25 Years of Making Theatre in a Classroom

Most of our rehearsals don't begin on a stage, but in a classroom, where we move the desks, make as much room as we can, bring in the props and start rehearsing. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't, and sometimes we simply have to start again. This is more or less how I have been making theatre with the students of Masca Theatre Company for 25 years.

Masca began in 2002, during my first year at Emil Racoviță High School in Baia Mare, Romania. I loved theatre and wanted to do something with my students that did not quite fit into a Romanian language and literature lesson. I don't think I wondered then how long it would last, and I certainly didn't imagine that, 25 years later, I would still be moving desks for rehearsals and beginning again every autumn with another group of teenagers.

Every autumn, new students arrive, most of them in the ninth grade and still not knowing one another very well. Some seem at home from the very first rehearsal, while others need more time before they dare to step into a role. The older students help them because they remember being the new ones too, and then, somewhere between rehearsals, forgotten lines, performances, laughter, disagreements and all the things that never go quite as planned, the months and years pass. Without really noticing when it happens, the youngest ones become the oldest.

And then comes the final year, when we have to say goodbye. For many years, we have had a performance especially for the students who are leaving Masca, and by then we have shared four years of rehearsals after classes, performances, trips, costumes, music and all sorts of last-minute solutions. For the audience, it is another performance. For us, it is also the moment when we realise that one more generation has grown up and that, after the final line, this particular group will never be together in quite the same way again.

Then autumn comes, new students arrive, and we move the desks again.

In 25 years, there have been many performances, festivals, journeys and awards, but when I think about Masca, these are not the first things that come to mind. I think of a classroom after lessons are over, with the desks pushed aside, scripts on the tables, props wherever we can find room for them and a group of teenagers who have chosen to stay at school a little longer to make theatre.