About the Community Specific Workshop

The site specific theatre works inspired by the givens of a concrete place. Such like this the fundament of the creation can be a community: the inner system of relations, or those that link it to world, its problems, traditions or vision of future. Living together for a shorter or longer period can provide the experience from which the performance is born.

In 2010 Föld Theatre held two community specific workshops: one in Copenhagen, at Floating City. At the place there some former industrial buildings, nowadays about 30 young people live there and work on projects regarding sustainable development. The other’s venue was Roşia Montană, where Hungarian, Danish, Italian and Chilean actors spent two weeks among the local inhabitants, and at the end either for them and for the public of Budapest they showed a presentation based on registered scenes.

The public of such presentations on one hand can be the community: people like to see the familiar reality on stage or screen. The purpose of the company is mainly not about resolving their problems or give advice. (At Roşia Montană it was extremely important to not to take a side in the mine-discussion, because among others it made possible, that the locals open up.) But seeing themselves through the eyes of an outsider can lead to comprehend new things as well.

The other possible aim of the work is to report about the community to the outside world, for example at Roşia Montană we tried to achieve to put the people themselves in spotlight, not as the sustainers of a certain economical-ecological-social situation (the losers or the winners of it), but emphasizing the personal aspects.

Extremely important to involve the locals into the work: in floating city several inhabitants took part in the whole rehearsal process; at Roşia Montană we spent one week to get in contact with the people: talking, making interviews, having a bonfire; and in the short movies that gave the arch of the performance they also acted, more or less playing themselves.

The raw material of the production is not a pre-formed text, but the experience gained there about a heterogeneous and complex reality. This material is continuously changing, „boiling”, and never can be percepted in its wholeness. This uncertainty is inspiring: it strongly stimulates the experimentation with expressing tools of the theatre. (Nádor Zsófi)