Erwin Piscator (1893-1966), theatre director and political theoretician, initiator of the political theatre. In Berlin, Piscator founded the Proletarian Theatre (1920), Central theatre (1924) and Piscator Bühne (1927-1929). In 1934, he emigrated to the U.S.S.R. , then to France and United States. He returned to Germany after the second world war and was in charge of Freie Volksbühne (1962-1966). Naturalism and the people’s stage are the underlying principles of the proletarian theatre theorized by Erwin Piscator in his work, Political Theatre. The establishment of the Volksbühne theatre constituted a radical rupture with the bourgeois theatre which emphasized aestheticism, grandeur in …

by Costi Rogozanu Why would I go to the theatre? Why would I go out for “art consumption”? Certainly not to look for something “nice” or to change the scenery for a while. The need for bourgeois catharsis can be easily fulfilled at home by downloading texts, films and music online. No. I only go out to a performance for its message. I only go out when I feel that the artists are “my guys”, that they’d like to get together and break some windows (metaphorically, since I’m no longer that age, unfortunately). I don’t even go out to socialize, …

by Valentina Iancu Andre Breton’s concept of revolutionary surrealism was introduced in Romania by a group of artists and writers gravitating around the magazine unu. Founded and financially supported by the military doctor and poet Saşa Pană, unu was the longest-running surrealist magazine in Romania. All the published works followed the two defining directions of surrealism: the Freudian-inspired automatism and left-wing activism. Uniştii (Victor Brauner, Marcel Iancu, Geo Bogza, M.H. Maxy, Saşa Pană, Ilarie Voronca, Claude Sernet) took baby-steps towards positing the socio-political determination of art. Throughout its activity, other young artists joined the initial group and radicalized the endeavor …