The 20th HOP Young Actor’s Gala

HOP Young HOP Young Actor's Gala organised by the Romanian Theatre Union UNITER has grown into more than just a competition

România Internațional, 23.09.2017, 18:08

Having reached
its 20th edition this year, HOP Young Actor’s Gala organised by the
Romanian Theatre Union UNITER has grown into more than just a competition. It
is a forum to discuss acting, as a profession, and an opportunity for young
actors to take part in invaluable professional meetings. The 21 young
professionals chosen this year by a preliminary jury to take part in the
competition held between September 4 and 7 in Costinesti, had a chance to
attend 4 separate workshops, suggested by the artistic director of the Gala,
actor and professor Miklos Bacs, which were held in Bucharest and Costinesti
between August 31 and September 7. Veniamin Filshtinsky, an acting professor
with the St Petersburg Institute of Performing Arts, the Romanian director
Alexandru Dabija, highly appreciated for the way he works with his actors, the
German director and writer Stephan Perdekamp, the author of PEM – The Perdekamp
Emotional Method, and Andrei Flaviu Falcusan, an expert in kinetotherapy and
motricity, were invited to run the workshops.

Many young
actors and former winners of the Gala seem to converge on the idea that
professional training workshops are necessary. Actress Mirela Oprisor, winner
of the award for best actress at the Sarajevo Film Festival for her part in
Tuesday, after Christmas by Radu Muntean, also won the best actress award at
the 2002 HOP Gala. In her opinion, 15 years on, the Gala gives a lot more
support to young actors:

tr I saw a
Russian professor, and not just any Russian professor, who came here to teach.
They have a workshop with Dabija. We didn’t have that back in the day. So I
think this Gala has made a progress. I wish I had met Mr. Dabija when I was
youn. It’s also very nice of him to do this, especially since he is very
relaxed and gives confidence to the people around him. And yes, we needed this.
But we were in the early 2000, when everybody was looking for a path.

Actress Cosmina
Olariu has graduated this year from the I. L. Caragiale National University of
Theatre and Cinema Arts in Bucharest, and is the winner of the Stefan Iordache
award – the grand prize of the HOP Young Actor’s Gala:

These
meetings are quite important and I would like to thank Mr. Miklos Bacs for this
experience, which on the one hand was draining, but on the other hand full of
wonderful things. The meeting with Perdekamp was an experience that I for one
will certainly not forget. The idea is that he discovered a technique based on
the fact that each organ is tied to a specific emotion, and by becoming aware
of a particular organ you can feel that emotion. The reactions were absolutely
fabulous. I was on the verge of a panic attack, because the emotions and the
energy that you feel is amazing. The meeting with Mr. Dabija was also very
important. It is not a common thing for an established director to be willing
to really meet young actors.

Over the past
few years, the HOP Gala, organised by the Romanian Theatre Union, has opened up
towards the world of cinema. The jury that selected this year’s winners
included Ada Solomon, the producer of films like Child pose, Aferim!,
Scarred Hearts and Toni Erdmann. Here is Ada Solomon on the role of the
Gala in the young actors’ career:

This is
a high-profile event and it helps young actors a lot. My advice to them: be
honest and confident. But honesty to oneself is the most important. And trying
to find the resources that would reveal them, to find the strength to look at
themselves in the mirror. I believe direct interaction, this kind of
networking, is very important in all arts, and so is the possibility to talk
about a show right after seeing it, to understand how others have seen it, to
understand someone else through such discussions.

As an
anniversary edition, the 20th HOP Gala brought to Costinesti many
former winners of its awards. Mariana Mihut, one of the most highly respected
theatre and film actresses in Romania, went there to support young actors once
again, and told us how she saw the role of this Gala in 2017:

It is
more than important. And it is equally important for experienced actors like
me, who can see that the tradition of Romanian theatre is taken on. Tonight I
have been very proud of and impressed with how well trained they are, with how
mature they are, a lot more so than we used to be at their age. They are more
aware of what they want, and more focused on that.

During the same
edition of the Gala, the idea was born of setting up a club similar to the
famous New York drama school, the Actors Studio. Here is actor Ion Caramitru,
president of UNITER, the one who came up with this idea:

I’ve
been thinking about setting up HOP Club and bring together all these people who
have taken part in the Gala and have won awards. Because all those selected to
attend the Gala make up an elite group. So we talked about this, about putting
together this club as part of UNITER, with certain rules, with a certain number
of meetings, with specific activities suggested by the Union or by themselves.
Since UNITER runs on projects and programmes, club members would be able to
suggest programmes and projects. I have been thinking about it and I think this
is a good time to do it if we want to do it well.