TABOO HISTORY. FILL THE PAST TO SENSE THE PRESENT

2026-07-22

Censorship in the performative arts, under totalitarian regimes, had a huge impact on theatre aesthetics in the 20th century. The project examines and explores how stories/narratives, memory patterns, and mnemonic practices have crossed cultural borders and how they’ve left hidden or blurred memories across the former Socialist Republic of Romania and the former Democratic Republic of Germany. In a threefold structure – research, education and artistic creation – we propose a context in which researchers, artists and the audience can reflect on the political and cultural implications of relevant moments in theatre history (1960-1990). The project highlights the role of generally unknown events that marked the history of theatre and shaped not only its aesthetics, but also the bond between artists and society, actors and spectators. The project aims to raise awareness to the causes and consequences of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes on artistic life, to create a performative archive, to transform research and testimonies into practical educational tools, to explore the past theoretically and performatively. WP: Research, Workshops, Performative and new technology experiences, and The Week of European Theatre Memory. Activities are aimed to critically respond to these questions, using artistic research as a basic instrument of aesthetically and politically understanding “our common territory of trauma and resistance”. In a time of profound proliferation of far-right discourses, can performative experiences become a “space of togetherness”, challenging us to reconfigure the traumatic events in the past? The project has an impact on consolidating a performative archive of essential theatrical events in the past, inspiring young researchers and theoreticians to investigate a part of the local and international theatre deeply related to the political context, making accessible a consistent part of our past from a theatrical perspective.in București.

Romania

2025-12-15