Staging Stalinism In Post Communist Romanian Theatre

Exploring theater practices in communist and post-communist Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, this book analyzes intertextuality or "inter-theatricality" as a political strategy, designed to criticize contemporary political conditions while at the same time trying to circumvent censorship. Plays by Romanian, Hungarian and Bulgarian dramatists are examined, who are "retrofitting" the past by adapting the political crimes and horrifying tactics of totalitarianism to the classical theatre (with Shakespeare a favorite) to reveal the region's traumatic history. By the sustained analysis of the aesthetic devices used as political tools, Orlich makes a very strong case for the continued relevance of the theater as one of the subtlest media in the public sphere. She embeds her close readings in a thorough historical analysis and displays a profound knowledge of the political role of theater history. In the Soviet bloc the theater of the absurd, experimentation, irony, and intertextual distancing (estrangement) are not seen as mere aesthetic language games but as political strategies that use indirection to say what cannot be said directly.

Exploring theater practices in communist and post-communist Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, this book analyzes intertextuality or ?inter-theatricality? as a political strategy, designed to criticize contemporary political conditions while at the same time trying to circumvent censorship. In the Soviet bloc the theater of the absurd, experimentation, irony, and intertextual distancing (estrangement) were much more than mere aesthetic language games, but were planned political strategies that used indirection to say what could not be said directly. Plays by Romanian, Hungarianÿand Bulgarian dramatists are examined, who are ?retrofitting? the past by adapting the political crimes and horrifying tactics of totalitarianism to the classical theatre (with Shakespeare a favorite) to reveal the region?s traumatic history. By the sustained analysis of the aesthetic devices used as political tools, Orlich makes a very strong case for the continued relevance of the theater as one of the subtlest media in the public sphere. She embeds her close readings in a thorough historical analysis and displays a profound knowledge of the political role of theater history. ÿ

Theatre in Eastern and Central Europe was never the same after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In the transition to a postcommunist world, “alternative theatre” found ways to grapple with political chaos, corruption, and aggressive implementation of a market economy. Three decades later, this volume is the first comprehensive examination of alternative theatre in ten former communist countries. The essays focus on companies and artists that radically changed the language and organization of theatre in the countries formerly known as the Eastern European bloc. This collection investigates the ways in which postcommunist alternative theatre negotiated and embodied change not only locally but globally as well. Contributors: Dennis Barnett, Dennis C. Beck, Violeta Decheva, Luule Epner, John Freedman, Barry Freeman, Margarita Kompelmakher, Jaak Rahesoo, Angelina Ros ̧ca, Ban ̧uta Rubess, Christopher Silsby, Andrea Tompa, S. E. Wilmer

A History of Romanian Theatre from Communism to Capitalism analyses the last three decades of Romanian theatre and connects it to the international stage. Cristina Modreanu questions the relationship between artists and power, both before 1989, behind the Iron Curtain, and in the current global political context, with nationalism manifesting itself in Eastern Europe, as seen in the critical work of Romanian theatre makers. This study covers the complex cases of theatre makers such as Lucian Pintilie, Liviu Ciulei and Andrei Șerban, who built their international careers in exile, and the most innovative Romanian artists of today, such as Silviu Purcărete, Mihai Măniuţiu, Gianina Cărbunariu, Radu Afrim, and Bogdan Georgescu, who reached the status of transglobal artists. Filling a considerable gap in Romanian theatre discourse, this book will be of a great interest to students and scholars of contemporary theatre and history.

The old road rapidly ageing : changes in Romania's theatre before and after -- Andrei Șerban : prophet without a country -- Silviu Purcărete, the visionary -- Mihai Măniuțiu : the trial of communism on stage -- The alternative path : Radu Afrim, a queer look at life -- Elements of ethics and aesthetics in new Romanian theatre : from Gianina Cărbunariu to David Schwartz and Bogdan Georgescu -- Three pictures with Gianina Cărbunariu -- Attempts at participatory art or cracks in the pedestal of the statue : Alexandru Berceanu, Cinty Ionescu, Peter Kerek -- Feminist theatre on Romanian stages : tools for reimagining twenty-first-century theatre : Catinca Drăgănescu, Ioana Păun, Carmen Lidia Vidu -- Mapping contemporary Romania : thirty years of new drama -- Epilogue : thirty years after : Romanian theatre from communism to post-capitalism.

This study explores the little-known history of the Hungarian Autonomous Region (HAR), a Soviet-style territorial autonomy that was granted in Romania on Stalin’s personal advice to the Hungarian Székely community in the summer of 1952. Since 1945, a complex mechanism of ethnic balance and power-sharing helped the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) to strengthen—with Soviet assistance—its political legitimacy among different national and social groups. The communist national policy followed an integrative approach toward most minority communities, with the relevant exception of Germans, who were declared collectively responsible for the German occupation and were denied political and even civil rights until 1948. The Hungarians of Transylvania were provided with full civil, political, cultural, and linguistic rights to encourage political integration. The ideological premises of the Hungarian Autonomous Region followed the Bolshevik pattern of territorial autonomy elaborated by Lenin and Stalin in the early 1920s. The Hungarians of Székely Land would become a “titular nationality” provided with extensive cultural rights. Yet, on the other hand, the Romanian central power used the region as an instrument of political and social integration for the Hungarian minority into the communist state. The management of ethnic conflicts increased the ability of the PCR to control the territory and, at the same time, provided the ruling party with a useful precedent for the far larger “nationalization” of the Romanian communist regime which, starting from the late 1950s, resulted in “ethnicized” communism, an aim achieved without making use of pre-war nationalist discourse. After the Hungarian revolution of 1956, repression affected a great number of Hungarian individuals accused of nationalism and irredentism. In 1960 the HAR also suffered territorial reshaping, its Hungarian-born political leadership being replaced by ethnic Romanian cadres. The decisive shift from a class dictatorship toward an ethnicized totalitarian regime was the product of the Gheorghiu-Dej era and, as such, it represented the logical outcome of a long-standing ideological fouling of Romanian communism and more traditional state-building ideologies.

Petre Tutea (1902-91) was one of the outstanding Christian dissident intellectuals of the Communist era in Eastern Europe. Revered as a saint by some, he spent thirteen years as a prisoner of conscience and twenty-eight years under house arrest at the hands of the Securitate. This book explores his unique response to the horrors of torture and 're-education' and reveals the experience of a whole generation detained in the political prisons. Tutea’s understanding of human needs and how they can be fulfilled even amidst extreme adversity not only reflects huge learning and great brilliance of mind, but also offers a spiritual vision grounded in personal experience of the Romanian Gulag. Following the fall of the Ceausescus, he has begun to emerge as a significant contributor to ecumenical Christian discourse and to understanding of wider issues of truth and reconciliation in the contemporary world. As Tutea's pupil and scribe for twelve years, as a psychiatrist, and as a theologian, Alexandru Popescu is uniquely placed to present the work of this twentieth-century Confessor of the faith. Drawing on bibliographical sources which include unpublished or censored manuscripts and personal conversations with Tutea and with other prisoners of conscience in Romania, Popescu presents extensive translations of Tutea, which make his thought accessible to the English-speaking reader for the first time. Through his stature as a human being and his authority as a thinker, Petre Tutea challenges us to question many of our assumptions. The choice he presents between ’sacrifice’ and ’moral suicide’ focuses us on the very essence of religion and human personhood. Resisting any ultimate separation of theology and spirituality, his work affirms hope and love as the sole ground upon which truth can be based. At the same time, hope and love are not mere ideal emotions, but are known and lived in engagement with the real world - in politics, economics, science, ecol

Formerly titled Biographical Dictionary of the Soviet Union, this vast and invaluable reference features personal profiles on some 6,700 individuals that have been created from both unofficial and official sources, including personal interviews with well-known former Soviet citizens such as Russian