UNAGE 2025, Vol 15, No. 2

Tribunal theatre asserts itself as an engaged artistic form that transcends aesthetics to become an instrument of symbolic justice, civic pedagogy, and social activism. It intervenes where traditional legal systems prove ineffective, inaccessible, or corrupt, providing a space in which injustices are brought before the public and collective traumas are acknowledged. Through participatory methods, based on real documents and staged reconstructions, spect-actors become witnesses, jurors, or active participants in processes of moral and social reflection. The function of tribunal theatre includes legal education, the democratization of rights-related knowledge, the recovery of collective memory, and the promotion of civic responsibility. Examples such as The Congo Tribunal, The Colour of Justice, or local projects in Romania illustrate its impact on public consciousness, symbolic reconciliation, and the generation of social change. In post-conflict or post-totalitarian contexts, tribunal theatre becomes a versatile instrument: a living archive, a space for ethical repair, an educational forum, and a platform for activism, demonstrating the capacity of art to transform public perception of justice and collective responsibility.

This article examines the relationship between Romanian state cultural policies and the emergence of a Roma theatrical movement over the past two decades. Although the recommendation to establish a State Roma Theatre appears recurrently in governmental strategies, institutionalization remains blocked, revealing the limits of the official discourse of inclusion. The study contextualizes this absence within the historical continuity of Roma marginalization, from slavery and eugenic racism to distorted representation in dominant culture. Drawing on conceptual frameworks proposed by Stuart Hall, theatre becomes a space of symbolic resistance, where memory, social justice, and the reconfiguration of collective identity are articulated through artistic expression. The analysis maps the main contemporary Roma theatrical initiatives, highlighting how they function as autonomous forms of knowledge production and challenges to cultural hegemony. In the absence of an institutional infrastructure, Roma theatre acquires political and epistemic value, proposing an alternative model of representation within the Romanian cultural sphere.

This article addresses the relationship between dreams and memory and focuses on the hypothesis that the process of dreaming contributes to memory consolidation. To understand this mechanism, the study considers dreams experienced in various stages of sleep and so-called "waking dreams," or reverie. Pro and con arguments, both enthusiastic and skeptical, are presented on the ability of dreams to influence memory and of memory to "dictate" dreams. The focus of this article is on the intersection of dreams, memory, and consciousness, a triad that emerges as a hypothetical fertile ground for the formation and understanding of theatrical dreams.

This paper explores the parallels between Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) and Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman (1996), two works separated by medium, tone, and historical context, yet bound by a shared dramatic structure: waiting. Through a comparative analysis, it examines how theatrical techniques and mockumentary aesthetics generate emotion and absurdity across stage and screen. Beckett’s play presents existential futility through minimalist performance and cyclical time, while Guest’s film transforms the mockumentary form into a study of aspiration, delusion, and human vulnerability. Both works use absence, specifically the unseen figures of Godot and Guffman, as a central narrative force, revealing how performance itself becomes a response to uncertainty. Ultimately, this study argues that in both theater and film, the act of performing, whether as endurance or self-invention, constitutes a profound form of resistance against meaninglessness.

Dancing for musicals includes several forms and styles of dance. And how else could it have evolved if not through an equally eclectic history, starting from Greek and Roman theatrical performances (from 500 BC onwards) to the dazzling musicals of today. From performances in which it played a supporting role in drama shows, operas and morality plays, dance gained its own identity in the 19th century, in minstrel and vaudeville shows. Later, it would manage to occupy an important place in Broadway musicals, because it evolved with each period to better support the stories and connect with the audience. The men who created the choreographies were initially called dance directors and later choreographers. They strove to integrate dance into the storyline of the musicals and became directors-choreographers who created conceptual musicals and dance musicals. But gradually, women demonstrated their skills as creators of musicals and helped evolve not only dance, but also Broadway musicals.

Costache Antoniu remains one of the defining personalities of Romanian theater, a complete artist who exemplarily combined stage talent, pedagogical vocation, and the desire to promote theater culture. His training in Iași laid the foundation for his entire career: at the Conservatory, under the guidance of State Dragomir, he learned the importance of rigorous analysis of roles and the idea that the stage also has a moral mission, that of contributing to "righting wrongs." Mihai Codreanu refined his diction and instilled in him the belief that art is the expression of emotion filtered through reason, while Mihai Sadoveanu, as director of the National Theater, offered him his first real support by hiring him as a "probist" in 1920. Alongside the master Vernescu-Vîlcea, Antoniu perfected his understanding of the Caragiale tradition, thus preparing himself for the difficult years of wandering through provincial theaters. His career, built step by step, illustrates admirable perseverance. As a teacher, he passed on to younger generations the essential principles of the Iași school—artistic sincerity and naturalness. His appointment as rector of the "I. L. Caragiale" Institute of Theater and Cinematographic Art confirmed his ability to transform his stage experience into a true model of professional training. Costache Antoniu's legacy lies in the harmony between the realistic tradition and the profound humanity of his performances, marked by naturalness, discreet irony, and warm humor, becoming a benchmark of professionalism and modesty for the entire profession.

This article focuses on Mihail Sebastian's play The Nameless Star, staged at the ”Elvira Godeanu” Drama Theater in Târgu Jiu, and offers a reflection on suspended time and human fragility, in a subtle encounter between the worlds of Mihail Sebastian and Chekhov. Marin Miroiu, like Chekhov's characters, lives in a reality weighed down by routine, finding refuge in astronomy, a space where ideals can breathe. Mona's appearance disturbs this stagnant balance, like the arrival of the soldiers in Three Sisters, revealing the hidden vulnerabilities of the small community. Miss Cucu, the student, Udrea, and the entire provincial world carry Chekhovian echoes, oscillating between rigor, dreaming, and the need to escape. In counterpoint, the elderly couple introduced in the staging becomes an image of the possible destiny of Mona and Miroiu, a poetic and degraded projection of their unfulfilled love. The character Ichim, an inner vibration of the show, tries in vain to awaken the spirits of the others, reminding them that time can be both a prison and a gateway to miracles.

Silent acting occupies an unusual position in performance studies: it is at once historically bounded by early cinema and yet persistently relevant as a model for understanding embodied expression. This article examines the silent actor as a site where cognition, nonverbal communication, and artistic technique converge. Drawing from film history, cognitive science, and performance theory, the study argues that silent performance functions as a laboratory for analyzing how bodies generate meaning and emotion in the absence of speech. After outlining the historical evolution of silent acting and the diverse traditions that shaped it, the article incorporates research in embodied cognition and spectator theory to explore how viewers infer intention, affect, and narrative from physical behavior. Technical aspects of silent performance, like gesture, posture, rhythm, facial micro- expression, and the actor’s relationship to the camera, are examined in detail to reveal how silent actors crafted expressive precision. Contemporary applications are analyzed through examples from modern cinema, animation, and motion-capture performance, demonstrating the enduring relevance of silent-era principles. Case studies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Asta Nielsen illustrate how individual actors developed distinctive expressive vocabularies grounded in bodily form. The article concludes by arguing that silent acting not only enriches film and performance scholarship but also contributes to ongoing scientific discussions about perception, empathy, and the embodied mind.

Theater in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a complex cultural phenomenon shaped by historical, religious, and migratory influences. Unlike Western theatrical traditions, which are deeply rooted in historical continuity and professionalization, theater in the UAE is a relatively recent development, largely driven by expatriate communities rather than local demand. This paper explores the evolution of theater in the UAE, its historical background, religious influences, and its current state, drawing from both scholarly sources and firsthand experiences. The study aims to analyze how theater is perceived, practiced, and integrated into the cultural fabric of an Islamic country with a rapidly growing global identity.

The article investigates how the performance Mutter, directed by Dumitru Acriș, rearticulates the themes of poverty, courage, and compromise through a complex hybridization of Stanislavskian psychological realism and Brechtian distancing techniques. The analysis follows the concrete mechanisms of stage construction—mise-en-scène, space, rhythm, gesture, and object—in order to highlight how these elements generate a representation that is simultaneously emotional and critical. Poverty functions as an organizing principle of the scenic universe, shaping behaviours and relational dynamics. The performance alternates realistic sequences with moments of social commentary, transforming the individual story into a reflection on contemporary socio-economic mechanisms. The result is a form of modern social theatre that establishes a dialogue between the interiority of lived experience and the lucidity of analysis.

The present paper starts from the idea of abuse that is generated by emotionality that is not properly managed either by spectators or stage professionals. Taking into consideration the psychological aspects of emotion and the way emotion is used in stage expression, it is emphasized that the idea of controlling emotion is as pernicious as the idea of letting oneself fall prey to emotion. It is noted that emotion, seen as a process of survival of the self, should not be automatically dismissed as series of micro-actions devoid of reason. Emotions can, however, be interchanged and transformed until they exhaust their energy. It also examines how, from a theatrical perspective, emotion is not only seen in facial expressions, but practically resides in the actor’s entire stage behaviour. At the same time, it is discussed that emotion, from a scenic point of view, is not exhibited, communicated by the actor, but is perceived by the spectator in a detectivist way.

Regardless of the type of theatre researched and practiced at the beginning of the third millennium, what remains constant is the aspiration of theatre practitioners to confront texts of the great dramaturgy capable of generating revelation and emotion and in which we find characters structured on the narrow strip between misery and ecstasy. From this perspective, the present work discusses aspects of Uta Hagen’s method according to which the actor creates his own character through series of transfers from his personal experiences to the life of the character in the play. We advance the idea that Hagen’s method makes the connection between K.S. Stanislavski’s method and that of Eugenio Barba, respectively between the creation of the role through affective identification and the creation of the score by weaving characteristics of a mythical or contemporary figure with parts of the actor’s biography.

The research project “Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. An Applied Investigation of Actorial Processuality” proposes an innovative exploration of the mechanisms of constructing, transferring, and deactivating a character in contemporary acting, using a practice-based research methodology. The study aims to generate a set of pedagogical and artistic tools related to entering a character and exiting it instantaneously, in the context of small cast productions and the contemporary need for increased actor versatility. The article seeks to analyze the structure of the project, its interdisciplinary directions, and the novelty of the approach in relation to national and international research. It is also a reflection of the working dynamics within an artistic laboratory, illustrating how, at times, research objectives can produce unexpected outcomes that enrich a field of knowledge.