ESIPUHE: Radical Beings. Five New Plays from “the Wild East of Europe”

Text: Cristina Modreanu 

Photo: Elise Wilk, A Bordeniau

”In Eastern Europe theatre is always deeply affected by the political field. Acting in opposition to that, some artists are still trying to avoid political subjects, offering instead to the audience elaborate performative means of escaping reality.”

Do you know the historical photo in which Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin appear so familiar to each other sitting on chairs, relaxed and smiling, while some other men in uniforms stand beside them looking very preoccupied? It was taken on the occasion of Yalta Conference in 1945 when, in order to end of WWII, the superpowers decided to portion a part of the world and gifted each other with countries and nations. Ever since I first saw it in my history textbook I have been angered by their happy smiley faces. One can eventually admit there was no better solution than the one they concocted, but why smiling like this on such a tragic moment? Looking back, their smile looks even more obscene given the millions of lives destroyed by that decision in the part of the world where I was born.  

The only historical play in the anthology takes us back three generations from 1944 to 2006, covering the most eventful time span of the 20th century in Central and Eastern Europe. It explains, via life stories, the geopolitical conundrum – how can people of different ethnicities and religions live together under common political pressure when forced to do it? – which started major conflicts such as the Second World War, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Balkan wars. It can also explain some of the reasons for the newest armed conflict in the area, the war Russia opened against Ukraine, the nut old superpowers are trying to crack most recently. Something new to fight over after the end of the Cold War and in the aftermath of what some believe to be the beginning of the end for the European Union, namely Brexit.  

The seeds of some of these conflicts and their effects on people’s lives appear in all the plays selected for this volume in various forms – comedy, drama, Brechtian lessons, monologue – a proof that theatre is continuously mirroring real life, trying to make sense of it in creative ways. A hard nut to crack.  

The author of Disappearing, Elise Wilk, is part of a new wave of Romanian playwrights who made fierce steps towards blending documentary theatre – which used to be the chosen theatre form of young theatre makers in the first years of this century – with fiction. In trying to advance their creativity, Wilke, alongside other Romanian peers, such as Peca Ștefan (working with director Ana Mărgineanu), Alexandra Badea (a global artist, playwright and director, born in Romania but living in Paris), Leta Popescu (a director writing her own pieces or creating text-collages based on contemporary writers’ works), or playwright Alexandra Felseghi (working with director Adina Lazăr) moved toward what Felseghi and Lazăr coined as ”documented theatre” instead of “documentary theatre”. They always start from real facts and events: the history of a neighbourhood for the immersive theatre trilogy The Parallel City of Peca and Mărgineanu, interviews with teenagers, which Badea used for her most recent piece, The One who Observes the World presented this year in Avignon festival, or from the case of a young girl whose call for help was ignored by the police force and whose death made the news and traumatized the entire nation, inspiring Felseghi and Lazăr to create a powerful production titled Don’t keep the line busy. But they are much more inventive in creating new forms to deliver their message.  

The final format is not usually visible in the texts, but rather in the performances, which is a result of collective work. But in the case of the plays chosen for this anthology the intended formal innovation is one of the aspects to be admired. More than this, the selection reflects the main tendencies in the theatre from Central and Eastern Europe, even if they can be still perceived as marginal in their respective theatre contexts, as they are usually staged in small theatres and produced by independent companies. Nevertheless, as tendencies usually work, these plays eventually make their way towards mainstream stages, which is what started to happen finally after the pandemic in Romania with productions signed by women theatre makers like Alexandra Badea (main stage National Theatre in Bucharest with her piece Exile) or Adina Lazăr and Alexandra Felseghi (main stage National Theatre in Cluj with Don’t keep the line busy). The most interesting and relevant part of Romanian theatre today is generated by these collaborations between contemporary playwrights and directors, working collectively to refine their productions mirroring a fast-changing reality.  

In Eastern Europe theatre is always deeply affected by the political field. Acting in opposition to that, some artists are still trying to avoid political subjects, offering instead to the audience elaborate performative means of escaping reality. They happily continue the escapist behaviour which gave them a chance to breathe under totalitarian regimes and they are financed to do so by big public institutions, such as national theatres. Meanwhile, the new generations of theatre makers understood early on that one cannot avoid to be part of the political conversation, as everything is politicized, one way or another. They seem to be on the right part of history.  

It must be said that, beyond the current war in Ukraine, in this part of the world – not unlike in the Western world – there is another open front, an ideological one, where the right and the left confront each other, on the background of a dangerous rise of the right movements registered in many European countries. There are still famous theatre makers playing ”the nationalistic card”, like the famous Latvian director Alvis Hermanis (manager of New Riga Theatre, Latvia) with his even more famous discourse against what he believes to be “the lax immigration politics” in Western European countries. But the work of the newest generation of theatre-makers is defined by a more leftist view of the world. The issues they debate may sometimes be similar, but the approach and the conclusions are opposite.  

Immigration

Immigration is a huge theme, since millions of people from Eastern European countries have left their families to go work in Western countries. They are forced to take care of foreign families while deserting their own, in the hope they can provide a better life for those left behind. This ongoing tragedy enrages playwrights such as Moldavian Nicoleta Esinencu who made a name for herself by hating Europe: her first successful monologue, translated in many languages and played on European and international stages was titled Fuck you, eu.ro.pa! (2005), echoing the more recent similar exhortation coming from a US official and causing a political scandal. From the same vein come her newer plays, such as the ironically titled Symphony of Progress, a co-production of teatru-spalatorie from Chișinău and HAU Hebbel am Ufer from Berlin. A collective creation of the Moldavian theatre group led by Esinencu, performed in Moldavian, Romanian, Russian and English, Symphony of Progress contests the idyllic idea of progress as promoted by Western societies, arguing that this is a cover for inequalities and exploitation of the East by the West.  

Like in other countries from the region, the most vocal Moldavian theatre makers are those who have benefited over time from the exchanges with the other European countries, such as, beside Esinencu, director Mihai Fusu, playwright Luminița Țîcu (creator of the project Casa M, staging theatre productions in prison houses), or director Slava Sambriș (who studied directing in Bucharest and since 2020 is the manager of Luceafărul Theatre in Chișinău, the capital of Moldavia). They all try to decentralize the theatre life which is over all concentrated in Chișinău, and to move on from big classical text-based productions, still in fashion at the National Theatre “Mihai Eminescu”, as in all national theatres in the region.  

The monologue by Esinencu published in this book, titled Intubated Europe is breathing the same tireless frustration as her earlier plays towards this fragile construct – Europe – criticized more and more after 2000 by the radical left-wing intellectuals.  

The critique of the backward view rejecting western values and regulations imposed on different nations from the former Soviet Bloc, as an effect of the process of joining the EU, is the subject of another play in this book, a play with a long title whose author refused to sign his/her name and left it mid-process, or so he/she claims through the voices of anonymous actors. a play with four actors and some pigs and some cows and some horses and a prime minister and a milka cow and some local and international inspectors written by a Kosovar cynic, is a stage text coming from a country aspiring, like Ukraine or Moldavia, to be part of the European Union. For the sake of better informing the reader, perhaps this is the place to reveal the name of the “Kosovar cynic”, Jeton Neziraj, to whom the European Union Office in Kosovo handed the “European of Year” award in 2023. Together with his wife, director Blerta Neziraj, he created Qendra Multimedia and has organized in Priștina five editions of Kosovo. Theatre. Showcase. In the 2022 edition ten new productions included in the program were addressing themes such as living with the war trauma, what means to build a new world on the ruins of the old one in only one generation, the women status in Balkan traditional societies, the European aspirations of the new generation and the social responsibility of the older ones, as well as the always powerful debate “artistic creation and ethics”. The debates included in 2022 Kosovo Showcase were relevant for the current thinking of theatre makers in Kosovo: “In the debates moderated by guests from the international theatre, local creators voiced support for their connection with European theatre, they pleaded for the quality of the performative stage in Kosovo and their intentions to open up dialogue with artists from all countries of the former Yugoslavia.” 

Theatre is one of the few agora where critical thinking is still encouraged and controversial issues are still debated, on the background of the dangerous raising of a new wave of nationalism.  

Jeton Neziraj is one of the most prolific creators in the Balkan area, author of over 15 plays translated in many languages, who became a darling of European theatre with plays like The Sworn Virgin, confronting the traditional Albanian customs with Western values in the case of women who swear absolute chastity in order to gain independence and all the benefits males enjoy in this country, or Kosovo for Dummies, a tragi-comedy following the heroine Antigona in her attempt to emigrate to bureaucratic Swiss. Echoing his interest in the status of women in the Balkan countries, Neziray, “the Kosovar cynic”, auto ironically criticizes the feminist politics of European Union in the play included in this anthology. The absence of feminist politics is a strong issue, and unfortunately representative for the theatre in the still patriarchal societies from all former socialist countries of the Soviet Bloc. Here, the main characters are rarely female and the quota of female theatre-makers is still very low, especially in public funded institutions. Which is why, besides EU funding conditions to regulate this imbalance, the decision to include two openly feminist plays in this anthology is a fortunate one.  

The Bulgarian play Cinderellas Ltd. has two authors – Zdrava Kamenova and Gergana Dimitrova – and was written with help from researcher Anette Daubner. The play heartbreakingly features viewpoints of “the other white women”, who hasn’t benefited from three waves of feminism like her Western peers and has harboured frustration, self-loathing, repressed feelings and unfulfilled dreams. Cinderellas Ltd. covers the gap between East and West and creates a common ground for feminist thinking almost eighty years after the moment when two parts of Europe were split by three powerful smiling men. The play qualifies as a fierce, long overdue attempt at taking down the patriarchy….or at least dreaming to do so!  

It must be said that Bulgarian theatre has recently made a more radical turn towards contemporary, especially in the capital Sofia and in the city of Plovdiv. The number of small independent companies has raised, theatre makers recognized in the West, like director Galin Stoev, director of Centre National Dramatique in Toulouse, France, have come back to stage in their country and international creators are more welcome, as one can see in the program of International Theatre Festival “Varna Summer”. And still, feminists play are rather exceptions, not only in Bulgaria, but in the entire region, where the very word still stirs resounding suspicions.  

Feminist plays are rather exceptions, not only in Bulgaria, but in the entire region, where the very word still stirs resounding suspicions.  

The other feminist play in this anthology addresses one specific and very serious concern regarding women in Eastern European countries, namely the raising numbers of teen moms and teen abortions. Born in the former Yugoslavia, the author Tanja Šljivar wrote All adventurous women do having in mind small towns in this part of the world, where teenagers live in poverty, lacking basic resources and having no hope for the future. The plays’ subtitle, “a play about an attempt of an adventure in a small town” explains so much about it!  

While economies struggles and war are fought teenagers go on being teenagers and they voice their confusion stepping too early into adulthood and depression at the same time: “We’re happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time it’s miserable and magical uh oh I don’t know about you but I’m feeling 22, because we have all been Swifties for three and half years now and she is not just a singer to us, like Red is not just a color, like 1989 is not just a year.” 

1989 was clearly not just a year, one may say it was also a sentence for the unborn generations. Voicing the same concern, the play 98% the correct decision was staged in January 2022 in Youth Theatre in Piatra-Neamt, Romania, and it was received with public protest by local authorities – councilmen and church representatives – who criticized the choice of subject. While they prefer to avoid difficult discussions, the number of teen moms is still raising and theatre people seem to be more responsible than politics makers in this part of the world. 

It is a good thing that artists and intellectuals are not giving up: with Zagreb Subversive Festival (Croatia), Mladi Levi Festival in Ljubljana (Slovenia), Kosovo. Theatre. Showcase in Pristina (Kosovo), Piatra-Neamț Theatre Festival (Romania) and a constant range of theatre productions openly addressing controversial issues, artists in this part of the world manage to keep the conversation open, sometimes despite the immediate danger of losing funding or facing public attacks by offended politicians (Jeton Neziraj lost his position as artistic director of the National Theatre in Kosovo as a result of his pro-European positions, playwright director Gianina Cărbunariu has been attacked by the local press, politicians and church representatives for the social-engaged theatre she promotes as manager of Piatra-Neamț Youth Theatre in Romania). Theatre is one of the few agora where critical thinking is still encouraged and controversial issues are still debated, on the background of the dangerous raising of a new wave of nationalism.  

Intubated Europe

Nicoleta Esinencu’s poetic monologue Intubated Europe expresses a much more powerful anger that I’m feeling looking at these three men, smiling in the picture after signing away millions of lives. As anyone can see, there are a lot of reasons to generate this anger, and many of them are present in the plays in this anthology. To add even more on the list, I invoke David Schwartz, a Romanian theater-maker from the new generation involved in many projects echoing the same anger. He sums up the work done in the last twenty years by him and his peers: 

”However, the criticism of the system is evident through the accumulation, through the multitude of revolted performances, on subjects of the most diverse, both with a more general character and with very specific issues: structuring gender roles, sexual identity and oppression of LGBT + people, Roma status and systemic racism, the Romanian-Hungarian inter-ethnic relations, the persecution of the Jews and the Roma during the fascist period, slavery, bullying, body-shaming, the situation of refugees, the condition of the immigrant workers in Romania, the denunciation of the anti-abortion counselling, the exploitation of the multinational corporations, shows performed with and for incarcerated persons, elders who recount their experiences on stage and critically analyse the recent history, the condition of migrant women and the lives of children left at home, the situation of construction workers or the situation of independent artists. And the list can go on.” 

No matter what form it takes, starting from texts written collectively or by one author but after a process of team research, based on devised theatre methods or on Brechtian method, using verbatim dialogues or personal storytelling, implying realism or magical realism, often with a comic and/or self-ironic touch, funded by EU or involving zero budgets, the new theatre born in Eastern Europe in post socialist times is undoubted a special blend, coming from a lot of suffering which has generated what Esinencu calls ”radical beings”.  

There is no better ending than quoting her again:  

”i hate you with all my being /my radical being  

i hate you with all my heart /my illegal heart.”  

In the “Wild East of Europe”, theatre is a place where radical beings are still breed.  

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