First off, would you mind giving us a brief synopsis of your play, Aurolac Blues, and telling us a little bit about where the initial idea for it came from?
Aurolac Blues is a sweet story about Elvis and Madonna, two Gypsy street kids from Bucharest—Romania, addicted to the cheap drug named Aurolac (a silver paint they huff from a plastic bag). They dream of America as they imagine it through their McDonald’s experience and the “heritage” of their names. They are the “celebrities” of the “third world”—the world of the streets. They are the characters that interest me, the homeless, as we don’t get to see them very often on the stage.
The idea to write a play about them came from watching a few documentary films with Romanian street-kids (see Children Underground) and from actually seeing them in Bucharest when I used to live there and work as a journalist. I wanted to give them a chance to live and breathe in the theatre.
You're on the faculty of the Undergraduate Drama department at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. What do you teach there, and how do you like it?
I love it! The students are so smart and open that it’s immensely rewarding and refreshing to work with them. I teach courses such as Contemporary European Drama & Performance, Theatre & Feminism, Reconfiguring the Classics, Major playwrights: Ionesco & Genet, etc.
It’s great to work with young artists as they are still genuine and less loaded with cultural and social baggage, they don’t have so many preconceived ideas, so they love to engage in wonderful thought-provoking debates that help all of us be vivid and creative.
You also got two degrees from Tisch yourself, in both Performance Studies and Dramatic Writing. What was it about NYU that made you want to go there?
It seems that my whole experience in the USA is mainly an NYU experience, which is absolutely great. I came to New York City in 2001 with a Fulbright grant to get an MA in Performance Studies as such a discipline doesn’t exist in Romania. Plus I was excited to study and work with Richard Schechner, one of the most innovative theatre directors of the last decades. Then I was offered a fellowship to get an MFA in Dramatic Writing so I took that chance to improve writing plays in English.
How did you first get involved in theatre? And did you know right at the start that you wanted to write?
Well first I got involved in theatre as a poet and a theatre critic. I know, strange combination. But my poems are very dramatic so some Romanian directors created performance texts based on them and they also staged them in some very cool productions. I had my poetry presented in big theatres but also in cafes, galleries, underground pubs, etc. I even toured the UK with poetry performances.
As a theatre critic I would go to international theatre festivals and get exposed to various directing and playwriting styles. So it seemed somewhat natural to start writing for the theatre. Actually when my dramatic poem Outcast got selected to be presented in Paris as part of the Du Monde Entiere festival at Theatre Gerard Philipe de Saint Denis—the only selection from Romania—I started to be called a playwright so, what else to do, I became one.
What do poetry and dramatic writing have in common, for you, and how do they each feed and influence each other, if at all?
In my case they probably have in common the fact that I am writing plays in a style that I would call “poetic realism” or “stylized realism”. I don’t really like psychological realism as I feel it confines you to a linear story based on cause-effect rational logic. Theatre is not TV and it’s not film. In writing for theatre we have this amazing chance to explore theatricality in so many ways, to build layers and layers of meaning, to use more than one central metaphor as a theatrical device and to let the audience’s imagination work. I want to make a theatre of questions not one of answers. I think that mainstream drama forces you to find a resolution, to “build an arc and a journey for your characters” and ultimately to compromise in presenting the complexity of life and humanity on stage. So I do think we need poetry in theatre as the logic of poetry is associative and sometimes irrational, emotional, visceral, impulsive. Theatre is a roller-coaster of human emotions for me, not only a clever and well-structured conventionally staged play with a clear journey of the main character. I wish things were so clear in real life for all of us, but let’s face it, they aren’t.
I understand that you are also an Associate Artist with The Lark Theatre Company and Playwright-in-Residence at East Coast Artists. Could you tell us more about your work for both companies, and how you got involved with each of them?
Now you will see how complex things are with me. Joking.
I’ve been working with Lark Play Development Center for three years now. I was a member of their Playwrights’ Workshop led by Arthur Kopit and I developed my play Waxing West there. Waxing West had a barebones production at the Lark in 2003 and it was extremely well received. Now I am working with director Daniella Topol on my new play Lenin’s Shoe which has a barebones production running NOW. I mean this is the last week, so come and see it!
I am now a TCG international fellow and Director of Playwright Exchange with The Lark. We have on-going exchange programs with Mexico, France, Nigeria, Holland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, and of course Romania.
With East Coast Artists I’ve been developing my …“highly exploratory” side (which is my favorite), as I worked with Richard Schechner on YokastaS, presented at La MaMa Theatre last February. I love Richard and East Coast Artists for the creative freedom and intercultural scholarship they foster.
You were also a theatre critic for Radio Free Europe at one time. What was that experience like?
As I mentioned before I enjoyed being a theatre critic as it gave me the opportunity to “see everything” and “know everybody” in the Romanian and even European theatre world. But there comes a time when you must focus on your own work and creativity, on the things you have to put into artistic forms… it’s like making babies: the clock is ticking so you can’t “birth control” your plays for ever.
For a time you also worked for the Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest. Would you mind talking a little bit about your work there?
I loved it. As you can see I am a sort of “renaissance woman”, I just love arts and creative expression. At MRL, I was able to work on interdisciplinary programs, to combine poetry, fiction, visual arts, classic music, jazz, theatre, dance, etc. MRL is more of a Performing Arts Center than just a museum. It also has a great bohemian garden where lots of artists come every day for meeting their peers, exchanging ideas and of course for a beer, or two, or more…
Plus my husband Alexandru Condeescu was the general director of the Museum so we did some great team-work.
What's coming up next for you?
After the barebones production at The Lark, Lenin’s Shoe will have a production at Hartt School, Hartford University and probably one downtown New York. Lenin’s Shoe will actually travel to Bucharest and to the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (Transylvania). I also am working on a project called Heroes, a documentary theatre piece that I’m developing with London-based director Karl Rousse. It’s a collaboration between East Coast Artists and London’s Central School of Drama.
Moreover, I am also working with Richard Schechner on a new project called Timbuku. I actually dramatized Paul Auster’s novel Timbuktu and Richard will be directing it. We just had a workshop with it at Baryshnikov Arts Center on 37th Street and it’s going well. We had a great cast including Tony-award winner Frank Wood (playing the leading character Mr. Bones—a dog!), John Ventimiglia from The Sopranos and Paul Auster himself as Vox.
I am working on some other projects, but hey, I need to keep some dramatic suspense…
Interview with Saviana Stanescu was conducted by Michael Criscuolo February 2006.