A week in Iași, Romania!

How do you connect?

4th November, 2024

Imagine this, it is week 2 of a 5 week project, you are having a conversation with a group of your friends discussing connection and how you plan on building relationships with the students in Romania. I am very nervous. I have been friends with all of these people for so many years now that I can’t even remember how I got to know them!

So when we are set a task that afternoon by our tutor, and we were each handed an envelope with the strict instructions to open when we were alone – I had no idea what to expect. The task was inspired by the work of Curious, a theatre company who work with actors from 6-18 years old. Inside the envelope was a letter, neatly folded in half, and on it a list of instructions. You must pack a suitcase that will be opened by one of your classmates anonymously, and in the suitcase you must pack the following:

  • The music or sound you need for the journey ahead
  • The nourishment that will sustain you
  • The outfit, material or special clothing you will wear
  • The thing you could not leave behind
  • The smell you could not live without
  • The item you hold most dear
  • The piece of writing you never truly understood
  • The object that troubles you
  • The object that delights you

All this, along with a letter for the person who will open the suitcase and instructions for what to do with the contents..

The experience of opening another person’s suitcase and going through their personal belongings was incredibly intimate and vulnerable, I cannot compare it to anything I have experienced before. I immediately felt connected with this person, I was uncovering very personal information that they were trusting me with and although I did not know who had packed the suitcase we nonetheless had made some sort of a connection.

Following the ‘suitcase task’ we sat and had a debrief about the experience and discussed how it made us feel, everyone agreed it had helped us build deeper connections and we felt closer as group.

This exercise made me completely rethink my perspective on connection and building relationships, there is no reason to hold back. Certainly there are often reasons we hold back in our day to day lives, whether that is from a lack of trust or confidence, or for the sake of professionalism. To open up to someone and be vulnerable is scary, but you must be brave – this was an important lesson that I learnt that day and I will take with me on my travels in Romania.

Hi, I’m Nina …

Easy enough building connections with people you already know, but how on earth do you introduce yourself to strangers who speak English as a second language, let alone build connections with them? I feel like I’m in Year 7 on my first day of secondary school, swamped by a sea of unfamiliar faces all over again!

These conversations we had had as a group instigated further questions about how we should introduce ourselves, and our work. Not only would I have to consider language and articulation when introducing myself to , but I also would have to consider what version of myself I was going to present? So how then, do you introduce 8 performers from a different country to do a performance that is presented in a foreign style and a language that is unfamiliar?

A rehearsal clip from the devising process of the introduction to the show, including some different languages.

Let’s make it really easy. My name is Nina and I come from Wales, which is a country on the West border of England. Simple. And now suddenly you have 8 British students all introducing themselves with their varying accents and pronunciations.

At this moment it felt necessary for me to chip in, as a trilingual speaker, it felt necessary for me to suggest including some different languages into the introduction. After all we were going to be in a country that is full of so many different languages and dialects, why should we hold back? Between us 8 performers we had 7 languages: English, French, Dutch, Romanian, Welsh, German and Spanish. So no longer was I introducing myself as Nina from Wales, instead I was saying “Helo, enw fi ydi Nina ac rwy’n dod o Gymru, sut ydych chi heddiw? Ydych chi’n iawn?” (Translation from Welsh: Hello, my name is Nina, how are you today? Are you well?).

As we continued to develop the introduction, we adapted the playfulness of the scene with some presentational techniques. Once I had spoken my lines in Welsh the rest of the ensemble made a moment of reminding me to speak in English, this not only added humor and broke the tension but it was a moment intended to feel relatable for the Romanian students considering the confusion of different languages that they were hearing.

So …. we have an introduction now!