(b.1974) is a curator, theater critic and researcher based in Bucharest, Romania and New York, USA. She helds a PHD in theatre from the Theater and Film University in Bucharest and she is the author of A History of Romanian Theatre from Communism to Capitalism (Routledge, 2020). She also wrote five books on Romanian Theatre and numerous articles published by academic journals and cultural magazines. Modreanu is currently a theatre researcher associated with Theatre and Film Faculty at Babes-Bolyai Univrersity in Cluj, member of Janovics Center for Film and Performing Arts Studies and the editor of the performing arts magazine Scena.ro which she co-founded in 2008. She also coordinates the research project Multimedia Dictionary of Romanian Theatre and The Feminist Archive of Romanian Theatre. FEM 100.
She is also a Fulbright Alumna and she was Visiting Scholar at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Performance Studies Department, New York 2011-2012.
Modreanu wrote the afterword for roMania after 2000 - Five New Plays, edited by Martin E.Segal Theater Centre, The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York (2007) and a chapter on Romanian theater in Theater in Times of Change edited by Theater der Zeit (2008). She contributed to special issues dedicated to Romanian theater by Theater magazine (edited by Yale University, USA, 2009) and Alternative Theatrales (2010) and penned articles for Slavic and East European Performance (published by CUNY, New York, 2012) and New Theatre Quarterly (published by London University, 2013).
Modreanu gave lectures about Romanian Theatre in Valladolid, 2004 (A Panorama of Street Theater in Romania), Berlin, 2006 (Romanian New Drama – New Eyes, Same Reality), Stockholm, 2007 (DramAcum – Changes in Romanian Theater after 1990) and Tel-Aviv University, 2011 (Contemporary Romanian Theater. An introduction) and about European Theater at University of California in San Diego (march 2012) and A History of Romanian Theatre at Pace University, New York și Arizona University (2020).
Cristina Modreanu curated the most important theater festivals in Romania: the European Performing Arts Festival in Timisoara (2011 to 2013), the National Theater Festival (2008 to 2010), the Romanian New Drama Festival in Timisoara (2006-2008) and she co-curated FestCo, the festival produced by the Comedy Theater in Bucharest (2005-2006).
\r\nShe is also an adviser for Nitra Theater Festival in Slovakia. As an expert in Performing Arts she was part of the team designated to formulate the cultural strategy of Timisoara city for 2014-2024.
As a curator, Modreanu introduced for the first time to Romanian audiences leading experimental creators such as Richard Foreman, Lee Breuer, Romeo Castellucci, Kama Ginkas, Alvis Hermanis, Rimini Protokoll, as well as important theoreticians like Richard Schechner, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Georges Banu, Michal Kobialka, Aleks Sierz who gave public lectures in Bucharest.
In 2014 Modreanu won the prestigious Ibsen Scholarship awarded by the Norwegian Government with a project titled Hedda's Sisters. Empowering Women Artists in Romania and Eastern Europe, aiming to use Ibsen's feminine characters as a tool to showcase contemporary women’s perspective and empower Romanian women artists in theater.
Between 2014 an 2020 she was the curator of the Bucharest International Theater Platform which she founded and organized for 7 years. In 2014 the first theme was "Future is Feminine".
Modreanu also initiated a translation series of some of the most important writings in the field: Richard Schechner’s Essays, Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theater, Esslin’s Theater of the Absurd, Michal Kobialka’s Essays on Kantor and co-translated Routledge’s influential Fifty Key Theatre Directors (2010) and Routledge Companion to Theater and Performance (2012).
\r\nAs editor of the Romanian theater magazine Scena.ro, she published excerpts from these books and also wrote and commissioned articles about the international Performing Arts scene.
Since 2011 Modreanu initiated the Scena.ro book series dedicated to translations of seminal writings for the field of Performing Arts. The series features Bonnie Marranca’s selected essays, Tim Etchells’s writings on the theater of Forced Entertainment experimental group and Conversations with Romeo Castellucci, Claudia Castellucci and Chiara Guidi, founders of Societas Raffaello Sanzio Company.
From 2012 to 2016 Modreanu taught at Bucharest University, Center for Excellency in Visual Studies, using her international theater expertise to design a course on Contemporary Performance in a Globalised World.
All of these activities planted the seeds of Performance Studies in Romania.
http://www.humanitas.ro/humanitas/utopii-performative
http://www.ibsenawards.com/scholarship/winners
www.dmtr.ro
