Theater has always been an essential part of the Romanian culture, but its role changed completely after the 1989 Revolution and the fall of the communist regime.
Before that moment, theater and culture in general, were one of the ways people could experience freedom, in spite the oppressive political context. Legends were born those days, actors and directors who used the opportunity of being on stage for expressing what everyone was thinking and never dare to say upfront became iconic figures of Romanian society.
In the same time, famous artists left the country and started their career in other cultures. Some of them were to come back after 1989 and actively contribute to completely restart the theater movement in their home country – Vlad Mugur, Radu Penciulescu, David Esrig, Alexander Hausvater, Andrei Serban.
After the confusion of this “zero point”, Romanian theater opened up towards the world, touring a lot in the early 90’s and trying to reconnect with Western cultures. But it’s only after 2000 that a new generation of theater creators was really born. Their voices – Radu Afrim, Gianina Carbunariu, Vlad Massaci, Alexandra Badea and others - are now the most interesting to hear on Romanian stages and not only there. In a new globalized context, they all travel to present their work in other countries or even create in different cultural contexts, where they bring their Romanian heritage.
Together with other new tendencies that can be detected in the past years, like the use of different performing spaces, the new voices in drama, the social oriented work of independent companies and the interdisciplinary projects – they define what it is to be the present of Romanian theater, also giving a clue about how its future can look alike.
The lecture will be given by theater critic Cristina Modreanu on 8th of April at Tel-Aviv University (with support from Romanian Cultural Institute).
Cristina Modreanu is the author of five books on Romanian Theatre and she wrote the afterword for roMania after 2000 - Five New Plays, the first anthology of new Romanian Drama published in the United States, edited by Martin E.Segal Theater Centre, CUNY (2007). She also wrote a chapter on Romanian theater in the book Theater in Times of Change edited by the prestigious German Publishing House, Theater der Zeit (2008) and contributed to special issues of Theater magazine (edited by Yale University, USA, 2009) and Alternative theatrales (2010) dedicated to Romanian theater.
Modreanu curated New Drama Festival in Timisoara and Romanian National Theater Festival. She gave lectures about Romanian Theatre in Valladolid, 2004 (A Panorama of Street Theater in Romania), Berlin, 2006 (Romanian New Drama – New Eyes, Same Reality) and Stockholm, 2007 (DramAcum – Changes in Romanian Theater after 1990). She is currently the editor of the Performing Arts Magazine Scena.ro (www.revistascena.ro)
