class="">„Antisocial” – the dialogue challenge

„Antisocial”, directed by Bogdan Georgescu will set the ground for the platform „Manifest for Dialog”, launched by the 25^th National Theatre Festival.

As a continuation of the project centered on the young generation of the previous edition, the successful „West Side Story”, produced by the NTF, together with the Odeon Theatre, a „Manifest of a Generation”, the festival now draws even more attention on the new generation.

„Antisocial” was created starting from a text generated by techniques of Active Art, together with seven young actors, during a workshop initiated by the „Radu Stanca” National Theatre, Sibiu and the Theatre Department of the „Lucian Blaga” University in Sibiu.

An interview with Bogdan Georgescu about „Antisocial”, followed by the declarations of Luminiţa Puiuleţ, project manager, and the cast.

An article by Maria Sârbu

Bogdan Georgescu, your performance „Antisocial”, has a rather minor starting point- do you think it could set off a dispute about such a social process (phenomenon)?

Bogdan Georgescu: I have always had an interest in the stories of “irrelevant” people, often invisible within the society they are part of and essential contributors to. And yes, as with other projects, what we aim at most is to incite discussions, to make us question, analyze and finally reinvent ourselves.

Your experience as a community theatre maker has led you to pay attention to a highly commented upon episode that happened in a high school in Cluj- Napoca. How did you work with the young actors, recent graduates from high school themselves? How did your ideas materialize during the rehearsals?

I think attention to the world we are living in is a fundamental element of all theatre creators. Community theatre is an instrument, one of many. It helped that the actors were still close in time to their high school years, but I was more interested in the process of exploring their artistic identity and their relation to the world we live in.  We have first of all worked on becoming a team, on finding a common language. After that, all the other components came naturally.

What should this theatrical project draw our attention to?

To the new social realities, both in the online and in the real, every day world. The lack of dialogue, of confidence, the fear, frustration, pressure from the authority are challenges to discussion; „Antisocial” functions as a debate platform.

Were you convinced, from the very beginning, that the performance can be of interest to the community, in a different way than a piece of news made up by the mass- media, this aficionado of the extraordinary?

There is nothing special in the fact that some pupils run a saw on their teachers. Or that the education system at high school or university level is in a great quandary and can’t face the new realities. The mass- media make efforts to survive. The show is not about a mass- media event. It’s an analysis, from several points of view, with humor and distance, of one real life situation: a number of pupils have created a secret group on Facebook, where they were mocking about their teachers. One of the teachers succeeded to infiltrate into the group with the help of one of the youngsters and this was our situation. We are now in a moment when we have to work with people who have lived with internet since they were born, to which access to information is limited only to excess of quantity. The educational system cannot remain structured as it is, the condescending formula maestro- disciple being absolutely not functional. New realities demand new educational systems. In the online world, we all exist together, as equals. 

How should „Antisocial” be interpreted in the school environment? What reception would you wish for it, as long as the performance reveals hidden aspects, beyond the banal piece of news, distributed by the press?

It’s time for the education system to change. The important thing is to get into direct, honest discussion, without trying to save appearances that have anyhow been compromised very long ago.

Luminiţa Puiuleţ, project manager, describes the production process of „Antisocial”:

„Highschool / University # pupils / students / professors.

We all live in a world that we wish to make better!

How did we get here? Why did we get here? Questions, thoughts, answers…

Questions and answers all of us are seeking, pupils, students, professors! This is how we started this social project of the young master’s course acting students of the Sibiu theatre school, which became a manifest for dialogue.

My colleague, Claudia Domnicar, artistic consultant of the project, came up with the ideea of inviting Bogdan Georgescu to work with the young actors of the school in Sibiu. At first, Bogdan Georgescu made a series of workshops- interviews with each one of the actors. Eight participants, seven actors and an author, were involved in this project. At the time when we started, we read about that incident at the „Gheorghe Şincai” High School in Cluj. The characters in our show are fictitious; they have been created separately, for each of the actors, according to their distinctive features. These characters speak about the thoughts, wishes, about the failures of our times.

We have been a team from the beginning: we have devised the set and costumes, the image of the performance all together. I think this also lead to creating an organic, balanced and responsible performance. After seeing the show, Constantin Chiriac, the general manager of the „Radu Stanca” theatre, said this performance is likely to become a true manifest for dialogue- and this became the name of the tour we are setting up for this year in 21 Romanian cities.

Let’s find a way to dialogue! Come to the most social performance of the young generation!”

Alexandra Şerban:

„The „Antisocial” laboratory is a very special one, since, paradoxically; it was created starting at a social incident. I feel very lucky to be one of those who can bring it to the public. We worked with a lot of devotion and affection, hoping we will be able to send a warning signal that would produce a change in the education system in our wonderful country.”

Paul Bondane:

„Even though I haven’t been in a similar situation in my years of high school, the characters sketched by the „Antisocial” team do perfectly match the features of my former teachers. When I think of my physics teacher, I rather remember his nickname “tumbler” than the formula e=mc²or other basic notions of this object. And this is true for many of my teachers, even though I was the typical high school pupil to care a lot about “fame and prestige”.  In high school, I met wonderful people, who, apart from the holy lesson planning, taught me how to look at things from different perspectives: „Thank you for the drama, I need it for my art”.

Yes, there are many details with resonance in my personal experience, but what frightens me is this detail we share: the atmosphere in which pupils are learning. An environment that “educates” through the means of censorship, competition and submission, in which social conscience is just a term you hear about in your psychology class. Our work on this project was a group of exercises that have actively introduced us into the action; we were in the situation of having to sustain our own point of view and not to take in an already existing text. The fact that we have included details of our personal lives came very naturally, based on the dialogue that Bogdan Georgescu started with us and that we would like to continue with other young people from around the country.”

Left to right: Alexandra Şerban, Paul Bondane, Cristian Timbuş, Maria Tomoiagă, Călin Mihail Roajdă, Anton Balint, Cristina Blaga

Cristian Timbuş:

„I have this sensation that this happens in all Romanian schools. There is this almost permanent influence. The teachers are all the same, it’s simply a well-known communist pattern; the teacher tries to impose on the pupil and not to understand him or her.

And about our process, I can only tell that this director has perfectly known how to lead his actors to a level of performance. He complements the actor, he doesn’t annul the actor- and this makes you want to go on with your profession.”

Maria Tomoiagă:

„It all began with a few interviews in which we talked about our hopes and our opinions about the world of today. At first, I didn’t know what the endeavors of this project will be and what direction it was heading to, I didn’t know what the theme or method will be…after that we did some improvisation to familiarize with our working styles, as we were coming from different acting teachers and years of studies. To keep it brief, I didn’t even realize how much my personal life was involved- in the end this is the only way an actor can bring something new on stage, his or her subjective and authentic view. New situations arose during our improvisations. Then, when we had to sketch the characters of the teachers or of the parents, we started by questioning ourselves. Each one of us tried to relate to the situation in a different way every time…”

Călin Mihail Roajdă:

„I don’t think I was influenced by what I’ve been through in high school. I can’t remember having been through an expulsion situation. A maybe similar case was that when I didn’t want to let a colleague of mine out so she had to go by the window, risking to be expelled. I thought she’ll go to the principal, turn me in and that I’ll be expelled. I was very scared my parents would find out. There was this permanent fear not to be caught, not to be expostulated and it must have influenced my work for „Antisocial”. I could feel what pupils feel.

I felt very well in the laboratory where this show was made. I worked together with wonderful people, which I love. And the director is more than a director, he’s a friend..”

Anton Balint:

„I brought a lot of memories and happenings from high school with me. Some became part of the story we tell during the show, but most of them stayed just with me. But most of what we see in show does happen indeed in the high school I have studied at.

Working with Bogdan was… amazing. Every day he came up with something new, something to provoke us;  we got the final part of the text the day before our premiere.”

Cristina Blaga:

„The topic chosen by Bogdan Georgescu made me travel back in time and relive my high school years, with all their pleasant and unpleasant episodes. Still, the strongest influence was not that of personal experiences, but that of the education system. And this perpetuates, not only in high schools, but also in universities…I do very much appreciate the courage some people have to fight the system from inside, because you can’t change the system if you’re not there- this is what needs to be considered. It’s obvious that if you try and if you’re discovered, you are automatically eliminated…It’s a risk to take. Our rehearsals for „Antisocial” were a continuous suspense…a pleasant expectation. We didn’t get the full text from the beginning, as it normally happens when you work on a play. We received the scenes one by one, not knowing what will come next and how it will all end and this kept us attentive and enthusiastic. The weirdest moment was that when we first read the text: we did not believe those were our words, our lines, the ones we had issued during our improvisations. It was the same sensation as if we had been given a text from Romanian or international dramatic literature. We had to get used to our own lines!”

Photo credits: Adi Bulboacă

September 4^th 2015