The selection process for the short plays that have been submitted to the Play readings module within the National Theatre Festival, the 2023 edition has been completed. Bogdan Georgescu, Petro Ionesco and Elise Wilk have chosen the following 5 pieces of writing and authors out of 62 entries. 

Motivation of the curators of the 33rd Romanian National Theater Festival. The curatorial team of the RNTF 2023 (Mihaela Michailov, Oana Cristea Grigorescu and Călin Ciobotari), after viewing more than 150 performances produced by state-funded as well as in independent theatres that premiered in the 2022-2023 theatrical year, opted for a series of productions they found corresponded to the theme of this year’s edition: RNTF, the Laboratories of the Sensitive.

The 33rd Edition of the National Theatre Festival, taking place between the 20th and the 30th of October 2023 in Bucharest, is announcing a new short-play competition (duration: 10 minutes for a reading), with a subject of your choice. This is a call to all upcoming authors and playwrights, and an encouragement towards writing plays with themes and formats that match present and future playwriting. Bogdan Georgescu, Petro Ionescu and Elise Wilk will be handling the selection process as a team. They are national and international-caliber playwrights, collaborating with state and independent theatres alike.   Following the selection, the chosen authors will participate in a playwriting workshop coordinated by Bogdan Georgescu, Petro Ionescu and Elise Wilk (both individual and collective working sessions). In this context, they will receive feedback and will be able to develop the writings they have submitted. The selected plays will be presented in the form of Play-readings held within the National Theatre Festival 2023, to be published on www.liternet.ro. By promoting modern local [...]

One of the major threats facing art is stagnation. When it intervenes, art is no longer able to keep up with society, and its stakes – reflecting the present world from an originative angle, the transformative effects it should have on humanity, its intuition and influences over the future – get suspended, postponed or repressed. Among other symptoms of stagnation, art is prone to suffer from the temptation of repeating the same forms of expression over again, a preference for certainty and already established ways, and the comfort of coming back to themes and solutions already tested throughout time.   There is one matter on our minds: who, respectively how and how much, is still researching in the Romanian theatre? Is artistic research only specific to academics or, ideally, should it be at the base of any and all stage creations? Is there a "will for research" when it comes to stage productions/performative arts? Are our artists – whether actors, actresses, directors, choreographers, dancers [...]