’99,6% is a multilingual performing arts event created for the centennial of Romania by Romanian and Hungarian theatre makers. It investigates the questions of ethnic coexistence and cultural diversity, as well as the everyday nationalism that often remains unreflected. These are all issues that, despite the abundant discourse surrounding them, remain deeply tabooed. The performance is also a personal looking back on the last one hundred years of love and hate. We hear and see personal stories and confessions, which expand to accommodate the audience and the anonymous characters and time of history. 99,6% touches upon the question of communal cohabitance, both in its theme and in the method the company used to create the show. The non-hierarchical creative process is based on the common decisions of the creators. It is a theatrical exercise in democracy, established in the hope of mutual understanding and solidarity, together with all its difficulties, resignations and shortcomings. The performance is the production of Reactor in Cluj, an independent theatre company. In 2019 99,6% was the first to receive the Halász Péter Prize, which was launched this year and which acknowledges outstanding performances of artistic innovation.’ Anikó Varga, curator

CREDITS

Created by Panna Adorjáni, Raul Coldea, Hermina Csala, Radu Dogaru, Petro Ionescu, Bogdan Olarson, Kinga Ötvös, Oana Mardare, Adi Tudoran

REVIEWS

"99,6% circles around the possible answers to questions of nationality and cohabitation. The answer, which lies in the performance and the company’s work method itself, has a natural utopic potential that trends towards a supposedly ideal mode of social and artistic operation. At the same time, there is also an awareness that the dominant discourse outside the provisional frame of the performance, is quite different. This is exactly what the performance is about: the hope, that is the complex hope of avant-garde art, that in one way or another this little space can have an effect on the bigger one. The hope that, even if only for moments, the heavy burden and narrow-mindedness of ethnic discourses can be suspended. So if someone asked you whether you are Romanian, Hungarian, Jewish, Swabian, Saxon or Roma, you could, in a playful moment, answer: I am a badger from Zalău!” Excerpt from Anikó Varga’s laudation for the Halász Péter Award

"These personal moments are the most powerful parts of 99,6%. Nine performers create a chilled, ambient-like atmosphere, then they approach us, as we sit on pillows next to the walls, to tell us about the first time they encountered exclusion. Can theatre be like this too? In a unilingual Hungary, where there is only one kind of theatre tradition, even independent artists avoid the question of what theatre could be like. Indeed, theatre can be like this, without a certain beginning or a clear ending (what would Aristotle say?). It can be a place where we get in touch with performers; where we also become creators of the performance; and where we don’t always know what is happening on the other side of the room. This freedom is liberating.” Noémi Herczog, Élet és Irodalom

FESTIVAL ABROAD

Thealter, Szeged, 2019.

Reactor de creație și experiment

Founded in 2014, Reactor has gradually increased and grown its aspirations and projects. It’s major focus is on supporting young artists (Fresh Start – residency programmes), contemporary dramaturgy (Drama 5 – dramatic writing residencies) and educating the audience (Teen Spirit, a platform dedicated to teenagers, MiniReactor with programmes for children)  The shows, in their diverse repertoire of theatre productions, often discuss current themes. 

Its openness towards people and ideas has turned Reactor into a catalyst for the creative energies of Cluj and of Romania. It has become an accessible place to people of all ages and all social backgrounds, where artistic experiment is encouraged through freedom of expression. 

SUPPORTERS

Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Local Council, Administration of the National Cultural Fund in Romania

CONTACT

Oana Mardare
oana.mardare9@gmail.com
+40.747.197.501