"20 Ground-Breaking Directors of Eastern Europe ... delivers exactly what it promises in its title ... . the volume is undoubtedly a unique and thorough undertaking, especially when considering the small number of works that attempt to provide an encyclopaedic overview of contemporary world theatre. ... an important and timely volume that helps to identify and recognise the directorial signatures that have shaped and continue to shape the theatre culture of the Eastern European region in recent decades." (Tamás Jászay, Theatron, Vol. 16 (4), 2022)
1.Grzegorz Bral: Cosmopolitan Experiments in Theatre 2.My Name Is Gianina Cărbunariu: I’m a Lioness 3.Oliver Frljić or the Theatre of Provocation 4.Alvis Hermanis: “To Be Everything and Nothing at All” 5.Grzegorz Jarzyna’s Theatre of Post-Dramatic Joy and Recognition 6.Jan Klata: The Social-Identity DJ of the Polish Theatre 7.“What Is Hecuba to Him or He to Hecuba?” or the Theatre of Oskaras Koršunovas 8.Jernej Lorenci: “People Are the Key” 9.Krystian Lupa: The Maestro They Criticise Love 10.Dark Visions of Jan Mikulášek 11.Alexander Morfov, the Game-Changer and His Collective Theatre 12.Eimuntas Nekrošius: The Poetics of Paradise and Hell 13.Béla Pintér and His Postmodern National Theatre 14.Silviu Purcărete: The Master of Rich Theatre 15.From the Theatron to the Agora: Changing Concepts of Theatricality in Schilling Árpád’s Oeuvre 16.Andrei Șerban: The Search for ‘New Forms’ 17.Beauty by Instinct or Daniel Špinar’s Theatre of Style 18.Włodzimierz Staniewski: (Re-)Constructing Traditions and Archetypes 19.Rimas Tuminas: A Poetic View of Theatre 20.Krzysztof Warlikowski: A Beautiful Shock Therapy 21.An Attempt at Drawing an Artistic Family Tree 22.The Stakes Today
Kalina Stefanova, a Full Professor at the NATFA, Bulgaria, is author/editor of 14 books on theatre and two fiction titles. She has lectured world-wide and is a Visiting Distinguished Professor of the Arts School, Wuhan University, China. She has served as Vice President and Director Symposia of the International Association of Theatre Critics.
Marvin Carlson, Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA, is the author of 25 books and hundreds of essays on theatre and performance. He has received many major national and international awards and an honorary professorship from the University of Athens, Greece.
Directors have long been the main figures on Eastern European stages. During the last three decades some of the most outstanding among them have risen to international stardom thanks to their ground-breaking productions that speak to audiences far beyond local borders. Not by chance, a considerable number of these directors have won the second-biggest theatre award on the continent – the European Prize for (New) Theatrical Realities. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the top directors of the region have been pushing contemporary theatre as a whole ahead into new territories. This book offers informative and in-depth portraits of twenty of these directors, written by leading critics, scholars, and researchers, who shed light on the directors’ signature styles with examples of their emblematic productions and outline the reasons for their impact. In addition, in two chapters the selected directors themselves discuss their artistic family trees as well as the main stakes theatre faces today. The book will be of interest to theatre scholars, students, and anybody engaged with theatre on a global scale.