Esinencu’s type of performative art intersects a number of current emerging practices (actors identity is never dissolved in the characters, the logical interpretation being replaced by representation), proposes collaborative working methods, without being what is called devised theater (the text is never generated by the performers’ improvisations) and the playwright is also the director of the text (an european increasingly widespread symptom).
Although, Nicoleta Esinencu never considered herself a director: “I never wanted to be a director and I still do not think I do directing. I’ve always wanted to do things together with the actors and visual artists. […] I never think about how to do a play on stage, the most important thing for me is what I have to say.” (Iulia Popovici)
Nicoleta Esinencu is a Moldovan playwright and theatre director, who after graduating in drama and theatre arts, has been an active presence in the theatre world in Eastern Europe, writing plays, directing and developing performances.
Following a scholarship award in 2003 at the Academy Solitude in Stuttgart, she became widely known with her play “FUCK YOU, Eu.ro.Pa!”, published at Solitude Press in Germany (Stuttgart, 2005) and éditions l’Espace d’un instant (Paris, France) due to its provocative style, the work has triggered furious political debates in Romania and in Moldova.
The play won the Romanian dramAcum theatre prize and was published in the reader of the Romanian Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005).
In 2006, she receives a scholarship for Récollets International Accommodation and Exchange Centre (Paris, France). Also in 2007, participating in the project Public Space of Goethe Institute in Bucharest (Romania), she develops the A(II)Rh+ performance.
In 2009 she participates in various residency and cultural programmes at Kunstlerhaus Edenkoben (Germany), at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Paris (France) and at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (Germany).
She continues in 2010 with a residency at Unabhängiges Literaturhaus NÖ in Krems (Austria) where she develops several ideas for future works.
In 2010 Nicoleta Esinencu founds an alternative artists’ space (theatre oriented) in Chisinau called teatru-spalatorie, which she also coordinates.
The artist was also a guest of the Leipzig book fair (2008) and the Literature Festival in Berlin in 2010/2012. She has also actively participated in the cultural projects After the fall, Moldova Camping, and Relations, Flow, Tandem.
During July 2013, Nicoleta Esinencu was artist in residence @ Badgast, Den Haag, Holland.
N. Esinencu’s plays were presented in Romania, the Republic of Moldova, Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Finland, Germany, Russia, Japan, USA, France and Austria.
Her texts are translated into German, English, French, Bulgarian and Polish and were published in Romania (at IDEA), in Germany (at Walther Koenig, Solitude Press), in France (L’Espace d’un instant), Bulgaria, Austria, and in Poland.
American Dream
American Dream has as a starting point the personal story of one of the actors involved in the project, Tatiana Miron, who went through the “Summer Work & Travel” in America as a sophomore at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chisinau. The program known worldwide as a chance given to students to visit the US in summer and to earn some money. An opportunity that apparently is not guaranteed to all the participants in this program.
Starting from this story, American Dream aims a peek inside a country that wants to be perceived and even often is perceived as a model society. The dream country that ensures for all and any of its citizens freedom of expression, food safety, consumer protection … and also, world peace.
ANTIDÓT
With ANTIDÓT, Nicoleta Esinencu recounts a long history of gas and nuclear, Zyklon B used in Auschwitz to Chernobyl through the chemical contamination threats in times of Cold War. But the gas is also a natural resource that meets our basic needs ( eg: food , heating ) , it is a source of life, except that in Russia today the gas is too often cut especially used as a means of political pressure. ANTIDÓT is a monologue portraying vitriolic Russia, a portrait that could be divided into three historical sequences, Russia before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Wall, post-Soviet Russia.
A(II)Rh+
Nicoleta Esinencu’s generating source text A(II)Rh + a series of speeches that marked the coming to power of popular withdrawal from Sarkozy and Blair Labour government, wedged on a Romanian- Moldovan reality, racism and patriotic nationalism. A(II)Rh + is a monodrama at the poematic limit (the author’s favourite genre), with something of cruelty worthy of Artaud, a lot of irony and a passion to challenge that sends exactly the opposite of passion involved in the destiny of a social space.
Edition 2015-2016
Review: Nicoleta Esinencu at Teatro i (Milan)
On 4th May 2016, the Romanian author Nicoleta Esinencu presented at Teatro i (Milan) the stage presentation of
