The Romanian Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv, in collaboration with the Department of Theater Arts at the Tel Aviv University, is organizing a master class of the theater of the absurd, "The Theater of the Absurd, as a Moral Response to the Nazi Ideology. The cases of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco", delivered by Dr. Octavian Saiu. The event, in English, will take place on May 7, 2014, at 12:00, in room 210- Mexico Building at the Tel Aviv University.
The master class is open to the Tel Aviv University students, as well as to professors, researchers and critics in the field of theater.
Program:• Lecture entitled "The Theater of the Absurd, as a Moral Response to the Nazi Ideology. The cases of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco"
• "The Romanian Tradition of the Absurd, from Classicism to Postmodernism"- a short presentation dealing with the theater of the absurd before and after the communist period in Romania
• video projections of fragments from contemporary Romanian plays
• Q&A
Octavian Saiu has taught theater and dramatic literature as Associate Professor at the National University of Theater and Cinematography (NUTC) in Bucharest and as Guest Lecturer at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He was Visiting Fellow at the University of London, School of Advanced Study, and is Guest Professor in Tokyo and Lisbon. He holds a PhD in Theater Studies from NUTC, with a thesis about the history of theatrical space, and one in Comparative Literature from the University of Otago, with a thesis about the theater of the absurd. He has been actively involved in several worldwide theater events and academic conferences in Romania, Israel, Brazil, New Zealand, Sweden, UK, including Edinburgh International Festival, where he was the Chair of the Beckett Conference in 2013. For three years, he was a presenter for Romanian National Television, coordinating TV shows about theater, cinema and visual arts. Since 2004, he has been the Chair of the Conferences of Sibiu International Theater Festival. He is currently the Vice-President of the Romanian Section of the International Association of Theater Critics (IATC) and Director of ‘Eugene Ionesco – Samuel Beckett’ Research Centre at NUTC. He received the Critics’ Award in 2010 and the Award of Romanian Association of Theater Artists (UNITER) in 2013. He is the author of various books, such as: In Search of Lost Space (UNATC Press, 2010, in English), Simply Beckett (Paideia, 2009, in Romanian), Fedra, from Euripides to Racine, from Seneca to Sarah Kane (Paralela 45, 2010, in Romanian), Ionescu/Ionesco: a century of ambiguity (Paideia, 2011, in Romanian), The posterity of the absurd (Paideia, 2012, in Romanian) and Theatre is dream (Paideia, 2013, in Romanian).
