The newest premiere of Odeon Theater in Bucharest has a lot to do with Fulbright Programs in Romania: Saviana Stanescu – the playwright – has completed an MA in Performance Studies at New York University with a Fulbright Grant (2001/2002) and the director, Alexandru Mihail completed an MA at Yale School of Drama through another Fulbright Grant (2009 / 2010).

The play that premiered on Saturday evening at Odeon Theater is one of Saviana Stanescu’s most acclaimed pieces. Aliens with Extraordinary Skills was produced for the first time at Julia Miles Theater in New York in 2008 and has received enthusiastic reviews in the American Press, The New Your Times stating: ”Saviana Stanescu’s Aliens With Extraordinary Skills is an enchanting piece of theater, a paean to New York”.

The Pre-departure Orientation for the Romanian 2014/2015 Fulbright grantees and students - who have received an offer of admission from a US university - took place on Thursday, July 10. Officials from the U.S. Embassy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania, representatives of the Fulbright Board of Directors and the Romanian academic environment congratulated the participants on their accomplishment and encouraged them to continue to represent Romania at the highest level. It was also an opportunity for the participants to meet and interact with American and Romanian Fulbright alumni, US interns as well as Romanians studying in the US, who introduced them to the American environment, shared their US experience and offered useful guidance throughout the informative sessions of the Orientation. Last but not least, all the participants benefitted from advice concerning J&F visa issues provided by the Consular section of the U.S. Embassy.

The Reception that took place at Casa Oamenilor de Stiinta offered the participants one more opportunity to interact and celebrate this special day. We wish the best of luck to the entire 2014-2015 cohort of Romanian students and scholars and look forward to hearing about their upcoming experience and academic achievements in the US!

More photos are available on the Commission's Facebook page.

   

New Volume Published by Romanian Fulbrighter Cristina Modreanu

As a follow-up of her 2011-2012 Fulbright research grant at New York University, well-known Romanian theatre critic Dr. Cristina Modreanu has recently published the volume Utopii performative. Artisti radicali ai scenei americane in secolul 21 (Performative Utopias. Radical Artists on the American 21st Century Stage), Humanitas Publishing House, 2014.

The book has been launched in a series of events organized in Bucharest, Sibiu and Timisoara and is available in all important book stores. It is the first book on American theatre published in many years in Romania and offers a comprehensive image on theatrical arts in the U.S. and its most radical representatives: Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, Lee Breuer, Merce Cunningham, Wooster Group, Laurie Anderson, as well as the younger “voices”, Young Jean Lee, Jay Scheib, Elevator Repair Service, Radiohole, Temporary Distortion, The Civilians, Liz Magic Laser.

This cultural project was supported by the Theatre Union in Romania (UNITER) and the book launchings were made with the contribution and in the presence of personalities such as Saviana Stanescu (a Fulbright alumna as well), George Banu, Alexa Visarion (Fulbright Alumnus) and George Mihaita.

   

                        





                            from left to right                                                                               from left to right
             Saviana Stanescu & Cristina Modreanu                                George Mihaita, Cristina Modreanu, Alexa Visarion

Three Romanian Fulbright alumnae,  Dana Mihăilescu, Roxana Oltean and Mihaela Precup, have recently edited Mapping Generations of Traumatic Memory in American Narratives (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), a volume collecting work by several European, North American, and Australian academics who are interested in examining the performance and transmission of post-traumatic memory in the contemporary United States. The volume includes several chapters by other former or current Fulbright grantees, i.e. Professor Rodica Mihăilă (Romania, currently Executive Director of the Fulbright Commission in Romania) and Sara Polak (the Netherlands, Fulbright researcher at Yale University, 2014-2015). The contributors’ chapters generate and explore a complicated dialogue between various and sometimes conflicting narratives along four main lines in this volume: trauma in the context of “multidirectional memory”; the representation of trauma in autobiographical texts; the dynamic of public forms of national commemoration; and the problematic instantiation of 9/11 as a traumatic landmark. The table of contents and an extract from the book are available at the publishers’ website: http://www.cambridgescholars.com/mapping-generations-of-traumatic-memory-in-american-narratives