An American performing in Romanian

Is not something we have the chance to see everyday in Bucharest. We had this privilege last Friday at Museo Café, when our friend (and member of our community) Cristina Bejan was engaged in a spontaneous play of short novels, a collage of fascinating insights of women facing challenges in different societies.

Half Romanian half American, Cristina came to Romania to study for her PhD thesis in Romanian History. Recently, She debuted as a playwright and the event on Friday revealed her as a most promising talented actress.

I wanted to share this with you and celebrate Cristina’s success…

more details in the Bucharest community.

Mirela, multumesc frumos for your kind words!

It certainly was a memorable event, and I do hope we have the opportunity to perform it again in both Romania and abroad. I will keep the Strada32 community posted :-)

Leading up to the performance (my first ever public performance in Romanian!), I found inspiration in the Romanian actors and actresses that I had worked with here in Bucharest. As nervous as I was to prepare a monologue in Romanian, a very gifted group of Romanian artistis recently performed a live reading (spectacol-lectura) of an entire play in English here at Teatrul Foarte Mic and also Museo Cafe. The play was one that I wrote, "Colombo Calling - a play from Sri Lanka," directed by Alex Mihail and the distinguished cast included Maia Morgenstern, Isabela Neamtu and Pavel Barsan, among many others. I invite you to check out our blog http://colombocalling.wordpress.com/and my theatre company's website http://www.theatrefilledechambre.com/ to view photos from and read information about our success.

As my friends and those who have attended my events are well aware, I strongly believe in the importance of having discussions after theatrical experiences, to get the audience's feedback and give the actors a chance to communicate their motivation behind their performance. In Museo Cafe, after "Colombo Calling," the topic of language was a hot topic of discussion. Why should Romanian actors perform in English? Why can't they perform in Romanian? I think this is an extremely salient issue and one that is particularly important today as the world we find ourselves in gets smaller and English becomes increasingly a universal language.

My reaction to this question was that, of course these brilliant actors can perform in any language you ask them to. That is just how excellent and well-trained and experienced they are. Maia Morgenstern volunteered her experience in Mel Gibson's 'The Passion' to illustrate this point. (She performed in ancient Aramaic in that film.) My second point was that I wrote the play in English, a language widely spoken in Sri Lanka, and the common language shared by all characters in the play. And my third (and perhaps most ambitious) point was that our production of "Colombo Calling" was the start of an English language theatre in Bucharest.

Romania has a tradition of diversity and providing an artistic home to international voices. Hungarian theatre, German theatre, Yiddish theatre, etc. But while the rest of Central-Eastern Europe has answered the demand for a theatre space dedicated primarily for the performance of English language texts, Romania still lags behind. Warsaw, Prague and Budapest all have English language theatres.

Judging from the turn-out to our events and the feed-back we have received, there is clearly a demand for a space dedicated to an English language theatre here in Bucharest. I welcome any thoughts, insights and inspirations anyone in the Strada32 community might be able to give. Let us reach beyond language and prepare the ground for more art to happen.