The International “Studio – Meeting of Theatre Schools” Festival

A highly successful cultural project, addressing theater professionals

Luana Pleşea, 15.12.2018, 14:04

The Arts
University in Targu Mures organized, in the second half of November, several
international events which primarily addressed students and MA candidates who
study acting, directing and dramatic writing. These events are an opportunity
for them to exchange experience and to develop their competences because, ultimately,
they are the ones who will set the trend and quality of the theater of
tomorrow. Or of today. The events included the International Studio- Meeting
of Theater Schools Festival, Transylvania Playwriting Camp,
and Fabulamundi. Playwriting Europe. Beyond Borders?, events of
which Radio Romania International was a media partner.

Therefore,
between November 18-25, 2018 the modern space of the Arts University and the
stages of the Studio and Studio 2.1 Theaters hosted the 4th edition
of the International Studio- Meeting of Theater Schools Festival which
was attended by ten theater universities from the country and abroad. What was
interesting, at least in this edition of the Festival, was the fact that the
shows presented by the drama schools were very different. Here is University
Professor Oana Leahu with more:

I
believe that each production that I have seen is trying to keep up the pace
with the times we are living. Universities are not making canned theater at
all. Everybody is trying to get their work anchored into the present and this
is very important to me. Equally important is the fact that students are trying
to develop their vocal expressiveness as well as their body language and all
the other qualities that make them good. The choice of repertoire is also vast.
There are various genres approached, from animation to physical theater, to
musical. I think it’s best for young artists and their teachers to promote
novelty.

The other
projects of the Arts University, Transylvania Playwriting Camp,
which is a partnership with the US, and Fabulamundi, a European project, have,
in a way, been the partners of the Studio Festival this year. Oana Leahu is
back with more:

We have cooperated with Lark Play Development Center from New York for ten
years. It is a camp which is held every two years. Each class of MA students
studying dramatic writing has the opportunity to have this experience. Fabulamundi
is a project which we have joined quite recently, and I hope to continue being
part of it for the next 10 years. We thought it was a good idea to hold the two
events together, at the same time. This year there is another section
Focus-Directing, which aims to attract the students from the directing
departments of the Arts Universities in Romania to present their productions.

John
Clinton Eisner is the co-founder and artistic director of the Lark Theater. He
has come to Romania for the past 12 years and has worked both in Bucharest and
Targu Mures.

Targu Mures I like in particular because it’s uncomplicated, in the sense that
there’s not a lot of shiny objects all over the place to distract you, you
know, you can actually focus on what you want to focus on, the people here are
very serious about making the work, and, I don’t know, there is something very
relaxing, that is very conducive to generating new ideas and not feeling the
emergency of having to compete with each other for better ideas. I will say
that 12 years ago or a few less years, but when the university started the
masters program there were writers who were coming from a more director-driven tradition,
and didn’t have a tradition of playwriting because that had sort of lapsed and
they were finding their voices and I would say that people were more
restrained, you know it’s harder to get them to talk about what they thought
and felt but then, when we did, it was deep and profound. And now, because the
program is strong and up and running, the moment we started people were ready
to talk about the world around them, what they thought and felt about it, and
what they wanted to do with writing, so I’d say the big change that’s happened
since we’ve come here is that, I think, the program has, you know, evolved to
such a degree that they are finding very interesting writers to come here but
they are also creating a framework where people are actually very clear about
what they are doing as dramatists.

Dramatist
Rajiv Joseph from Lark Theater has been the guest of the festival in Targu
Mures several times in the past years. This year he launched at the Studio
Festival the Romanian-language version of the play Describe the night made as
part of the MA in Dramatic Writing at the Arts University in Targu Mures. The
translation was coordinated by university lecturer and PhD Anda Cadariu. Recipient
of the Obie Award for best new play in 2018, Describe the night starts from
two real events: the crash of the plane carrying the Polish president and a
great part of the Polish government to Smolensk in 2010 and the discovery of
the journal of the Russian writer and journalist Isaac Babel, a witness in 1920
of the Polish – Soviet war. Rajiv Joseph was very affected by the Polish
president plane crash being covered just by a small newspaper article and by
the fact that almost nobody knew about that tragic event. The translations into
Hungarian and Romanian made in Targu Mures have reduced the duration of the
play to one third. Here is dramatist Rajiv Joseph:

The experience of working with the translators, the directors and the actors
on this play, getting a Hungarian perspective on it, getting a Romanian
perspective on it, changed the play entirely. And made it into a play, I would
say. Because I was getting all these new perspectives that I never would have
gotten in the US. Perspectives from people in a culture that had been much
closer to the Soviet Union than I ever was. Questions that came from actors,
and directors, and translators about what a word meant, and why would this
person say this, and why would this person behave this way. And I sat there in
the theater trying to answer these questions and then adjusting the text and, as
I did, things started to fall away from the play and things started coming
together in the play, and while I went back to all the stuff that I have done
in Transylvania (animals out of paper, Bengal tiger, gruesome playground
injuries) and now this, I realized that in every case I learnt so much more about
my work when I come to this city and I work with the people, the artists that
work here. There’s a creativity here, there is an ethos, and there is
excellence in the text and so for that I’m totally grateful, because I don’t
think this play would ever have been produced anywhere, especially in the US, had
I not come to the translation camp here.