Eötvös Lóránd Tudományegyetem

Documentalist theater as a means of mediating the past

– A study of Gianina Cărbunariu’s 20/20 –

Szabó Máté Áron (JJPM8B)

Community and Remembrance in Central-European Theater II. (BBN-THE-281)
Cseh-Varga Katalin / Deres Kornélia
Budapest, 2020.01.20.
 In this thesis I will be examining Gianina Cărbunariu’s theatrical production: 20/20. I

will be mainly focusing on the role of theater as a means to articulate and process communal

traumas such as the series of ethnic clashes that took place in Târgu Mureș in March 1990,

commonly referred to as ’Black March’. The play depicts everyday situations in which the

events – and the perpetual tension – still echo, as well as it shows actual situations which have

or might have happened during the clashes of Balck March. I say ’might have’ because this

ambiguity is in the main focus of the play which is based on a serious of interviews, written

documentation and oral recounts of the events. ’Truth’ thus does not appear as a

(semi-)objective knowledge as it usually does through our narratives of the past but it is

always mediated through history and the subjective memory. By treating theater as a medium

through which fragments of the past and subjective experiences are given voice to, Gianina

Cărbunariu and the Yorick Studio evoke such themes as collective memory versus subjective

experience, the question of shared and opposing narratives – and also the representation of

these themes in a theatrical form.

Traditionally, theater follows a very specific line of creation: writer writes text,

members of the theater interpret said text and present it to the audience for viewing. Now I

skipped some steps in the process, for example when the author interprets the given reality

and by doing so tries to bridge the gap between his subjective reality and some objective

’truth’ that can be reread, relived or reinterpreted by the reader. Or when the director of a play

reinterprets the text while simultaneously trying to comply it with his own subjective take on

reality. Or when the actor reinterprets the reinterpretation of the director and tries to relive the

experience first described by the text. And finally, when the audience – simultaneously

existing as individual beings and as a group – are asked to rather passively take in the play.

Viewing is hardly ever called into action. Documentalist theater seems to draw its existence

directly from these gaps. It seems like its sole aim is to directly address the obvious tension of
the voids in the creative process by standing directly on the bridge between past and present,

real and fictititous, individual and communal – or at least this is the case of 20/20. By relying

only on interviews and personal written documentation, 20/20 commits itself to a web

subjective recalls of the past and by doing so it takes no stand on either side: it tries to remain

objective by presenting the unpresentibility of an objective truth. So shifts slightly the role of

theater. Its task is no longer to present a definitive interpretation of reality but to present its

unpresentibility. This also resonates with Amelia Jones’ take on re-enactmens:

all "events" - those we participated in as well as those that occurred before we were born - can

only ever be subjectively enacted (in the first place) and subjectively retrieved later. There is no

singular, authentic "original" event we can refer to in order to confirm the true meaning of an

event, an act, a performance, or a body - presented in the art realm or otherwise.’ 1

I would furhter argue that by presenting this void of an ’authentic original’, 20/20 urges the

spectator to leave its traditional role as a passive interpretator of the past and encourages it to

be an active participant of the present and consequently a shaper of the future. The play

achieves it exactly by confronting the spectator with the inherent subjectivity of all

experiences which renders a search for an authentic original futile, thus shifting the focus

from the past into the present where the means and modes of reconstruction are brought into

light – not the present itself in a fixed interpretation – or, as Jones put, ’reminding us that all

present experience is only ever avaliable through subjective perception, itself based on

memory.’ As we will see, the play further emphasizes on this aspect by thematizing on the

personal (un)availability of the past for the younger generations in the digitalized culture

where the barriers of language and cultural taboos are still standing, and thus history only

presents itself in a wider but more fragmented way.

1
Jones, Amelia, The Now and the Has Been: Paradoxes of Live Art in History in: Perform, Repeat, Record:

Live Art in History, 18.

 The play early on depicts a scene where two Dutchman recalls their past experience of

the Black March as they were travelling through Târgu Mureș one night when a man with his

pregnant wife jumps into their car, fearing for their lives. In the past – when they encounter

the couple – the two Dutch are in a state of panic and are hostile towards the couple. In the

present in which the recollection happens, the two Dutch shift their narrative and evidently

paint themselves as caring and heroic. Both timelines are shown and so the scene consists

entirely of binary oppositions. It sits on the opposition between the past and the present, the

subjective recollection and the actual unfolding of the events, even the opposition between the

prosperous West and post-communist East is shown. To summarize it, the temporal, the

personal, the social, the political, and even the linguistic factors are at play here which

together completely distort the subjective take on the events, alienating it from what actually

happened. Aleida Assmann and Linda Shortt comment on this unreliable nature of memory

which is itself not only prone to change but can also changes things – narratives for example –

by stating that:

’Memory can play a key in processes of change and transition because is itself flexible and has a

transformative quality.’ The first premise is that individual memory is itself volatile and transient;

it is constantly in flux. Collective memories are also essentially dynamic. This plasticity of

memory has been much commented on by, for example, cognitive psychologists who emphasize

memory’s notorious unreliability (…) As remembering always interacts with forgetting, there is no

definitive closure in the process. To put it anoher way: the file of memory is never closed; it can

always be reopened and reconstructed in new acts of remembering.’2

By being in the constant state of oppositions, the scene brings forth the ’plasticity’ of

memory. By doing so, it also exposes the hidden structures in which memory functions not as

an affirmation of the past but as the distortion of it. It also puts emphasis on the present in

which the distortion happens, so not only the memory, but also the present itself suffers this
2
Assmann, Aleida / Shortt, Linda, Memory and Political Change: Introduction in: Memory and Political
Change, 3. (original emphasis)
distortion. It then gives way for the viewer to take an ironic standpoint on the present in which

the distorting factors are revealed (i.e. time, social and linguistic barriers, personal interest).

Theater here also functions not as an institute in which fixed interpretations of the past are put

on display but as a mechanic which reveals the unpresentability of a fixed past.

Evidently, it would be quiet one-sided if only that would be the case. Cărbunariu’s

20/20 presents as rather with a spectrum starting from the factuality of the trauma to the

entirely subjective take on it. A prime example of the raw factuality is the following scene in

which the actors are sitting in a circle facing the audience. They begin chronologically citing

the names of the victims who arrived at the emergency clinic during the clashes, the age of the

victims, and the place of the injury. It confronts the audience with the immediate factuality of

the collective trauma, as also hungarian and romanian names are cited, both inhabitants and

visitor. This kind of take on the collective trauma is then opposed by a completely subjective

perspective. In a scene the audience hears a woman’s recount of the events of Black March:

’I was eight years old and my teeth were growing awry. We used to come up to Târgu-Mures once

a month, to have my braces adjusted, and I was making progress. We had an appointment for that

20th of March. My parents cancelled it in the last minute. And all the others to come. This circus of

yours has fucked up my smile for a lifetime.’3

It is an example how collective traumas can perpetuate and can be fixated in one individual. I

would also argue that this scene should be treated not as an individualistic case, but as an

anological extension to every individual who were affected by collective traumas but feel

alienated from the events and from other individuals who were affected just as same. This

scene shows that collective traumas exist as strongly in the indidual as in the collective, and

not only are the two exist in an endlessly perpetuating cycle, but that the two are inseparable

from each other. The scene previously cited – with the factual enumeration of the victims –

also seems to move towards the mashing up of the individual and collective layers by the
3
Cărbunariu, Gianina (director), 20/20, english translation by Albert, Mária, 16.
actors eventually talking over each other. So now the cited victims – who were stripped down

to their names and injuries – were no longer given space for their names to be heard but were

only constitutive voices in a collective and chaotic mass of raw data: all were equal but were

no more than one sound in the noisy echo of the trauma.

So far we have not touched upon the layers of the visual representation of the play. It is

important to note that in 20/20 – as previously stated – not only written and oral

documentation appears as sources through which history is mediated which then appear in a

theatrical form, but the theatrical form itself functions as a medium in which said documents

of the past are given form. The play most noticingly – but not only – does so by placing a

two-sided projector above the stage on which the translations of both romaninan and

hungarian texts appear. Conclusively, the past and the actual events that took place during the

ethncical clashes are presented through a series of acts of mediations until they reach the

audience. 20/20 aims to show and even thematize the following process: history first appears

through the documents which are themselves function as mediums, these mediums are then

given form in the performative space of the theater which at the same time incorporates and

exteriorizes said mediums. But it does so by giving them form, by channeling them through

its own corpus to the viewing of the audience. By emphasizing this process where the actual

events – hence history – only appear through a series of distorted lens, 20/20 raises concerns

in regard to theater as a definitive interpretative medium, forcing the audience to reconsider

its relation to its own past.

A prime example how the play thematizes this distortion is a scene when a romanian

student of architecture shows his drawing – projected on the double-sided monitor – to his

hungarian art teacher (see attachments). The display shows a perspective drawing; minimalist,

abstract, yet the two talk of it as it was fully detailed. The theacher goes on how it is not as

realistic as possible. As they continue to converse, the audience realises it depicts an image of
the aftermaths of the clashes – soldiers, tanks, and a ’carpet of broken glasses’. 4 The only

noteworthy thing is, according to the teacher, is a man and his daughter (not actually visible

on the display) – the father of the student and his little sister. I will leave this scene now, but

note how the only element of a purely realistic drawing is one most close to the subject doing

the drawing. How every enviromental object, the war-torn scene, the ruins upon which a

communal trauma have taken place, are all off. Only in the most subjective part of reality was

the student in accord with the expectation of the teacher who had demanded a drawing exactly

resembling reality. This scene – I would argue – depicts how communal (places of) traumas

are subjugated to different perspectives, and it is nearly impossible to find a common ground.

However, a mutual agreement on the impenetrable subjectiveness is achiavable by simply

acknowledging the other’s subjective reality – whose nature is diferrent in every person, yet

the fact that it is subjective is shared by everyone. Having drawn this conclusion, the

audience once again is forced to examine its own personal take on the subjective nature of

history.

Another way to shift the role of the audience from a witness of a mostly aesthetical

experience to actively rethink its own position is evidently satire and irony. We can see this in

a scene where the actors take turn to read out a manual instruction of a ’survival guide for

participants of ethnic clashes’ – each instruction repeated both in hungarian and romanian. By

paralelling the two texts – or more precisely duplicating each other – this playful structure

satirizes several layers of the subject of ethnic conflicts. The root of the irony is that the

instructions are an exact semantical match in both languages – only that one is in hungarian,

and the other in romanian – and that the reason of the existence of these texts depicting a

hostile environment is only dependent on the other: the other text, the other language, the

other group of ethnicity. Their existence is absurd because it has no true reason to exist or

characteristic of its own. This identical and codependent mode of existence is also a way to
4
Cărbunariu, 20/20, 37.
ridicule the preconditioned hostility which becomes meaningless when the reason of existence

of the element presupposing hostility becomes questionable. By basing the scene on the

absurdity of this codependence, the very nature of the ethnical clashes are brought into

question which follow the same (previously elaborated) line of thought as the texts, and thus

the nature of the ethnical clahes can be viewed as an allegorical amplification of the texts:

shared violence is absurd because it is codependent as well as identical to its opposite side – it

has no true reason to exist. Depicting this futility and making it a subject of ridicule, through

the means of laughter, 20/20 is further distances the audience from his own subjective take on

the events by the emptying and liberating nature of satire.

Lastly, let us look at the last scene of the performance which turns towards the future

more than any preceeding it by raising questions of the youth and thematizes their unclear

relationship towards the events of Black March. Assmann and Shortt names four general

factors that highly affect our perception of the past and the collevtive traumaus of history. In

the case of the Black March all four seems to be at play: political regime change, the changing

of the social frame, generational change, and certain media events. 5 As the change of a

political regime ’enforces an abrupt reorganization of memory by ushering a new value

system’, with that new value system, an evident change in the social areas are bound to

happen as well – some occuring faster, some persist for decades. 6 I, nevertheless, argue that

due to the digital revolution of our age the change of most sociatel frames occur faster than

before. This accelerating tendency poses a requirement for every kind of medium – theater,

televesion, online surfaces etc. – to address this issue whenever tackling with the

reconstruction of the past. The last scene of the performance seems to be doing exactly this by

reciting statements and questions from a generation whose primarly sources are heavily

filtered and appear only through the distorted lens of certain mediums. This phenomenon of

5
Assmann / Shortt, Memory Introduction, 7-8
6
Assmann / Shortt, Memory Introduction, 7
the current age also demands to urgently (re)visit questions of fragmentation of the past,

multi-narrativity, education, responsibility of previous generations, the barriers of language,

as these obstacels in forming a coherent narrative and social identity from the past seem to be

larger than ever. The scene addresses these problems by giving voice to individual comments

such as: ’It must be in Wikipedia... 5 dead, 2 Romanian, 3 Hungarian ... Sütő András...

Cofariu...’ ; ’Black March. One and a half million search results. Kuruc.info? Sixtyfour

Counties?’ ; ’The sequence with Cofariu being beaten was an all Western TV channels. They

thought he was Hungarian because he was wearing a green pullover.’ 7 Within these voices we

also find fragments of statements of indifference and positive opinions such as: ’We may have

a chance to talk more, not just in small groups. Perhaps we could speak even about the March

events in a more relaxed way. Now, that we have grown up. Why not? Do you think we

could?’8 By providing a mixture of voices, 20/20 once again commits itself to neither sides. It

only provides all the necessary tools for the audience to draw its own conclusion in the

framework of the whole play, the documents and the collectively shared – though not evenly

experienced – reality to which now they are to return. By making said reality the only and

immediate source of the play, and not commiting itself to a fixed interpretation of the past or

its archive – as, I would argue happens to any heavily text-based plays, e.g. a mise en scène of

Shakespeare –, the performance subverts the traditional role of theater. Here, in the case of a

heavily social and political play, theater does not appear as the primary purpose of the archive

in which it (the archive) can be given form. Visual, aesthetic representation becomes

secondary too. On the contrary, this type of documentalist theater only functions as an

admittedly open channel which serves only as a means to articulate social and political

questions. But the focus is on the audience to whom these questions are addressed. In relation

to these issues, this type of documentalist theater exists only as a secondary forum – whereas

7
Cărbunariu, 20/20, 51.
8
Cărbunariu, 20/20, 53.
traditional theater seems to function as the primary forum to represent said issues, to

implement them in an enclosed and aestheticized system of representations, which system is

first and foremost presented to the audience for viewing and only secondarily to actively

partake in the resolution of the presented issues outside of theater. In 20/20 the audience takes

on the role of the historian and partakes in a dialectic play between history and the present,

and while viewing the reenactement of an event – a communal trauma for example – it

simultaneously reconstructs the present from the past and the past from the present, all the

while looking straight into the future. In his book, The Angel of History, Stéphane Mosès

comments on Walter Benjamins’s take on the historian when examining non-contiguous

events, when:

’a new type of historical intelligibility is born, based not on a scientific model of knowledge, designed

to reveal the laws of historical process, but on a hermeneutic model, tending to the interpretation of

events, that is, toward illuminating their meaning. The ’telescoping’ of the non-contiguous events

engenders a new form of thought, in which the present fertilizes the past and awakens the forgotten or

repressed meaning it bears, while the past, in the heart of the present, discovers a new vitality.’ 9

But as I previously stated, due to the rapid technologization, the gaps which were always present in

relation to understanding history have been widening – such as the gaps betwen generations, social

frames etc. There is no reason then not to be able to apply this benjaminian take on the role of the

historian to the role of the audience as an active reconstructor of the past and the present.

I conclude this paper by clarifying some things. The terms I use such as ’traditional theater’ or

’actively partaking’ (etc.) are evidently broad terms and would require a more accurate elaboration

which would also call for a deeper analysis of the subject at hand. However, it was never the intention

of this paper to provide exact definitions and clear distinctions. I only wished to touch upon certain

notions which undeniably exist between the lose terms regarding documentalist theaters dealing with

individual or communal traumas. By doing so, I do not wish to exclude this type of documentalist

theater from the other kinds of theatrical practices. My only aim is to identify certain notions which

are the guiding characteristics of it and which are not given enough attention in other kinds of

9
Mosès, Stéphane, The Angel of History, in: Cultural Memory in the Present , 113. (original emphasis)
theatrical practises, thus opening up the subject for possible future studies concerning the relation

between documentalist theater and other types of theatrical practices.

Attachments

(1) The display of the student’s work

List of references

Assmann, Aleida / Shortt, Linda, Memory and Political Change: Introduction in: Memory and

Political Change

Cărbunariu, Gianina (director), 20/20, english translation by Albert, Mária

Jones, Amelia, The Now and the Has Been: Paradoxes of Live Art in History in: Perform, Repeat, Record:

Live Art in History

Mosès, Stéphane, The Angel of History, in: Cultural Memory in the Present