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IA: Please introduce yourself and describe what it is that you do.

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LT: I'm an independent producer, and I like to say about my work that I do everything that's not on the stage. I work with artists, choreographers, dancers, and theatre artists – 4 or 5 organisations – and I manage their projects. That means that I write the applications for getting funding, I work with them in developing their artistic topic and interests and if we get funding, I manage the projects and coordinate the team. I keep in contact with the partners, I make the schedule for all the activities, the contracts and the payments. All the administrative work. I put together all the parts, the artistic part, the communication part, the technical part and the institutional partners, if we have partnerships. And after the premiere, I manage all the financial reporting and final documentation that needs submitting at the end of the project.

IA: And it’s just you who does that?

LT: Yes. But this year, I had a colleague on one project who was in charge of a small part of the process. We had some workshops for teachers and students in 5 schools outside of Bucharest, and she was in charge of calling the schools and setting up a schedule. This was the first time when someone took a part that I was not coordinating. She just took it, did a great job and I loved it. I wish for many, many future collaborations like that.

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IA: What and who is Laura? You introduced what you do, who are you?

LT: I am a person. This is a question I needed to prepare for. So, this is a period of time where the political and the social context in Romania is influencing me a lot. Today I feel that I'm a person who's struggling to keep her - not optimism, because I started to hate this word - I feel that I’m struggling to not become sour. Because in general, I'm not sour at all, I'm very naïve and I still think that one day, I will contribute to making the socialist revolution and everyone will have equal chances. Now that I'm saying this loud, I feel stupid, but maybe one day. This faith is very hard to be killed in me. I'm struggling to keep my hope alive. Besides this I'm just a person who wants to have a break this Christmas, enjoy hot chocolate under a blanket with my cats and read some books because I only read 2 books the whole year and I'm very ashamed of it.

IA: What books have you read?

LT: I just finished a book yesterday evening, I read it in two days. It's like I haven't eaten books since forever and I got a big plate, and ate it with two hands. It's an alternative history book, mixed with true historical facts, mixed with fiction and the action is happening during Christmas 1926. It’s a crime and mystery because there are two cops looking for - guess what - fascist killers. It's like reading the present times. Now I have another one, I just started it this morning with my coffee, with short stories – it’s a mystery and a thriller about Christmas.

IA: What is your relationship to endings?

LT: My relationships with endings...in my non-professional endings I always need closure. Always. Sometimes I'm fighting for closure for years. The end might have been 10 years ago, but I’m still fighting to have closure in that situation. I really need closure in my life. Sometimes I manage to have closure by myself, like my brain is OK, this is closed, I’ve put it in a file, in a drawer and locked it away forever. But this is only when I am lucky enough for my brain to cooperate. Usually I need closure face to face, sometimes a ritual of closure where I just want to light a candle and sing some incantations to achieve that closure. But with professional endings, the situation is different.

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One time after the last performance of the season, my colleagues wanted to to go out and celebrate and while we were toasting, they said, “Yay, another project has ended, great, congratulations to everyone.” But another colleague made a small sign to the person who was toasting and said, “Hey. Not all of us are finished.” Because for me, that was just the beginning of the whole reporting process, which can take longer than the creation. Sometimes it’s 1-3 days of work, but if the project was complex, then I need to work 1-2 weeks because we have a really bureaucratic system in Romania. For all cultural projects we need to provide like 10,000 documents for every payment.

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I really appreciated that acknowledgement. I was feeling that it was the artistic end, but for me it was not the end end. The end of the artistic process is the beginning of my accounting work. At that point I change, I'm not a producer any more, I'm an accountant who makes Excel documents and calculates everything. So there are these two types of endings. After I finish this administrative part, it's process of closure, these weeks are full of papers and my office and desk is full of papers on the floor which are organised in categories - while everything looks like a mess, I know the system. It's my system. This is the end end of the process and where I close the circle.

And after I submit the accounting file, there’s this waiting time, because it takes a month or more for someone to verify the papers. So every phone call I get from an unknown caller I’m like, "OMG, is something wrong with the papers?" So I have another month of that. If they call you, if something is missing, you have three days only to solve it. After I finish, say the submission deadline is 15th November, then until 20th December they can call you anytime. "Are they gonna call me?" It's this one month of being scared whenever an unknown number calls me.

IA: What’s that like? They can question any receipt or any transaction? Has that happened to you?

LT: This year I submitted three final reports. For one they sent the second payment instalment and if everything is fine they will just transfer the second instalment. So it's just a matter of checking your bank account every day to see if they’ve transferred it. This means no phone calls and all’s good. On the second one I got a phone call because something was missing, but it was just a paper with a small summary of something. So that was very easy and now I’m waiting for the second payment. There was one time I needed to modify something and make some changes in the final report because I was making payments in Euros, but I put in the Excel document the currency exchange rate from our own bank account. This was not fine because the report needs to show the currency exchange provided by the national bank, not our personal bank. So, it was a difference of maybe 1 euro. I needed to redo that. I have colleagues who’ve experienced very difficult changes, but I’ve only had these small details to redo.

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IA: How do you mark your end or engagement with a project? What do you do?

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LT: When the second instalment is in our account, that's my end.

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IA: Do you pay everybody from that?

 

LT: Everyone is paid before. I need to pay myself and I leave myself till the end. So that’s another end. Me. I am the end. I am the payment end.

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IA: When you work with an artist or a company on a project, what do you do? Is there a formal evaluation or reflection period? Do you spend time thinking “I don't want to work with this artist again” or “I really enjoyed that”?

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LT: I had this situation where after a project, I didn't want to work with that artistic collective any more and we just spoke about it and I said, “OK, thank you.” It was our first and last collaboration because the topic wasn't interesting to me. I try to keep my focus on specific topics. Usually we don't speak a lot about projects and endings because we know that we’ll continue working together. When they have an idea, they will call me or I will call them. So we just spin the wheel constantly. Sometimes we organise feedback meetings after a project, sometimes we do it before starting a new project and speak about how the previous project went. Sometimes, e.g. when the end is in December, you barely catch anyone for a meeting, everyone just flows away and in January, everyone is not active. So in February the hustle starts. “What are we gonna do this year?”

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Endings are different with each organisation that I work with because they all have very different personalities and workflows. With some of them we might see an open call and apply with a project - even though we know that that specific project will be very independent and not related to anything that we've done before. Sometimes the artist has an idea that they need to explore. I have organisations I work with only on specific topics like political theatre, documentary theatre and anti racist workshops for children and teenagers. So everything we do is in this area, and sometimes it feels like we don't have an ending because if we have a documentary show that we present outside of Bucharest, and then if we don't present it any more, but we have workshops on similar themes, we consider it still part of our work. It's an ongoing process and we just change the activities, not the focus. I don't feel like there is an end here.

IA: Do you want there to be an end?

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LT: No. At least not in this organisation. I really feel that this is something that I want to do, organising and helping create cultural activities in places where they don't usually reach.

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IA: With a relationship that you have ended with an artist or a company, how did that feel? Did you initiate the end, or did somebody initiate the end for you?

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LT: I initiated the end and it was very hard because I don't know how to end things. I mean, I find it difficult to know how to end things, especially when it doesn't work for me, I think maybe I am the problem. Maybe I need to be better at this. Maybe I need to be different and I start telling myself lots of arguments. It was pretty hard to end it, to start the ending, but afterwards, it felt good because it reminded me why I choose to work as a freelancer and not in an institution. This is the most valuable thing that I have, I get to choose with whom I work with.

IA: Why is that valuable?

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LT: Because I can create some new practices - not only for myself - but for the organisations I work for with. When I was employed only in one organisation, I felt that a lot of the practices were already there. Yes, you can you can influence them, but they are there. If you hold a minority opinion...I had some values, and, of course, my values were taken into consideration, but the workflow of the whole organisation was not changeable. This was the thing that frustrated me a lot, I was working in places where I didn't fully agree with everything. It's not like now is an ideal situation, but it literally nourishes my soul when my colleagues say to me that working with you feels “very normal.” It doesn't sound like much, working normally, but especially in this field of dance where bullying and harassment is so present, I feel like feeling normal and feeling safe whilst working is amazing. Everyone works independently and there’s no hierarchy. Yes, I coordinate the project and the director is still the director - but I call this responsibility. We know that one person has more responsibility for a particular process, so we will credit that person accordingly.

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IA: Do you feel that you have ended your relationship with organisations or institutions? Would you not want to work in that context again?

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LT: I would love to work in a team because I feel so lonely. Most of the time I feel very lonely, and I would like to work in a stable, organic team because I feel that I'm this stable person but in different artistic teams. I need to be aware of all the processes that are happening in each of the organisations and it's exhausting. It's exhausting to know each of the internal processes and to manage those different internal workflows.

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IA: Instead of endings, can you talk about beginnings? What are you like at the beginning of a new relationship with an artist or with a company? How do you behave? What are you like in those moments?

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LT: At the beginning it is like I’m falling in love. I'm all excited and curious. I'm curious all the time, but getting to know an artist, a new team, discovering new work practices…but at the same time I'm also stepping on glass, because I know I get very excited, very fast, and I like people after 10 minutes. So, I try to be mature and not go full speed ahead ahead. But in my mind, I'm like, love, love, love.

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IA: If we're using the falling in love analogy, does that mean there's sometimes heartbreak at the end or a divorce?

LT: Not often. Sometimes. Sometimes I felt that the love went nicely into a friendship zone. Like, a chill friendship, something not very powerful. Sometimes, the love transformed into a very strong and profound care for others and for the team and the project. I think a divorce only happened once. One divorce. But sometimes I’ve gone back, we ended it, but we still try from time to time.

IA: Talk a little more about that, what brings you back from an end?

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LT: The content of a project. When I go back and I'm like, "OMG, for this project, I will come back and do it, because now I'm smarter, I know how to manage this relationship and it works." I’ve got better with this over the years.

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IA: We are in the final month of the 2024. What has this year been like for you in terms of dance?

LT: I feel that this year, even though I worked a lot in 2023...I'm referring to 2023 because it was the hardest working year of my life. But this year I’ve worked the same amount. Maybe I’m just used to it, so it felt manageable. 2024 came with a big pressure and hard work emotionally. Things like insomnia, dreaming at night, being afraid and taking big responsibilities like raising money, like the last chance to raise money. These type of things are a lot of emotional work. 2024 required a lot of emotional work.

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IA: Is that bleeding into your non-professional life then? If it's affecting your sleep and affecting your health. Why is that?

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LT: Because I'm unable to have a work life work balance, because of not having a team and not speaking about what's happening. Let's say you and me, we, manage and organise something. Information is shared between us and if a car hits me, someone else knows the information, this helps me a lot because I know that then I'm not the only one who can do it. I'm not saying this in an arrogant way. It's just that I'm alone and I'm not able to things. I don't know how to delegate because I don't want to put pressure on other people. When I'm alone, it's not like I can call someone and say “hey, let me update you with all my problems” because I need someone else to know them. If we were in an office or were working together for two days a week, at least then I could share my problems and they could share their problems with me. This is why it affects me, because it's everything here [points to face], sometimes I feel something leaks out of my ear and through my nose. Last week I was speaking with a very good friend of mine, she also works as a dance producer, about our current social and political context and we started talking about death and if we are afraid of dying. I told her that I just hope it would be quick. I mean, I'm afraid of pain, but not of death. The only thing that I'm afraid of is not to leave things unfinished. So if I could just send all the emails I need, all the figures. She was scared a bit.

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IA: Of what?

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LT: I don't know. It's this thing, I hate putting...I'm very afraid of putting someone else in this context of taking care of things because of my faults. For example, when I get sick, I feel guilty that I'm not able work. I don't want someone to break into my passwords and reach all my papers and documents, but recently I thought about making a folder with all my passwords in, so someone could find it and make it easier for people. On Facebook, I already nominated an heir to my account. In case of death, my friend will be able to close it. I told her you must close it - I don't want RIP on Facebook, it's creepy. When I sent her this and when she received the notification (of course I told her in advance and I asked for her consent) she was also scared. She was like, “Are you planning on dying?” I was like, no, I just need to produce my life and my afterlife.

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IA: That's a nice segue. How do you consider your own archive? How have you documented your practice? What do you think will be your legacy?

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LT: Until now I was just thinking about the practical legacy, like passwords, accounts etc. I would prefer my legacy to be kindness, rather than anything professional. I mean it's not that I invented professionalism, it would just be nice to inspire people to be kind and work kindly with their colleagues.

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IA: One of the things we spoke about before in terms of the archive, there are projects that we've both been involved with that have disappeared from the Internet. There's no documentation and no trace of those things. Can you talk a bit about that?

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LT: Yes. The situation here is clearer and pragmatic. There are projects that were online at some point, but this was also because we wanted them to be known and to let the world know what we do. It's also a very clear requirement when you get funding that you need to have some communication – a website, newspaper coverage etc. I feel that some of those invisible projects now only have continuity through us, as people. They are not online, there’s no digital or physical archive and this is because we don't have communication specialists to follow-up on this work. For example, a project that ended just now, we don't make a website for each project, we just add something onto the organisational website. But when a certain project ends and the money ends, the communication person who was supposed to create the content, write an article or update the website needs to be paid and there’s no money for that. So in between projects, I try to use money from the previous or forthcoming project – when we are in between two fundings – to make it work. So one thing is the lack of money to pay people, the other is that, this year we’ll work with a certain public relations expert, last year it was someone else. These types of collaborators are not permanent - like the producer and the artist - and we constantly get to this time where some of us will upload some pictures and write a text for free.

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IA: What have you lost? Are there things that you have lost that that are no longer documented?

LT: Do you mean projects that are not online any more? Yeah. Mostly projects from 2020. One of my biggest thoughts about loss is that in 2020, I produced a documentary theatre performance and we couldn't present it live because of COVID and all the restrictions, so we filmed it. We filmed it in a really professional way and we have a really good recording of it, we presented it five times and then it disappeared from from the Internet. I tried to put it on an online theatre platform, but we didn't have any subtitles and we need money not only for subtitles, but also for translation and it's a two hour performance. So it's just on my computer, on Google Drive and it feels frustrating. Not only because it’s not online and there’s no proof of my work, it's more like a responsibility for my colleagues and the artists who were involved in creating it. With this particular context, for me, it felt a bit like a failure because I was not able to make the most out of their work artistic work.

IA: Is there anything to do with endings and dance that you've not spoken about so far that you want to speak about?

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LT: I think endings are very complex and we need to speak more about them because sometimes they are very needed. I really think everything comes to an end. Even though the end can be in 10 years from now, endings are mandatory. I think that we need (and when I say we, I'm including myself in this and the people I work with in dance) to speak more about endings. We need to realise that sometimes we need to end things and not prolong them. I strongly believe that people feel when something needs to end, but we don't speak about it. So we just continue in a very not productive way. There are ways to develop a project and not bury it after one shot and there are some projects that don't deserve to to die so fast. I don't know the perfect word for it, to describe when you know that this needs to end. It's a matter of choosing your battle and choosing not to give all your energy towards something that needs to be finished. I always choose human relations over artistic quality and I'm very proud of that. I don't know if I have received some not so great feedback about the performances that I produced - and I acknowledge that my baby may not always be the most beautiful and the brightest one - but it's still my baby and I love it. I know when something is not great and will say so, but I prefer to work with lovely people rather working for a “great” or “big theatre” which would give me stomach pain

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IA: If you were in the end times and you could have a last dance with two people, who would they be, and what would that feel like?

LT: A personal dance or work dance?

IA: It's up to you.

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LT: No, you're making me you're making me choose between my friends. I can't. I can't. I can't even think of it. It would definitely be people I love and not at all related to the work I do. It would be very far off my work life, but for sure, it would be people I love. I will not even think about who are the first two people I love the most.

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IA: What is the best ending in dance that you've experienced?

LT: It’s the ending of every premiere night. Of all the shows I’ve worked on. It's just a feeling, not the ending of the night where we get some drinks. But the ending right after the show has finished, that very short moment. This is my driver in all my work and it’s a bit bizarre now I’m saying it, all this work for one minute on the premiere night. But I don't care, it's just a feeling that I feel every single time on every single premiere. The dancers have stopped and this is what I work for. Of course, if the public seems enthusiastic, it's better, but it's just a feeling that I have that it is very personal and intimate. Something that’s not shared with anyone else. It's just this thing that is mine. That's the best ending for me.

IA: Any last comments or questions?

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LT: I was thinking a lot about endings after you wrote me, so thank you for writing to me. Besides the fact that I think we need to choose our endings in a more profound way, I would like to find a solution, at least where I work, for working on projects after the initial funds have ended [on paper]. There could be state funds for in between projects, a fund to support people between projects to work on small tasks. The second thing was that maybe we could pay people more and let them know at the beginning that even though we signed this contract which says it will end on the date, please be aware that I put an extra amount for you to work afterwards that I cannot talk about on paper because everything “needs to end” and it's very difficult in the independent scene where people are struggling with money anyway to keep people attached to you or your projects. “Stick with me for one more euro for another month.” Sometimes endings happen with or without our consent. I know people will not stay just because Laura has asked you to work for a lot less money than you could get in a commercial PR contract. So this for me is a struggle, because if a team lacks a person, I know I can come and support or cover in some way, but not in PR. It’s the furthest from me, I think I could do lighting design better than communication. So maybe it's my fear that this area of work is impossible for me to cover and it’s also the most expensive job. It contributes a lot in how you end a project.

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