TIMIȘOARA - Heritage Contact Zone

T

Three communities. Romanian, Hungarian, German.
Three theaters. Only one building. From its balcony Romanian Revolution started in December 1989.
Mixing private collections and the public archives of the three theaters, as well as the student theater groups’ and children theaters’ archives we will take a look at the everyday life of people in Timișoara under Communism (1960-1990), with theater at its center.
We will add an investigation of the relationship between the artists and the Securitate, using archival materials from the Securitate archives. Then we will make the connections with the past 30 years under Capitalism (1990-2020) and present our discoveries in performative exhibitions around the city.
Theater as resistance in both systems.

Objects from a performative exhibition

We selected ten objects which are now history, all connected one to another. For many generations under the communist regime they were desired, used, exchanged, and trafficked, often valued more than their usual prices. To own them meant to be invested with power in various degrees but also, in some cases, to be put in danger. Their possession singled one out of the masses and for this it came with a risk. We included these objects in two separate categories: weapons of cultural resistance and weapons of physical resistance. All in one they are part of what we can call Survival Kit for Communism.

All the objects were used in a performative exhibition presented live in a moving tramway, in December 2019, 30 years after the Romanian Revolution.

White Bread: The most basic need for bread was not easily met before 1989 in Romania. One could get the famous one pound white bread, franzela in Romanian, only in counted portions depending on how many members his/her family had. Every citizen had a paper card to be stamped when buying bread, which was often already stalled when brought to the shops. Sometimes, on Sundays, a “luxury” version of the common bread which came in long baguette-like form with pop seeds on its crust (batoane) suddenly appeared in the bread shops and people would queue for hours to get them.

Romanian Communist Party Membership Card: In the beginning everyone wanted to have it, in the end everybody wanted to get rid of it. The most spectacular way to do it was to set it on fire in public. This was the Communist Party membership card, the main difference between an ordinary people and a privileged one, a transgenerational and interclasses favor granted by the only political party in Romania. The communist party members had priority when it came to advance in their work place; a communist party member would get a passport easier; a communist party member could not be followed by Securitate unless a special permit was granted by the party itself. Of course, there were party members and party members who took decisions, a strict hierarchy was in place and this would not be easily overstepped. But for ordinary people signing to join the ranks was a big temptation as it came with real advantages. For a small number of people, intellectuals included, joining the party was an act of belief as they were truly loyal to the ideas of the Left. More loyal than the party itself which in Romania had other priorities than serving the social causes. The communist Party membership card was one of the first things set on fire in the streets, together with portraits of Nicolae Ceausescu, by the angry Romanians taking part in December 1989’s revolts. Weapons of physical resistance for some (non-believers) and cultural resistance for others (believers in leftist ideas). (C.M.)

The daily basket: The forerunner of the metallic on wheels baskets one can find in the supermarkets today, the small carry-on baskets made out of colorful wires were used for shopping food in the old general stores in Romania. They were the relatives of the rural willow baskets used by the peasants to carry various goods. One can still find these type of willow baskets attached to very urban bicycles, sometimes even Pegas ones (Pegas one the only brand of bicycle made in Romania). The communist era did not totally go away. There were comrades before 1989 who left the general store taking the basket with them. It was probably because they couldn’t find anything else so they took at least that. To bring something back home. But then why there are still people doing this nowadays? One thing is worth mentioning: there was not much art and culture in the daily basket. The shelves of the cultural institutions were sometimes as empty as those in the general stores. One could hardly find a piece of well done literature or a roasted steak of theatre. Arme de rezistență fizică/Weapons of physical resistance.

Heavy Coat: Pufoaica is a type of coat with a nylon shell and down filling. Together with the hot plate and the electrical resistance which used to be fixed in S shape on a piece of concrete to make it useful for getting worm, pufoaica was a tool to fight against cold in communist Romania. The usual radiators one could find in every apartment or public building were useless, just another piece of cold furniture needed to be replaced with something more efficient. Pufoaica was doing exactly this. It was a piece of clothing needed and indispensable, a combination between a short jacket, an overcoat, and a heavy coat and it was one size fits all. It was more than useful for staying in line for food, at work in the frozen desktops or factories, as well as at home, while eating in the kitchen or even while sleeping in the bed. Hard to imagine today. In theatres, pufoaica could be worn over the real costumes, as on stage the coldness was sometimes unbearable coming from the backstage, so that sometimes one could see something looking like steam coming out of the actors’ nostrils and mouths, as if their souls would fly away. Coldness would occupy their bones. Thanks to the pufoaica even in those difficult times when life was really hard to go on with, one could say Romanians were literally covered with feathers. Arme de rezistență fizică/Weapons of physical resistance

Placard: A couple of weeks every year before 1989 the theatres’ wood shops were busy with preparing the placards for the popular marches of support organized by the Romanian Communist Party. Painters were also involved in writing the slogans among which at least half were dedicated, after 1969, to the new party’s president, Nicolae Ceausescu. The researcher could find in the theatres’ archives lists of approved slogans to be written on the placards or to be shouted by the people. On special occasions, such as 1st of May, the Working people celebration, special shows were organized in which theatre people were directly involved as coordinators of masses (directors). Each theatre, including the Opera, had to have special productions dedicated to official celebrations, such as the annual congress of the Romanian Communist Party. After 1989 the slogans on the placards changed and the wording was against the party and its president. One of the most significant symbols of the 1989 Revolution was the flag with its coat of arms – the Socialist Republic of Romania or the hammer and the anvil – cut out, something one could see in other countries from the former soviet bloc too. Weapons of cultural resistance. (C.M.)

Electrical Hot Plate: Not sure there is an exact name for it in English, but this object became very popular in the 1980’s when the economic crisis hit Romania under Ceausescu’s rule. A Decree from 1977 set the standards for saving resources, one of the rules being that the temperature both in private and in public institutions should not be over 18 degrees. In the big iconic building in Timisoara where the three theatres and the opera were housed the temperature sometimes dropped to 9 degrees, as we found out from a series of official memos kept in the local Department of culture’s archive. The managers of all four institutions – Opera, National theater, Hungarian Theater, German Theater – signed together a paper begging for special measures, as the actors got sick while rehearsing and the singers were in danger to lose their voices. It is not by chance that it was in the balcony of this building where the first discourses about freedom were heard. It was a “hot” December in 1989. In the interviews for Theater as Resistance and archival documents actors and technicians mention the omnipresence of the hot plates both in the actors’ cabins and in the hotel rooms when they were on tour. Sometimes, people even warmed their food on it. These were weapons of physical resistance. (C.M.)

Tape Recorder: A rare object in communist Romania, the tape recorder was very popular amongst youngsters in Timișoara, who had more chances to procure them from nearby countries. There were many rock bands in Timisoara in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and unlike other places in Romania some of them even employed by the theatres. Both Hungarian and German theatres had their own bands who helped with music for theatre productions and had their own concerts which proved a solid source of income for these institutions (as seen in the archival documents). Famous Romanian rock groups like Progresiv TM, Bastion, or the most rebellious of them, Phoenix, were employed in 1974 in local theatres. Phoenix also worked with the theatre student group Thespis, the most successful of their joined production, Tiganiada, dating from 1967, toured all over the country and was considered a piece of resistance. In the 1980’s most members of the group emigrated and they only reunited after 1989. Film director Andrei Ujica, who was involved together with poet Șerban Foarță in writing the lines for a famous Phoenix song, Mugur the fluier, told us in a Theatre as Resistance interview that rock music and literature, more than theatre, helped creating the favorable atmosphere for the 1989 Revolution. In this sense, the tape recorder, as well as the pick-up and the vinyl albums brought to Timisoara from nearby Serbia, from Germany or Hungary, were weapons of cultural resistance. (C.M.)

Maybe something comes up Bag: PPC, the short for Poate pică ceva ( Maybe something comes up), with the extensive version Maybe something will fall from the sky, (PPCC- “Poate pică ceva din cer”) is the famous and indispensable bag carried by every one of the ordinary citizens in communist Romania. It was either hanging in their hands or waiting patiently in their pockets for something to fill them. They were made out of recycled materials, a piece of resistant table cloth, or a piece of curtain, PPCC were resilient, well sewn and they could carry more than one could actually find on the shelves of the almost empty shops. Its correspondent in contemporary times can be find in the fancy bags hanging on hipsters’ shoulders and carried with pride as it proves a connection with a festivalgallerybienallesymposionorexhibitionopening. This version is handmade and ornate with social messages and it is meant to be a statement. It is a sign of belonging to a totally different type of ”hungry people”. Arme de rezistență fizică devenit arme de rezistență culturală/Weapons of physical resistance transformed into weapons of cultural resistance (O.M.)

Typing machine: There is a moment in a famous film, The Life of Others, when the main character, a playwright, is hiding his typing machine under the doorstep. The gesture may seem absurd in the absence of an explanation: every typing machine in communist countries had a series and a print of its own. A typed text could thus lead directly to the owner of the typing machine and if that text was dangerous in any way for the regime the owner of the typing machine had to face the consequences which were interrogation, arrest and years in prison, depending on the content of the text. An instrument meant to record somebody’s thoughts and multiply them for the others to hear them, the typing machine gave power to its owner, but also put him in danger, if not used carefully. One way to resist was to smuggle “clean” typing machines within the borders of a communist country and/or to carry the text written on those machines outside these borders. The object itself can be seen nowadays as a poisoned gift, but at that time typing machines could be weapons of cultural resistance/Arme de rezistență culturală. (C.M.)

Video by Cristian Văduva

Fanzin TCR Pilot – 2018

Fanzin TCR 1 – 2019

Fanzine TCR 2 – 2019

Fanzin TCR 1 – 2020

Resistance through innocence – animating the heritage

Cristina Modreanu

The pop-up exhibition titled „How to get rid of adulthood for 10 minutes assisted by a puppet” was the second public event under the umbrella of the Theater as Resistance project, supported by Timisoara 2021 as part of the Heritage Contact Zone project, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Organized around the idea that before 1989 all theaters in Romania – puppetry included – had moments of subversive anti-totalitarian impact on children and their parents, the exhibition curated by Cristina Modreanu and Ovidiu Mihăiță, had the form of a performance based on a script by Ovidiu Mihăiță.

What happened? Small groups of 5 people were invited to enter the space of the exhibition and were greated by two puppets dressed like guards who debated if they are allowed inside or not. Then, the visitors met their guide, a small puppet who recomended itself as Croitorasul (the little tailor) and its handler, Maria „Cutza” Gornic, a veteran pupeteer who have been working for over 5 decades for the children theater in Timisoara. The puppet guided them through an interactive exhibition connecting the dots between a totalitarian past, a violent political present and the role of theater as an interface between a troubled global society and what is left of the childhood’s innocence and can still be found in contemporary adults. Using old weapon toys the visitors of the pop-up exhibition were asked to „shoot” the printed portraits of the worlds’ most criminal dictators, Romanian Nicolae Ceausescu included, and then were freed through a secret door after informed that „crimes taking place in theater are not punishable”. The total duration of one tour was up to 15 minutes.

In conceiveing the exhibition we wanted to include a performer who is in herself a live archive, as she has acted in all the important productions of the puppet theater in Timisoara, both before and after 1989 – a key year for our research. Also, the puppet guiding the visitors has been the protagonist of a production titled The courageous little tailor, produced before 1989 by the Timisoara Puppet Theater and it was „recycled” after 1989 for a production of Auăleu independent company, The Paricid, based on a text written by Ion Sava and directed by Ovidiu Mihăiță. This is the third production in which the puppet „acts”.

In the process of preparing the exhibition we interviewed a series of relevant persons, including Maria „Cutza” Gornic, and we did research in the archive of (now called) Merlin Puppet Theater, searching for those productions with a subversive potential, like The last unicorn, an adaptation of the novel with the same title by Peter Beagle made in 1979 by Andrei Ujică (today a well-known film maker), with music of a famous Romanian singer, Mircea Baniciu. We focused the texts published in the Theater as Resistance Fanzine around this production and around the idea of Resistance through innocence, expressed by Maria „Cutza” Gornic in the interview we video-recorded. The fanzine includes texts by Andrei Ujică, Șerban Foarță, Alina Nelega, Marcel Tolcea, Cristina Modreanu, Ovidiu Mihăiță, drawings by Lucian Popovici, and it was launched together with the exhibition and each visitor received a free copy.

The pop-up exhibition lasted for three days, 21st, 22nd, 23rd of June 2019, every night we had 6 groups entering the space and being guided by the puppet into a world of total freedom and playhood, only to exit it more responsible.

Recycling our heritage for a better contemporary world.

More from TIMIȘOARA …

No items found

T

More from TIMIȘOARA …

Start typing and press enter to search