What kind of recent history is tackled by a theatre which documents realities often banished from the realm of the only “historical truth”? How are different historical contexts, accessible through written documents, archives and oral histories, approached and interpreted by theatre discourse? How are uncomfortable and politically problematic recent histories made into theatre and what are the performative lenses through which they are filtered? To what extent do artistic acts which question recent history end up legitimizing mainstream political strategies, thus enforcing the dominant narrative?

The theme of issue #7 of the Gazeta de Artă Politică – Recent History Theatre – focuses on a series of controversial, contested and ignored events, tackled from an engaged socio-political outlook in performances which have shaped documentary theatre discourse in Romania and Moldova in recent years.

Factual history, fueled by the wie es eigentlich gewesen (“how it actually was”) principle, which attempts to impose a positivist “historical truth”, represents the dominant historiographical model of the post-socialist period in Romania and Moldova. In the last 7-8 years, the artistic attempts to question the commonly-held views over the recent history of Romania and Moldova have gradually begun to initiate a debate on the historiographical canon, which is one of the main suppliers of the ideology of the transition period. By means of performative elements, an artistic project which presents and represents an event from the recent past (from World War 2 to the present day), excluded form historiography or from history textbooks, can reveal the multitude of meanings which have been attributed to that event by various social actors. At the same time, such a project can reveal the perspective of certain marginalized groups on everyday life during a certain historical period, thus opening the way for debating the selection of historical elements regarded as relevant for historiography and questioning the dominant narrative.

Issue #7 of the Gazeta de Artă Politică – focusing, in its print version, on theatre performances from Romania and Moldova – aims to investigate artistic projects which:

–          Discuss socially impactful events in recent history, which have either been ignored or treated in a one-sided manner, in performances which rely on archival research, oral history and/or online research;

–          Make visible the outlooks of social actors marginalized during oppressive regimes (fascist, Soviet, capitalist etc.);

–          Bring relevant topics from recent history into the political and artistic sphere by means of performative interventions.

We kindly invite you to contribute with your reviews, essays, analyses and interviews in order to broaden the approaches which issue #7 aims to emphasize. We look forward to receiving your contributions for the website on issues pertaining to, but not limited to, cinema, visual arts, literature, cultural studies and recent history at: gazeta@artapolitica.ro