We set out to make this book out of our desire to make accessible some of the plays that have been created in the past years at Reactor Cluj. Initially we planned an anthology – more than 30 performances have been produced here, most of them based on new and original texts – but we focused for the beginning on The Cluj Miracle and M.I.S.A.NDERSTANDING, two of the more recent productions. Both were generated within the joint framework of the project Exercises of Democracy. Investigating Recent History and are based on a rigorous documentation of the subjects they deal with. The texts, rather than being mere performance scripts, are dramatic texts in their own right that can be read independently. The Cluj Miracle unravels mechanisms of the Caritas scheme game that, in the early 1990s, ruined millions of people, and M.I.S.A.NDERSTANDING follows the violent reactions of society towards MISA and its members, amplified in the 2000s by a media in search of sensationalism. For these two productions, the research and documentation were essential parts to which all artists involved contributed. I therefore made a series of interviews with the playwrights, directors, actresses and actors of the two shows, seeking to understand how to approach the documentation of a case, a phenomenon or a story, how to process the information gathered, how to transform it into performance material and what can a documentary theatre performance bring when it comes to clarifying or understanding recent history.

THE CLUJ MIRACLE AND M.I.S.A.NDERSTANDING
Miracolul de la Cluj și M.I.S.A.Părut

plays by: Alexa Băcanu, Petro Ionescu
texts by: Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, Gabriel Andreescu, Miruna Runcan
editor: Oana Hodade
producer: Reactor Cluj

available here