PC: Jody Christopherson
Where are you from and where do you reside now?
I am originally from Romania – born and raised. I arrived in New York for the first time in 2001, two weeks before 9/11, to study Performance Studies at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts, thanks to a Fulbright fellowship. I got my MA in Performance Studies and became Richard Schechner’s East Coast Artists’ writer-in-residence. Our show Yokastas Redux had an impactful production at La MaMa Theatre. I was then accepted into the MFA in Dramatic Writing program at New York University and continued to develop my playwriting in English.
My first full-length play Waxing West, presented at La MaMa, won the 2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award. Excited by the opportunity of living and working in New York, I stayed in the city, wrote new plays, taught part-time at NYU, and had multiple workshops and (small) productions, enjoying the artistic life of an impractical international/immigrant playwright – until I realized that I need to make ends meet and get health insurance… ☺
I accepted the offer for a full-time job at Ithaca College (IC) upstate New York. I am now a tenured associate professor of Playwriting and Contemporary Theatre, and the Chair of Theatre Studies at Ithaca College’s School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, as well as an affiliated artist/scholar with Cornell University’s Center for International Studies. I reside mainly in Ithaca, but I try to be back in New York on all my academic breaks and many weekends, so I can still develop and present my plays in NYC and beyond. And of course, I want to see shows and hang out with friends… New York is still my home in my heart.
2. What is your artistic discipline?
I am mainly a playwright. However, I’ve worked as a director and theatre journalist as well. I’ve published books of poetry. I even performed in my autobiographical show Alien with Extraordinary Skills. I could be called a multidisciplinary artist, I guess, but I consider myself first and foremost a playwright.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Romanian revolution, I worked as a journalist for the newly created free press at the most widely circulated daily newspaper, Adevărul (The Truth). I was also writing poetry, prose, theatre/film/book reviews for various cultural magazines, and was a contributor for Radio Free Europe. I even worked as a TV talk-show host for TVRi (Romanian Public TV – International channel) called Necessary Polemics where I moderated a sort of debate between two public persons. It was intense. But I’ve always been a little subversive, a rebellious artist, speaking truth to power. It was exciting to be a writer and a journalist in Romania in the 90s – everything seemed possible.
After covering theatre productions/festivals and publishing two collections of feminist poetry (Love on the Barbed Wire and Advice for Housewives and Muses), I wrote a dramatic poem, The Outcast, about a woman running and running... to escape the patriarchy, I guess.
It was translated into English and French, staged in Romania, and then made it to Théâtre Gérard Philipe de Saint-Denis in Paris for their Du Monde Entier festival in 1998. I was invited to Paris to see the production of my Outcast. It was my first trip to the West and I was called a ‘playwright’ for the first time. It rang totally true. I had considered myself a poet, a writer, a journalist, but I gradually grew to believe in myself as a playwright. All of my plays are actually about outcasts – the immigrants, the voiceless, the marginals, the oppressed, the different, ‘the others’... Outsiders as un/documented aliens, global foreigners, nerds, disoriented/misunderstood teens, loners, rebels, revolutionaries or just regular people who felt like an ‘outsider’ at some point in their lives. The need to belong/conform versus the need to rebel/stand out – that internal conflict is a rich theatrical mine. In a few of my plays (Waxing West, Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, Ants), I dramatize that inner dialogue.
I went to Germany to study playwriting in English with Phyllis Nagy and David Harrower at the Ruhr International Summer Theatre Academy. I wrote my first play in English there – Final Countdown. It’s still being produced around the world, most recently in Mexico City, Paris and Warsaw. Then I wrote a full-length absurdist play, The Inflatable Apocalypse, in Romanian, and it won the Best Play of the Year UNITER (Romanian Theatre Guild) Award in 2000.
The UK tour of my multimedia poetry performance, Scriptease, consolidated my reputation as a feminist poet-dramatist in Europe. A KulturKontakt residency in Vienna and a Fulbright grant in New York followed. Although I was already a noted artist with many published/produced works, I chose not to use the fellowship as a visiting artist but to enroll in the MA in Performance Studies program at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. I thought I’d get to learn more that way, while also practicing a much-needed humbleness. Success can be addictive and harmful – it’d already went to my head.
So, I was in my early 30s when I pressed ‘reset’ on my life, becoming a student again and writing in a second language: hello, American-English! I was living uptown, at International House, thanks to a Women’s International Leadership (WIL/MacLaine) fellowship, and going to New York University downtown, when 9/11 happened. A new reset... a new perspective about life.
I started to write plays about immigrants as I became more aware of and concerned with non-equality, discrimination, power dynamics, and the non-stop negotiation between the American Dream and the small (and big) daily ‘nightmares’. It hasn’t been easy to start from scratch, to live in a new – extremely tough – culture, to write in a new language, to have to prove continuously that you belong here.
3. When did you become a Member?
I became an EST member in 2009, I think. It’s important for me to have such a valuable artistic home and a community that supports you and pushes you to do your best as a playwright.
4. What is one of your favorite EST Memories?
EST co-produced my play For a Barbarian Woman with/at Fordham University in 2011.
I got to work with director Niegel Smith, choreographer Paloma McGregor, sound designer Daniel Kluger, set designer Alexis Distler, and a team of talented students. We had an amazing time, and the production was gorgeous. It was a wonderful experience, professional and educational at the same time. Plus, I felt truly supported by the EST leadership. Shoutout to Paul Slee, who championed my work and believed in me - an immigrant/international playwright who was still trying to make sense of her hybrid identity.
5. What is influencing or inspiring your artistry right now?
My own life. The current social and political climate. Books, articles, facts, artifacts, movies.
Yeah, I am influenced by interesting movies and their dramatic structures or characters.
I am inspired by various stories I read in the news. I’ve always thought that the role of the playwright in contemporary society is to respond to the spirit and the issues of our time, to question the unquestionable, to address the difficult topics, to challenge the taboos, to subvert the mainstream, and to never provide easy answers to stereotypical questions.
Maybe because I protested in the streets – as an idealistic college student at the Romanian Revolution and then as a journalist in the newly created free press – I still believe in the revolutionary writer: the writer who's always on the barricades, fighting for the underdogs, pushing the borders of human knowledge and the understanding of ‘the other’.
6. Who are your artistic influences?
I admire many US playwrights working today. To name the first that come to my mind, in no particular order: Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, Jordan Harrison, Jeremy O. Harris, Caridad Svich, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Katori Hall, Martyna Majok, Jen Silverman, Ayad Akhtar, Jocelyn Bioh, Qui Nguyen, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Dominique Morriseau, Rehana Lew Mirza, etc.
In Romania I was clearly inspired by Eugène Ionesco / Eugen Ionescu. His Rhinoceros is relevant even now… A French journalist called me “a female Ionesco” once. I still cherish that moment, but I hope that “Stanesco” is making her own lasting mark ;)
Currently, I am happy I get to be in the same room/Zoom with EST playwrights Deborah Zoe Laufer, Cassandra Medley, Jacquelyn Reingold, Alice Eve Cohen, James Scruggs, Laura Maria Censabella, and the other Playwrights Unit members. It’s really helpful to hear new work and give/receive feedback. And of course, the Youngblood playwrights are so compelling and fresh, I always love to see their work. They are inspiring and fierce.
7. What was the best play/film/TV you watched recently?
Oh, there are so many good plays, films, TV… It’s hard to call one of them “the best”.
But I’m gonna say that English by Sanaz Toossi is one of the best and most relevant (for me) plays I’ve seen recently. It addresses the experience of learning English as a second language in such a powerful, meaningful, and candid way…
I also loved The Antiquities by Jordan Harrison, and the musical Maybe Happy Ending. I’ve been writing a few dystopian/utopian plays regarding the AI-human connectivity too, and I am highly interested in these topics.
In terms of film and TV: Anora is a beautiful movie that touched me profoundly (possibly because my Eastern European background). I finally got to binge-watch all seasons of Succession and Hacks, and I enjoyed both, the writing is so witty and poignant.
8. What advice do you have for emerging theatermakers that you wish you knew?
Believe in yourself, be bold and brave, but also kind and compassionate.
Be humble and generous: acknowledge other people’s talent and work.
Be part of a community, it’s hard and lonely to be on your own.
9. What are you working on now?
I’m working on an adaptation of a memoir/novel by a Romanian-Jewish Holocaust survivor: The Hooligan’s Return by Norman Manea. We had a first public staged reading, it went very well, and I’m looking forward to the next developmental steps.
I’m also in the process of doing the last rewrites on a documentary play called Ithaca Fever which will have a production in April at the Cherry Arts in Ithaca, NY.
Another project I love: We have a first draft of a musical co-created with Julián Mesri and Courney Young, HIJAS, that we plan to further workshop upstate NY, and then in New York.
My “AI scripts” Zebra 2.0 and e-Motion are moving forward towards new presentations in New York. We are still in discussions about where it’s better to have a run of Zebra 2.0 (I wish EST was an option ☺), but it’s probably going to be at 59E59.
e-Motion, co-created with choreographer/dancer Daniel Gwirtzman and his dance company (DGDC), will have a presentation in a festival at La MaMa in April. It’s a dance theatre show about a H, a humanoid robot, and his creator, Ava, a neuroscientist.
Last but not least, I’m trying to find a home for my new play Lab Rats, a dramedy written from the perspective of a lab rat called Mr. BIG. What else? Oh, we’re hoping for a revival of my “old” play Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, originally produced at Women’s Project (WP Theater) – it’s such a timely story about two undocumented “aliens” and their documented friends. And it’s funny, and sad, and funny, and sad, and— uplifting, really.
We all need a little joy in these crazy times…
10. How can people connect with you?
Email is good: savianas@yahoo.com. My websites: www.saviana.com and www.savianastanescu.com. Or through my agent Elaine Devlin at (212) 842-9030 - elaine@edevlinlit.com.