The limits of freedom: Eu sunt! Și? Case

Abstract

In 2019, in Romania, there has been an active debate about the limits of theatre expression in the Eastern European cultural space. It is acknowledged that documentary and political theatre have a strong influence on the cultural scene in Eastern Europe, especially after the emergence and appreciation of new techniques such as Verbatim or Devised Theatre among theatre makers. Notwithstanding the fact that these forms of theatre, which have an extremely strong social and critical voice, have appeared in the European space for decades and have started to become more and more widespread, in 2018, in Cluj-Napoca, the premiere of the performance Eu sunt! Și?, directed by Loran Betty, for which I wrote the text. This performance was performed for a year all around Romania, and in 2019 it was proposed for censorship and amendment by the Romanian Orthodox Church. This was one of the first cases of its kind after the exit from the Romanian communist regime, one of the first, or even the first, to be fined by the National Council for Combating Discrimination in Romania, for discriminating against people of faith. Therefore, it is important to understand the context in which this event occurred, as well as the history of performances with similar concerns after Communism, and of course, the opinion of the authors of this performance. In addition to all this, we will also analyze performances that addressed similar themes in the Romanian space and discuss the limits and freedoms of theatre in the Romanian cultural space.