🇳🇴 Les på norsk
I started studying acting in the last millennium and graduated in this one. Perhaps the turn of the millennium had something to do with the way the theatre world changed afterward. I think I was part of the last wave of theatrical bohemia.
I like writing about actors and acting, and about what I experienced in the first ten years of this millennium. I don’t know what the atmosphere is like after a performance in Romanian theatre today, but I’m glad I lived through a time when every show was followed by a kind of spontaneous team building. A sort of post match discussion, a chance for those of us who had found each other onstage that evening to enjoy being together.
I mean “the beer afterward”: a necessary exercise, I believe, though probably too frivolous to be mentioned in articles on acting pedagogy.
“The beer afterward” was a bit like… “the cigarette afterward.” You get the idea. Perhaps people still do this today; I don’t know. We never left without it. It didn’t matter who had money and who didn’t: somehow, there was always enough for everyone to have a beer.
That was where we talked about that evening’s performance, made jokes and laughed a lot. Sometimes we cried, too. Sometimes people argued, though more often than not they made up. Then those who wanted more stories moved on to a place near another theatre, where other colleagues had finished their show and were now taking part in the show after the show. A bit like New Year’s Eve for waiters, if you see what I mean.
Until I left Romania, I still had this routine after every performance of Abracadabra, a children’s show at the National Theatre in Bucharest. Admittedly, it ended around two in the afternoon, so “the beer afterward” had been demoted to “the Coke afterward.” We didn’t even sit in a bar anymore. Marian Râlea would pick up a few cans of soda for everyone at a Petrom petrol station, and he, Adina and I would stay and gossip for an hour or so. Then we each went our separate ways.
An older actor who is no longer with us told me about an even lovelier custom from before mobile phones. Some actors would get an admission ticket to Romanian Radio early in the morning, before going to rehearsals at the theatre, just to sit and talk with colleagues who were recording a radio play or something else there that day.
But back to the story at hand. Although I believe the best advice is not to listen to advice, I’ll allow myself one suggestion for young actors today: stay with the company for a while after the show. Even if you don’t drink alcohol, even if smoking in bars is no longer allowed, even if none of you can afford a beer at a bar, even if life is expensive and rents have gone up shamelessly. It could just be a Coke from a petrol station, shared while sitting on the kerb.
I don’t know whether “the beer afterward” made us better actors, but I know for certain that it made us actors who were “more together.”