A new play in Romania, based on transcripts of interrogations conducted by the Communist-era secret police, is focusing attention on the still sensitive issues of solidarity and betrayal.Called „X Centimetres out of Y Kilometres”, the play, directed by 34-year-old Gianina Carbunariu, premiered this weekend at the international festival „Temps d’Images” in Cluj, in northwestern Romania.
Before rehearsals began, Carbunariu, whose works have been translated and performed in countries including Ireland, France, Germany, Poland and Austria, carried out research at the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS).
Set up in the late 1990s, the CNSAS houses some 1.8 million files. They hold information on hundreds of thousands of Romanians who were spied upon by the former Communist regime.
When the documents were made accessible by the public, many people who had been persecuted or imprisoned by the secret police discovered that they had been turned in by a neighbour, a relative or even their best friend.
After reading dozens of files, Carbunariu and her actors chose a transcript of the interrogation undergone by Romanian dissident writer Dorin Tudoran, which made up „a few centimetres” of the kilometres of CNSAS archives.
In 1980, Tudoran spoke out against the „disastrous situation” in Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu’s dictatorship, when people were suffering from food shortages and living in unheated apartments.
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