Performance in Romanian only.
Text: Raluca Mănescu
Cast: Denisa Nicolae
Duration: 1h
Age recommendation: 18
"When we were little, our mother used to tell us about the Diomede Islands, the small Diomede Island and the big Diomede Island, located somewhere in the world. She said that even though there's only a 3.4 km distance between these two islands, the time difference between them is 23 hours. So, if you were to travel from one island to the other, you could practically travel through time. You could leap from Yesterday’s island to Tomorrow’s island.
And I began to doubt, I began to wonder: 'What if?' What if I could go back in time? What if in this space between what has already happened on one island and what hasn't happened yet on the other one, things could actually unfold differently? What if we could slip through the cracks of time and have a different kind of ending? A happy one?"
Based on her own experience of losing a child, playwright Raluca Mănescu has written the text “Urme,” a delicate, intimate, and playful one-woman show in which she tries to unravel the fragile balance between love, death, and the power to move forward.
“Urme” is an exploration of the human experience in the face of grief and loss, a reminder that even in the midst of shadows, there exists the possibility of discovering light and, unexpectedly, embracing life.
“Urme” will have its first reading in Timișoara, performed by actress Denisa Nicoale. The reading performance is hosted by Auăleu Theater.
The two proposed reading performances will have 3 important moments: 1. audience welcome by the main actress (being a performative text, it will be important to build a relationship with the audience - 10 minutes), then 2. Reading of the text, 60 minutes and 3. A 10-15 minute session of ritual-artistic actions, during which the audience can reflect on their own processes of loss and mourning. The text will function as an exercise of self-reflection on the theme of death and loss, so after the Reading of the text (in which members of the audience will also participate, as it is a participatory text), we will invite the audience to immerse themselves in a series of ritual-artistic actions derived from the text of the play. The duration of these unique reading performances will be 80-90 minutes.
Artist: Raluca Manescu