Imaginary Performances in Shakespeare

In Imaginary Performances in Shakespeare, visionary modernist theatre director Aureliu Manea analyses the theatrical possibilities of Shakespeare. Through nineteen Shakespeare plays, Manea sketches the intellectual parameters, the visual languages, and the emotional worlds of imagined stage interpretations of each; these nineteen short essays are appended by his essay ‘Confessions,’ an autobiographical meditation on the nature of theatre and the role of the director. This captivating book which will be attractive to anyone interested in Shakespeare and modern theatre.

Author Biography

Aureliu Manea made his debut as a director with a production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm at the Sibiu Theatre, which stunned Romania’s theatrical world with the originality of its staging, and the press hailed him as a unique new talent. Throughout his career, he created a large number of theatre and opera productions, as well as puppet shows, creating a repertoire of both Romanian and foreign plays, some of which had never before been performed in Romania, such as Sophocles’s Philoctetes. Manea is considered a Romanian director who revolutionised and reformulated theatre.

Translator: Alistair Ian Blyth is one of the most active translators working from Romanian to English today. A native of Sunderland, England, Blyth attended the universities of Cambridge and Durham, and has resided for many years in Bucharest.