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
THEATRE AND VIRTUAL REALITY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR THEATRE RESEARCH
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
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.”
“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.”
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
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...
On Screen and On Stage, Disability Continues to Be Depicted in Outdated, Cliched Ways
The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements have forced Hollywood and other artists and filmmakers to rethink their subject matter and casting practices. However, despite an increased sensitivity to gender and race representation in popular culture, disabled Americans...
“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 Comic Frame of Sławomir Mrożek: Or, How to Tell if You Live in a Totalitarian Country
On August 15, 2013, the Polish dramatist, writer, and cartoonist Sławomir Mrożek died at the age of 83 in Nice, France, his home since 2008. Throughout his long and rich career, Mrożek created a diverse body of work, consisting of plays, short stories, and cartoons,...
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
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...