Ion Cojar facts for kids
Ion Cojar (born January 9, 1931 – died October 18, 2009) was a Romanian acting teacher and theatre director. He created a special method that completely changed how actors were trained in Romania.
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Ion Cojar: A New Way to Act
Ion Cojar was born in Recaș, a town in Timiș County. He changed the old way of teaching acting in Romania. Before him, actors were taught to pretend, imitate, or copy emotions and characters. Cojar believed this was not real enough.
He introduced a new idea: actors, directors, and teachers should create situations where real feelings and actions can happen. This means actors should go on stage or film sets and experience true psychological processes. These processes cannot be planned or controlled ahead of time. When actors do this, they actually change as people during the performance. This helps the audience understand and believe what they see and hear, and feel connected to the actors.
Ion Cojar said that for a performance to be truly real, an actor's feelings, speech, body movements, and even physical changes (like their face color) should not be planned. If they are planned, they won't be new or authentic. Also, actors shouldn't try to control these things while they are happening, because we can't truly watch ourselves without stopping the process.
Think about everyday life: we never know exactly what will happen or what we will say when we talk to someone. We just try to achieve a goal, like convincing them of something. Cojar believed acting should be the same. An actor, playing a character in a certain situation, should try to really change something in their acting partner to reach their character's goal. They shouldn't plan for problems or try to control their reactions. This way, everything that happens – emotions, movements, speech – will come naturally and be real, just like in everyday life. This helps the audience truly believe and connect with the performance.
Cojar also pointed out a clear sign that an actor is not faking: instant, natural changes in their face, like when blood rushes to their skin in important moments. These changes are very hard to fake.
Teaching Actors to Be Real
As a professor and researcher at the Caragiale National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest, Ion Cojar followed the rule: "follow the process, not the success." He worked with his students to help them develop a special way of thinking and feeling. This helped them turn made-up situations (like a story, lines, or a character's personality) into real-life truth. This was very different from the old acting schools that taught students how to "play theatre." Ion Cojar often said, "the art of the actor has nothing in common with theatre." This became his famous saying.
Many professional actors who learned from Cojar's method use a similar approach in their work. For example, Luminița Gheorghiu, one of his former students, won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005). Professor Mircea Gheorghiu, another former student, is seen as the main person continuing Cojar's teaching today. Adrian Țofei, who studied with Mircea Gheorghiu and strongly follows Cojar's ideas, won the Special Jury Prize for Best Actor at the 2016 Nashville Film Festival for his performance in Be My Cat: A Film for Anne.
Ion Cojar also believed in an educational system where students are not just told what to do. Instead, he wanted a learning environment like a laboratory, where students could experiment and learn about themselves. He wanted them to let go of old ideas they learned from family or school. This way, students could discover and use their full natural creative potential, which makes each person unique.
Ion Cojar put all his research and discoveries into his book called "O poetică a artei actorului" (which means "Poetics of the actor's art").
Directing Plays Differently
As a theatre director, Cojar also believed that audiences should not feel like they are watching a play. He wanted them to feel like they were seeing a real-life event. He aimed to create theatre shows that, strangely, didn't look like shows at all. He wanted audiences to find nothing that would make them think they were watching a play and not an actual event happening in front of them.
His Legacy
Ion Cojar passed away in Bucharest in 2009, at the age of 78. He was buried with military honors in the city's Sfânta Vineri Cemetery.
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