"Tania Popa does not only have an undeniable talent. She has personality, originality, consistency; she catches you, bewitches you, deceives you, she is aptly mastering the means and exposes them with a desire to perform, honestly, incandescently. You never know if you are supposed to laugh or cry. You know for sure it is really scary and frustrating. Tania is like an upright hunting plane. 

(...) A strong, powerful, well-crafted show full of ideas like a railway knot, but especially an ever nourishing, healing encounter with a real actress, for real, lifelike - Tania Popa. And, yes, the Angel also passed. "

Razvana Nita, Blog - Confession of a former seagull  

"A show about life, traumas, failures and hopes. A well-written text and a performance with the nuances of daily life she wants to impersonate. Tania Popa’s artistic maturity makes the encounter with Andreas Petrescu's text turn the stage of the Bucharest National into a puzzle of emotions and questions about the (unknown) torments of creation."

Simona Ionita, Book Agency - Premiere at NTB: "The Extra" by Andreas Petrescu, with Tania Popa 

"Tania Popa, an established actress of the Bucharest theatre, is now a mere aspiring actress, whose life is torn between the desperate attempt to make a career in theatre and the failures in her personal life. A show about the actor's condition. A colourless rainbow, from which Tania Popa desperately struggles to compose and recompose the light from Ana's tragic-comic story, in a small black-and-white lab, a minimalist scenery and just a few props of her actress life, in her make-up and rehearsal booth for the lives she hopes to live ...

A brief confession made to the viewer about how each character they see on stage is built, but especially about what happens to him/her until the next performance.

"The Extra" is that kind of simple, clean show, like an autumnal thought that comes off the tree of emotions of an ending like all other endings and slowly descends, swaying, to the ground. "

Luciana Antofi, Blog - Life, a mere stage for a supporting role: "The Extra" from the National, a voice lost in the Antigone Choir  

"Tania Popa has assumed the role of director, giving life and meaning to the lines that suit the wonder of a being - equally - solar and impetuous, and has discovered the depth of meaning from the poetics of this contemporary text, intently created for the ungrateful condition as a female artist.

As an older schoolgirl, lost in the great recess, Ania / Tania radiates an energy flow that arouses interest and has a magnetic effect on the viewers’ senses. " 

Madalina Dumitrache, Bel-esprit - With closed doors, behind the scenes of artistic development - "The Extra" 

Translated by Simona Nichiteanu 

The show was presented within the Romanian Actors' Tour, April 2023