SIRENS: (IN BETWEEN) HOMES

Tickets

Free, but reservation required.

Venue

Fabrica Clujana / Clujana Factory, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Date & Time

07, 09, 13 – 16 July, 2023 @ 18.00

Language

Romanian

As a country Romania has a rich history of people migration from and to all corners of Europe. Could this history inform a debate about the challenges facing a united Europe today? Employment, migration, identity? The latest form of migration is a perpetual transitioning back and forward from the birth-country to the work-country, neither of them being truly a “home” anymore. Sometimes as a migrant all you can call home is that feeling, encapsulated in the music that reminds you of the times you had at home, with all your dear ones close by.

Chapter 11 from Joyce’s Ulysses is the chapter about the Sirens, with much emphasis on the theme of the ‘other’, family relationships, the loss of loved ones, absence and presence. The public event which took place in Cluj-Napoca revisited this chapter from the perspective of the massive migration of Romanians abroad (of different ethnicity, gender, age and at different moments throughout history), and, more precisely, followed the effects of this migration on families. 

The public event was an immersive-promenade theatre performance, which ensured a closer relationship between the audience and the production, its themes, and questions – it invited participation and, implicitly, a more active role for the public. This theatrical collage took place in a public space, a transitory space – an industrial site, a closed factory, which directly relates to the issue of job accessibility and employment, and, on a broader level, to the corruption and collapse of the Romanian political system, betrayals which represent some of the core reasons for Romanians’ decisions to leave the country. 

Through revisiting different moments in the long history of migration (work or politically related), the different reasons for leaving and the numerous effects that these departures have on families, our main goal was to question what the fundamental motives are of these quests, their benefits and downsides, as well as to identify possible ‘well-being’ resources for coping with the reality that after 1989 (when the communist system fell) between 3 and 4 million Romanians left their country and that now migration represents one of the key causes of population decrease from around 22,8 million at the 1992 census to around 19 million in 2022.