Km. 0 (Kilometer 0) is an original, full-length, performance installation created by Oana Botez that will take place in an abandoned phantomatic Communist-era building synonymous with the autocratic rule of Ceausescu. Using autobiographical detail, and addressing the complicated history of Botez’s family and homeland, Km. 0 looks at what it means to be Romanian today given the country’s legacy of displacement, socio-political violence, and the blurring of lines between the real and surreal that forced a schizophrenic and fractured existence. It is a story about the struggle for survival in the face of oppression, and the fight to define one’s own identity after existing in a cultural void, and losing one’s home and life at its very core.
Km. 0 will integrate disparate theatrical modes that explode dramatic structure: filmed documentary footage contrasted with live performance; spoken-word, opera and electroacoustic urban Gypsy music; hip-hop dance and ballet. The goal is to create a dynamic living environment that through its contrasts of old and new, will transform the the dying building, and the characters performing within it, into fully-realized, living, liberated entities.