Mihaela (2013). Teatrul Spectatorului Indecent. Gazeta de Artă Politică no. 4, Bucharest.Sociu, Ionuț, Marius-Bogdan Tudor (2013). ”Am înțeles care e miza mea ca actor” – interviu cu echipa de actori de la subPământ. Gazeta de Artă Politică no. 4, Bucharest.

David Schwartz is a theatre director, he lives and works in Bucharest, He is interested in the theatre based on personal accounts and recent history, as well as in various forms of art as means of political emancipation. He has worked and still does with groups of institutionalised elders, people threatened by eviction, refugees. He is co-initiator of Gazeta de Artă Politică (artapolitica.ro) and a PhD student of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, with a study of the ethic and political aspects of the interaction between artists and various groups of outsiders/outcasts. davey_schwartz@yahoo.com