HostelLand. Boardgame Theatre and Social Dialogue

Abstract

Abstract HostelLand. Boardgame teatral is one of the most recent productions at Teatru Fix in Iaşi, a project that has been made in collaboration with Asociaţia Addarta. This paper will focus on the work methods used in the creative process and the performance form that has resulted – a form that is based on several rules that belong both to the principles of the boardgame that has been created, and to the way in which we interact with the audience. Director Alex Iuraşcu’s decision to structure the performance as a game generates a context in which audience participation is a factor that doesn’t only determine the way in which the performance takes place, but the very possibility of it taking place. A risky endeavour, one might say, but one that, up to this moment, has proven functional every time. The spectators have to become actants, alike the performers, and they gradually go from their role as (active or passive) players to that of citizens who are involved in a debate on the new laws of a state – the fictive, independent state HostelLand, a community formed by the boardgame players.