Down to Work! MAN.IN.FEST

MAN.IN.FEST was more than a publication about performance culture. It was a critical discourse space, based on what is called cross-art in performance culture, that is to say the intersection between flowing practices and concepts, defined by the combustion of aesthetic limits in a de-dramatisation of genres.

It has been a thorough theoretical construction, in a context where, in Romania, we get less and less such initiatives to come up with crossed research methods. MAN.IN.FEST did not stop to reviews of stagings or films. In included and developed, issue by issue, a social reception of the performance phenomenon, an extended perception that multiplied the depth connections between what we see and what we experience. MAN.IN.FEST proposed several writing formulas, highlighting the variety of discourse typologies, specific to the most diversified of approaches: sociological analysis, anthropological investigation, report, review, essay, etc.

Issue Number 2 of 2011 is, unfortunately, the last in a series that managed to bring quality in the theoretical and practical laboratory, which is so rare in Romania.

As Miruna Runcan says in issue number 2 editorial - “It is miraculous that we lasted, from the paper printed series in 2003-2004, to the (extended) soft cover edition in 2004 and 2005, and then the quarterly one, until the present: for eight years’’.

Since 2007, MAN.IN.FEST devised a series of thematically structured files, to complete the Quotidian Drama Laboratory, a higher research project which, beyond theoretical reflection, came with a reflection on contemporary drama practices. The texts created within this laboratory entered a partnership with various contemporary realities, from an interdisciplinary approach.

In this (still hope not) last issue – you may read an extended file on Work vs. Play. The file includes an introductory text by Miruna Runcan, short statements of “jobbists” with ages between 17 and 26, taken by Cristina Iancu, an interview marking the places that a young worker went about - Dan Achiroaie, taken by Alexa Băcanu, and some other professional interventions discussing the history of work and the “play plans” of those for whom work is often a way of being occupied.

MAN.IN.FEST proposed a live communication space for the performance society in Romania and benefited from plurireferential thinking.

To me, MAN.IN.FEST means, apart from all those who made this magazine exist, two names: Miruna Runcan and C.C.Buricea-Mlinarcic. It is them I want to extend my thanks to for having created this unique cultural precedent in Romania.