WRITER, DRAMATURG, THEATRE AND TRANSMEDIA RESEARCHER

MAGDA ROMANSKA

Professor of Theatre, EMERSON COLLEGE
Faculty Associate, BERKMAN KLEIN CENTER FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY AT HARVARD          
Chair, Transmedia Arts Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Principal, metaLAB, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, THETHEATRETIMES.COM
Research Associate, The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Research Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Advisory Board Member, DIGITAL THEATRE +
Member, LEONARDO NETWORK

AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

2021 PAHA Creative Arts Prize
2021 Culture Online International Award for the “Best Online Project” for TheTheatreTimes.com
2021 Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship for Dramatic Writing
2021 Targeted Research Grant from American Society for Theatre Research
2018 Elliott Hayes Award from Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy
2017 Apothetae and Lark Theatre Playwriting Fellowship from Time Warner Foundation
Aquila Polonica Prize for the Best Essay from Polish Studies Association
Gerald Kahan Scholar’s Prize for The Best Essay in a Refereed Scholarly Journal from American Society for Theatre Research

RECENT GUEST LECTURES AND PANELS

FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN

Temporal Communities and Digitality – Theatre During the Pandemic, June 2021.

THEATRE AND VIRTUAL REALITY

“Theatre Festivals After the Pandemic: Ecology, Digitality, and the Ethics of Engagement.” – XXX Baltic House International Theatre Festival Saint Petersburg, Russia, October 2020.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

“Transmedia Dramaturgy of Pre- and Post-Pandemic Theatre.” – Mahindra Humanities Center/metaLAB at Harvard, September 2020.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

“Postcolonial Approaches to Central and Eastern European Theater and Performance.” – The Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, May 2020.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

“Structural Architectonics of Transmedial Narratives.” – The Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Harvard metaLAB, December 2019.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

“Posthuman Performance: TechnObjects in Theatre and Performing Arts From Robot Actors to Algorithm.” – Plenary – 3rd Posthuman Global Symposium, April 2019.

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR THEATRE RESEARCH

Digital Humanities and Theatre Research Group, May 2019.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

Guest Lecture: “Transmedia Dramaturgy.” – Tish School of the Arts, September 2018.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Drama Across Borders: The Politics & Poetics of Contemporary Theatre in Translation, May 2018.

DUKE UNIVERSITY

Guest lecture: “Performances of Dignity: In Law, Medicine, and Theatre.” –  John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, September 2018.

YALE UNIVERSITY

Soyuz Symposium: ” Justice, Guilt, and the Law Panel The Research Network for Postsocialist Cultural Studies.” – March 2018

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THEATRE RESEARCH

Plenary Paper: “The Bionic Body: Technology, Disability, and Humanism,” November 2017.

Recent Book

theatermachine: tadeusz kantor in context

“These rich and profound essays not only place Kantor retrospectively into the theatrical past, but also argue persuasively for his relevance in the 21st century as an avatar of postdramatic and posthuman performance, and of object theater and performance art.”
– Choice Magazine

“The work of the editors of the volume deserves recognition. The book they have prepared above all proves that Tadeusz Kantor’s work can still inspire, surprise and provoke discussion.”
– Didaskalia

“The most important result of this publication is that through this entanglement of different discourses, cultures, and narrations, Kantor’s art reveals itself not only as practice but also as a strong theoretical proposal.”
– Modern Drama

“Richly documented chapters interweave primary sources, critical commentary, and contemporary theory (for example, Adorno, Agamben, Bettelheim, Améry) on each topic. Through its argumentation and design, the book demonstrates a sophisticated dramaturgical strategy for re-historicizing and recontextualizing theatre and performance events.”

Theatre Journal

“An impressive cast of notable contributors offers their definitions of comedy and its historical contexts, themes, narrative structures, plots, character types and tropes. As a valuable precis of historical writings on comedy, Reader in Comedy is a full, rich and highly informative anthology that can be dipped into time and time again. For the scholar of comic theory and criticism, this is an extremely valuable reference tool.”

-Comedy Studies

“Romanska has put together a robust, impressively comprehensive volume that covers the ever-broadening scope of contemporary dramaturgy within a global context. With 85 essays, this volume reveals the established, emerging, and imagined ideas of what dramaturgy is and could be. The volume is destined to become a go-to reference for practitioners and students of dramaturgy, along with directors, critics, playwrights, and theater scholars.”

Choice Magazine

Playwriting

OPHELIAMACHINE

“funny yet brutal”
Hollywood Reporter

“uncompromising vision”
Los Angeles Times

“relentlessly provocative and challenging”
LA Weekly

“stunning….brilliant writing”
Los Angeles Post

Recent Press

Blog

Runt of the Litter: Disability in the Age of the Pandemic

Runt of the Litter: Disability in the Age of the Pandemic

There was a saying in the Eastern Bloc back in the days of the Soviet regime: “You might not want to follow the news, but the news will follow you.” It meant that if you’re not aware of what’s happening in the larger world, you might not be able to escape the next...

“Slave Play”: Can a Subaltern Consent

“Slave Play”: Can a Subaltern Consent

In her 2011 book, Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality, Margot Weiss, an anthropologist, links BDSM games to the complex nexus of socioeconomic power relations, involving gender, race, economic and social status, and whatever else might affect...

The Wooster Group’s “A Pink Chair” – Can You Ever Return?

The Wooster Group’s “A Pink Chair” – Can You Ever Return?

The Wooster Group’s newest production, A Pink Chair (In Place of a Fake Antique) was commissioned by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the Tadeusz Kantor centennial as a tribute to the famous Polish director. The show is based on Kantor’s 1988 piece, I Shall...

The Context of Contemporary Polish Theatre: Spotlight on Poland

The Context of Contemporary Polish Theatre: Spotlight on Poland

Today, we are launching The Spotlight on Poland. Here’s the context….. Following the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its regime in Eastern Europe, Polish theatre found itself without a subject. Always political during the...