Simó Emese wrote about her lecture: “Staging ‘the classics’ these days is one of the most challenging tasks from an actor’s perspective. Many times, I have observed that I, the actress in me, and the theatre are three entities which are very remote from one another. While the theatre keeps pace with contemporary arts, I cannot truly enjoy it because I feel that my acting abilities are constantly lacking something. As a result, the main topic of my Ph.D. research became concerned with the understanding of the position of the actor in contemporary theatre by using psychodrama techniques. According to it, avoiding conventional acting approaches could be one of the possibilities of deconstruction. Because of my Ph.D. research, I had the opportunity to follow the whole process of creating the performance Uncle Vania by A. P. Chekhov, directed by the well-known Slovenian theatre director, psychodrama psychotherapist, and university professor Tomi Janežič for The State Small Theatre of Vilnius (Valstybinis Vilniaus Mažasis Teatras). Since I am planning to use the entire experience as a significant part of my Ph.D. thesis, I decided to write a rehearsal diary from which I will share some parts during the presentation, mentioning the following topics: how to avoid classical theatre conventions; performing life logic on the stage, not theatre logic; stereotypical interpretations of Chekhov’s characters and stories; using the principles of psychodrama as a tool for a profound understanding of the point of a scene or role; detachment from the role (techniques of reversing roles, talking about themselves in the third person); the importance of the audience’s viewpoint; and the director as a partner and not as a figure of authority. The lecture will contain video recordings from the rehearsal period and demonstrations of the use of the principles of psychodrama in acting approaches involving the audience as potential partners.”
(The photographs in the presentation were used by the agreement of the Valstybinis Vilniaus Mazasis Teatras, credit: Dmitrij Matvejev.)
Simó Emese, born on the 26th of December 1990, is a Romanian-born freelance actress based in Hungary, and a Ph.D. candidate at the Theatre and Film Ph.D. School, Babeș-Bolyai University, where she also received her BA (2012) and MA (2014) in acting studies. She is an expert on both independent and institutional theatre-making from the point of view of an actress, dancer, creative consultant, writer, and assistant director. She has also taken up the role of a stage director for one of her recent projects. As an actress, she had the opportunity to collaborate with remarkable theatre directors such as Silviu Purcarete, Kokan Mladenovic, Tomi Janezic, Tom Dugdale, Urban Andras, and Radu Afrim. She was awarded a prize for best actress under the age of 30 and received the Pro Cultura Timisiensis prize for her cultural activities in Timisoara, the European Capital of Culture 2021. She has been the recipient of several artistic scholarships and is currently collaborating with the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius thanks to the Erasmus+ Traineeship Program. In addition to acting, she is also attending the Psychodrama Practitioner Training in Budapest and Targu Mures, integrating it more fully into her Ph.D. research topic, which is ‘Interconnections between psychodrama and acting approaches’. Challenging her artistic boundaries, facing personal and educational issues in the field of arts in Romania, she had decided to become a freelancer in order to rediscover self-expression and authenticity. For that reason, she participates in various international workshops in the field of acting, psychodrama, and theatre education. Her dream is to elaborate an Artistic Retreat Program for everybody who needs to find a retreat in the self-creative process.