Föld Theatre is organizing an international community specific workshop from the 5th until the 19th of August in Roşia Montană (Romania). The village is partly abandoned, because a Canadian company wants to open a gold mine there. On the blog you can find a log-book written by the participants, photos and other background information about the project.
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 FloatingCity. 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)
The great round of invitations. In pairs we set off in different directions. I go with Morten. We each have a handwritten note explaining who we are, what will happen when and where. We stop at a hay harvesting family, and stop and talk to everyone we meet. People engage us in conversation, not giving up just because neither of us speak Romanian.
Last inhabited house is Cornias in the upper village. She says something about Zeno, pointing further up, saying something about „vaches”. When there are seemingly no more houses, we pause for a while. The stony path continues upwards, but the trees hide its destination. Should we continue? We don’t count on meeting more people, but curiosity spurns us... I think we both realize a curiosity about the area that is still unsatisfied. Hallo! we are in Romania! We sometimes forget, living in a group, not often moving beyond the house and rehearsal spaces and a few familiar points. We continue upwards, soon short of breath.
And reach the lake. Not the one we had the bonfire but a greater lake in the middle of the pastures. Mining remnants in the far off, and a sandy hill in the middle of the forest, we are guessing this is the open cast mine which already exists. 5 haystacks on the steep, steep slope. Can they really cut the grass with a scythe at this angle?
For a long time we stand looking at the scenery. Zeno watching over the herd, a faint sound of his voice reaches us. The cows moving down the hill so slowly, eating meanwhile. We start the descent, full of energy. (Anna Laursen)
It was a good thing we didn’t wake up at 6 o’clock, as it was first planned, but shot the common scene after breakfast. The picture on the wall in the main square served as a base. Basically it is a plan of how the square will look like in the future after all the reconstructions. There are gray figures standing in different positions. We formed similar positions in the middle of the street: some couples, a man playing the violin, an other walking, a lady carrying water on her head. After “action!” we froze for a minute. It seemed that the cars always came when we tried to shoot the scene. Some people took pictures of us as we stood there. I felt like we were forming a living statue park in the middle of the busiest road of the village. We tried an other location as well, in front of the most beautiful but very much ruined Protestant building. On the film we will dissolve out of the picture and people will walk through us. The goal is to demonstrate how people move away and disappear in the future. But there will be other people coming, maybe tourists. Also, the figures we represent are unnatural, just like the gray figures on the plan. The future of people cannot be planned with a 3D architecture program.
In the afternoon Anna lead a discussion about permaculture and transition movement. Since the theme of our workshops is the future, it was nice to expend our views about the future of our planet. Permaculture is both a design method and technical solutions for building sustainable communities. We talked about agriculture as a possible field of application. The idea behind permaculture is that people live in harmony with nature. It is possible to add to the resources instead of exhausting or storing them. Transition movement offers a guideline of how to move from a oil based society to a non oil based society using the knowledge of permaculture.
Anikó and Máté spoke with the elderly Hungarian lady, who is always very pleased to talk to somebody in Hungarian. She really opened up for them but they couldn’t make an interview with her because of her vulnerability.
Coral, Kálmán and I spent the afternoon working on the scene of two tourists lost in the mines. We worked in the dusty room of the borrowed empty house. Aware of the possibility that we are going to die, we wrote messages on the floor with water. Before the rehearsal we took interviews with members of the group and with locals about what they would write. Among a lot of commonplace sentences, I liked this one: I know that it was stupid, but I did it and I am proud of it.(Hinsenkamp Fanni)
I didn't sleep very well this night. The Hay Festival’s noise crept into my dreams and woke me up several times with different music, load drunk people and late night telephone calls. Laila was sure she heard techno-psychedelic music – however I cannot confirm this.
Attila, Bálint’s roommate arrived around four o'clock at night he said. He looked quite tired at 8.30 when I met him in the corridor. But happy! I hadn’t seen him for about two years. After a brief meeting at the warm up I found myself in a forest. A very special and noise-forest, I must say. It felt magical and ever changing – It cannot be compared to any forest I've visited before! I heard several rare birds, and I'm quite sure, I heard a mouse. However, when I opened my eyes, I was in an abandoned house with Bence, Zita and Zsófi next to me. Quite a surprise! All together we took upon a journey to a very dusty place in Africa. Smiling and dancing – the day had begun.
We split up into groups, and everybody seemed busy with different missions. The mission I was upon demanded a certain amount of patience. In the burning midday sun we were looking for local people among the great amount of festival people to participate in our short movie. Three travelers are eager to figure out if Joanna Andreaz had been to the seaside. I lost track of time, but mission completed successfully. Soup, bruschettas, beanmix and watermelon was very welcome at two o'clock. After lunch I had a surprisingly relaxing afternoon with three palinkas served by different people.
We had plans to go to the church during the afternoon, but the information in the Magazine Mix was: “priest, crazy, with key, to Campeni!” So instead we shot the “backwards scene” with the guy whose name I'll never be able to remember (Csongor, a szerk.). Romanian and Hungarian names just don't seem get stored in my system. Well, I guess, people who know me, might say that this applies to names in general. However, I do feel that my brain seems to fail even quicker with Romanian and Hungarian names.
Anyway, we had a fantastic dinner which woke up my tongue and made my nose run a bit. Palinka and beer gave me the strength to climb up to the lake where the Hay Festival was taking place. Music wasn't really for dancing, but people seemed to be enjoying themselves and so was I. We left the lake while the party was still on – for us it was way past bedtime! (Esther Kristensen)
Long evening, ended up chatting till late, in spite of sleepiness. Now everybody is sleeping, and I am pretty sure about this, since the toilet is free! We had two new entries today: Coral and Javier, actor and technician, from Chile and Spain. I had no time to gather with them, but they seem to match they average madness of the group. They are sleeping in my room, which is getting pretty crowded (you must keep in mind the three/four people always queuing for the toilet).
There is another person, who finally arrived in Roşia Montană, to help organizing the Hey Festival. It is Stephanie, the girl we saw in the New Eldorado movie, who spent part of her life here, fighting against the Corporation. She is a really direct and strong person with clear ideas, that she has no hesitation to express.
So this Hey fast began this afternoon at 3 o’clock. It means that the square of full of parked cars, there are tourists everywhere, and a policeman every ten meters. I really don’t like it, I preferred the silence and the emptiness we had during our days here. By the way, I didn’t go up to the lake, so I have no idea about what the festival is, and how it will develop during the next days.
The day went this way: after physical training in the Unitarian church, Bálint divided us in three groups. My group (I was together with Kálmán and Zita) had a wonderful task: build a Music House! We started to search sounds... creaking doors, tinkling windows, clicking light triggers... So after and entire morning’s work we ended up with: a unique nail-xylophone, another xylophone made from beer bottles, hanged on a rope and filled with water at different levels, a bottle-flute, synchronized with the bottle-xylophone (which took us a lot of time), a kind of light-percussion made sliding an old broken liner over the wooden ceiling. The house was getting alive with sounds. But something was missing, so we added the Devil’s Dance, a traditional Csángó dance that filled the rooms of the empty house with and evil rhythmic stomping.
So more or less that’s it for today, or not? Let me see... I played with the children and Zita in the playground... I had a late improvisation session with Morten and Bálint after dinner... and yes, that’s all, time to sleep now, good night.
Pam pa ram pa pam pa ram pa ra pa pa
This is the Devil’s Dance, and I’m dancing.
Pam pa ram pa pam pa ram pa ra pa pa
This is the Devil’s Dance, and Kálmán and Zita are dancing with me.
Pam pam pa ra pa pam pam parapa
Nails are playing the Devil’s Dance, and we are dancing.
Pam pam pa ra pa pam pam parapa
Ceiling and floor are playing the Devil’s Dance, and new people come to join us.
Pam pam pa ra pa pam pam pam
This is the Devil’s Dance, and together we dance in the Music House.
Here everything is alive and singing:
glass jars for the wind,
wooden sticks in the ceiling for the water,
howling bottles for the wolves, tinkling bottles for the bones,
Wednesday we arranged a celebration for the villagers up by the lake. It was the first time I went there. It is always a small wonder to see a great mass of water lifted above the level of the ground.. here was a small lake with a far reaching view over wood clad mountainsides. The sun was orange, veiled by the evening mist, the mountains a sign of constancy, comforting to the eyes. There’s old men and women, children and their parents, foreign students around the tables, besides ourselves. But if we were not all here, if the village was all together abandoned, would this place be desolate?
Roşia Montană is Romania’s oldest documented settlement and was known from old times to be rich in gold and silver. Mining goes back centuries and has continued until recently. Now the village is being depopulated, a mining company is buying the properties. But the permission to start the project has not been given by the Romanian government, and it has already been years of struggle between the company and the several opponents.
Since the gold ores are exhausted there is need for a modern and massive technique: washing out the gold from crushed mountain stone with cyanide. This technique requires the construction new roads for the several-ton-vehicles, of a plant, of an entire pond and dam to catch the waste water; it entails the devastation of the mountain landscape around the village, resulting in four huge pits; and the filling up of the Corna Valley with waste material.
The mining company is visibly present in the village. The golden ring-logo of Gabriel Resources (GR) appears on many houses and there’s a museum and an info-point to explain to the visitors what the company plans to do here. At the info-point a young woman shows me around. She is from Roşia Montană, her father was a miner here, and her grand-fathers. She says she hopes the project will be realised and that the opposition has been a help in assuring the continued existence of the village. In the museum an archeologist explains about the archeological research that was a condition for the company to proceed with the project. He has been here for many years and has formed an opinion in favor of the company.
Since yesterday there hangs a banner on the house next to the museum (also owned by GR) put up by the ‘future miners’ union’ – local, unemployed miners who want jobs - alongside banners announcing two other local events sponsored by the company - a response to the FanFest (Hay Festival), which is taking place these days. FanFest is an event to mark the resilience of the local community and an opposition to the mining project. It has transformed the simple pattern of the village, weaving in lots of new threads and connections. The gendarmerie is patrolling in the village, a three-man band at the local pub has been playing all day, there’s music rolling down the mountain from the Taul Brazi lake further up.
The promises of the company are overwhelming: 4 billion USD to the national economy; over 2,000 jobs in the construction period; Education of the local population, not just for mining jobs but to ensure the business of the village after the mining is over; Restoration of the ‘protected areas’ and infrastructure to make tourist trails; Re-forestation of the area and improvement of the environment; health programme, summer school for children;... and it has so far payed an archeological research and restoration of some historical houses at the cost of $ 10 mio. But the architects restoring another house in the village contest the quality of the company’s work.
And who will ensure that the promises are kept? “It is possible that Gabriel Resources would become a senior company were the project to win all of the approvals necessary to proceed. But it is more likely that the company would sell the project to an established senior company. At that point, all of the promises that Gabriel has made would pass to someone else to fulfill” (GR is at present a junior company).
Where are all the people who were in the houses? Well, many of them have chosen to be resettled nearby or in a nearby town, where the company have built over 125 houses in one neighbourhood. Would be interesting to visit them there and hear what this move has meant to them. (Anna Hoegsbro Laursen)
2000-2004: University of Desarrollo, studying acting
2005: seminaries of direction, Argentina
2005-2008: actress (in her own company)
2005-2008: teaching theater in different schools of Chile theatre to schizophrenic and Dawn-sindrome children
2008: studying traditional theatre, percussion and martial art in Kerala (India)
2009: teaching theater to Maori children in New-Zealand
Good morning Thursday, it’s 8.30 – Laila is writing, in queue for toilet, no surprise! Have been back and forth since 7.50, every time finding new morning troubled, pee filled people waiting, some with more pressured facial expressions than others. In the meantime my patience have shrunk into non-existing, and I’ll guard this spot on the carpet in front of toilet not letting any more people to pass before me. – I guess you must have heard this story plenty times before by now, right? Well, it is a very tough life, dealing with theater...
Just a little bit later, 8.47 –DEJA VU! The queuing feeling hunts me this morning, appearing several times, in queue for water tap, in queue for boiled water, in queue for a moment of free space to open the oven and check the bread I’m baking... Deep breaths, Laila, what are all this people doing in the kitchen this early? All I want is a cup of tea for my smoke-destroyed sore throat after too much singing, too many cigarettes and too much inhaling bonfire-smoke while trying to explain Romanian kids not to put their stickbread in the flames – all taking place yesterday at the lake event. But every time I return to the kitchen, the boiled water have disappeared somewhere, for something I don’t know. This time I’ll keep my eyes on it.
9.07 – I made it! Was almost tricked by the kitchen lady speaking only Romanian, while disabling my hands and mind with a pot of sausages for a reason I never understood – while trying to figure out what she wanted me to do with it, in the background I could watch the water boiler being carried away for an unknown task, out of my reach. But for a minute I managed to think fast and multitask – some Romanian words go with pot and sausage, then cup and running, and now I have a wonderful cup of tea in front of me... I’m happy!
But wait... There is still bread in the oven, when did I check last time? Oh, I guess I have to run again.
Later.... Freshly baked bread turned out to be a hit, and there is a happy atmosphere now when the worst toilet-stress is over. I’m enjoying tales from yesterday’s experiences and more or less drunken experiences.
15.18, time is running! After a hectic morning with too many balls in the air it was just grand to let the church affect calmness and silence upon the group. Bálint apparently had other and less calming plans for us, directing us trough a sweaty warm up with crawling, kicking and jumping, as to get yesterdays palinka out of the body. Now the theater part of our Roşia Montană stay are kicking in, and in groups we’ve been working with different ideas creating scenes. Personally I’ve been very busy and amused by trying to prevent the old Unitarian church from falling apart. It have been hours of climbing around searching possibilities in the church space, a game I really enjoy a lot! The appearance of an amazing amount of homemade Romanian doughnuts, made by the kitchen lady and our two Romanian translators, only made this part of the day even better, mm...
Lunch is now over, and I’m trying to convince myself to go to the internet – the frightening thought of dealing with at least two weeks of unread and unanswered mails have been working very hard against me for several days now. And thinking about it, a few more days wouldn’t harm anyone. I guess it’s the kind of faraway reality, which I can’t really connect myself to up here in the Romanian mountains. Roşia Montană workshop is this big intense bubble, where it’s hard to imagine that time and the world outside actually exists. So much is happening here all the time.
But what does exist here is the heat of the sun, and besides tiredness the only thing in my mind right now is ---> ICE CREAM.
21.47 – Yes, believe it or not, still the same day. Just thought about this morning’s warm up, and it seems like days ago I was kicking and hitting people to the rhythm of „Humpty Dumpty sat on wall...” This is how the days go by here, full of stuff! Right now I’m full of lasagna, with a slight stomachache caused of overeating. I should note here, that the wonderful menu was prepared dancing, by me and Esther, turning the kitchen into a dance floor featuring Santogold. We’re both lying in bed now exhausted, and I just received a big juice kiss on my cheek from Esther – who is also talking to other people in the room. We live quite close here in Roşia Montană, you see. In our room is four double beds, currently hosting seven people, six birds, an elephant, a deer and four statues of pretty girls. Morten is present in this moment, striking some chords on his exotic instrument which I have forgotten the name of.
The afternoon went with more group theater work, for my sake back in the lovely Unitarian church – I guess the amount of time in church during this workshop tops the total amount of church time in my whole life.
Esther is giving a very good proposal this very minute, she thinks I should write down all ingredients used for this evenings menu down in the logbook – which I actually agree with, though the 1,5 min I have left until Bálint starts a movie screening at 22.00. SHARP! Won’t do for this task. Now it would be a surprising new experience if this time limit was actually held punctual for once.
00.43, I can smell myself, and it’s not a good sign. Intended to take a shower before, but was falling a sleep in the bathroom queue, and my mind tricked me into believing, that if I went to bed now, maybe I could get up early, before everyone else, and have a unstressed bathroom experience in the morning. At least a have my intentions right, though deep down inside I know that there’s no such thing as an unstressed bathroom experience at this place.
The movie screening was (of course) not sharp due to technical complications, but the movies shown was more than worth the waiting time – especially „The cost of living” by DV8, which have once before given me great inspiration. Thanks to Bálint and co. for this initiative and the whole group for a grand day!
Now there’s only a drop-dead fast-asleep goodnight left to be written from here. (Laila Sigrid Rosholm)
The village is in an interesting situation. More than half of its population, about 600 people left in the past years. A Canadian-Romanian company, Roşia Montană Gold Corporation intends to create one of the biggest gold mines of Europe on the place of the village, so they offer houses in Alba Iulia for the inhabitants of the village.
Roşia Montană is strongly present in the media, but only regarding ecological, economic and social problems. We on the other hand are interested in the people who live there, in their dreams, their fears and their everyday life. How do they handle this uncertainty that has been going on for years? What makes them stay in the village even though a Canadian company offers them an apartment in the town of Alba Iulia? How do they imagine their future?
The research of the local community and the communication with them follow some anthropological and ethnographical principles; one of them is that “you can get if you give”: by organizing common events – bonfire, film projection, playing music – on one hand the life of the village becomes more vivid, on the other hand people open up more, if they don’t feel like some kind of spectacularity, but part of a natural, mutual communicational process. The research partly proceeds by interviews with the help of interpreters. The interviews do not focus on the mining project, most of the locals are already fed up with reporters and tourists, who are willing to know only that – but they open up much more, if they are asked about their everyday life, childhood or their future.
The workshop goes on parallelly with the similar research of the Romanian „dramAcum” group, who are also collecting materials at the place for their play about the actual social situation of Roşia Montană, which will be presented in Cluj Napoca in November.
The initiative makes part of theatrical trend that involves outsider groups (for example a village) in the work, and with this and fieldwork it examinates actual social phenomenons with theatrical tools. Therefore 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.
2010: graduated in Literature and Aesthetics at Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest
2009-: editor, Scolar Kiadó
2008-: member of Föld Theatre
2007-2008: improvisation course on the role of "Clown", Trento (Italy)
2006, 2007: leading theatre workshops in children camps
