Old Secret Police Files Inspire New Romanian Play

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 Centimeters out of Y Kilometers", 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 neighbor, 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 centimeters" of the kilometers 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.

When he asked to be allowed to emigrate, he was subjected to interrogation and threats.

In 1985, after going on hunger strike, he was finally allowed to leave the country and he settled in the United States.

The transcript of his interrogation by the local head of the Communist Party's propaganda department, the chairman of the writers' union and a "technician" who was actually a Securitateagent, makes up the body of Carbunariu's play.

"These transcripts were not a hundred percent accurate," as sometimes the Securitate altered the reality to suit its own goals, Carbunariu said.

In order to convey the gap between the transcript and what Tudoran had really said, the actors switch places, turning from the accuser into the accused and vice-versa.

They perform in spaces left empty by the audience who can sit where they want in the auditorium, sometimes putting the theater goers in the middle of the interrogation.

Video effects by Romanian artist Ciprian Muresan reinforce the impression of permanent surveillance, with webcams placed on the interrogators' table and in various corners.

"There was no solidarity with this man. He was turned in by his very friends and acquaintances," Carbunariu said.

"The lack of solidarity was and unfortunately still is the norm" in Romania, she added, citing a recent meeting called in support of downtrodden pensioners to which only one person turned up.

"This context in which citizens are discouraged to show solidarity towards one another was born in the Securitate years," she stressed.

"It's also dangerous that many young people born after the 1989 revolt know nothing about what happened under the Communist regime."

Many of the play's lines ring a familiar bell in modern-day Romania with its unending political corruption scandals.

There were plenty of smiles among the theatre audience when Tudoran asks his accusers, "Are there laws and the notion of legality in this country?"