I was born and raised in Bucharest, Romania in an old family that included a senator, a lawyer, a writer, an oil-fields owner, a gardner, a priest and a World War I hero. The communists put both my grandparents in jail as political prisoners for years. One died soon after the communists took his land, the other one committed suicide a few years after his release from prison.
I've learned about my family history only at the age of 14 when my father took the risk of telling me the truth and showing me forbidden pictures and documents. With the new awareness of my family trials and tribulations, I've learned at an early age to distrust and to question authority, and became known in my circle of friends as a person who was always taking the risk to speak up her mind.
I first wanted to follow my family tradition and become a lawyer, but I shocked everybody when I announced one week before the exam that that was not the path I wanted to take. At the time, kids my age had very few interesting choices, and whoever wasn’t admitted to college had to work in a factory instead. So my parents sent me to a psychiatrist to make me change my mind, and go back to law school, but I didn’t budge.
Fortunately, things were starting to open up in Eastern Europe and the Iron curtain was crumbling. In December 1989, at the age of 18 I participated in the Romanian Revolution and witnessed the bloodshed in the University Square. Across the street from where people were tearing down the communist flags and were ran over by tanks, Dan Rather from CBS News was reporting live. I didn’t know, that 10 years later, I was going to meet him and work in the same news division in New York.
Soon after the revolution the Film and Theater Academy of Romania reopened and expanded, and became the most coveted university in the country. I decided to give it a shot, and to my surprise I was admitted on top of all the list among all the schools. Although I barely prepared for a couple of months, my secret weapon were all the theater and film books from my father’s library that I’d been reading since I was 10. My life suddenly turned around.
It was still a troubled era, when communism not totally out of the door, when the old was fighting the new. Television was still seen as a propaganda tool and not as commercial glamour. As a sophomore student I was politically active and participated to many marches of protest against the Romanian Public Broadcasting Corporation which was still seen as a major symbol of the old regime. Soon though the Romanian Public Broadcasting Corporation changed direction and swelled from a one part-time channel of propaganda into four 24 hours channels inspired by the BBC model. It was a time of tremendous opportunity with big demand for young talent.
I started to work for the Drama and Film Department of the Romanian Public Corporation network reluctant at first, but it turned out it was the right move at the right time. During college I worked 20 hours a day and by the time I graduated I produced and anchored a weekly 30-minute series, “The Stage”, a critical overview of plays, performances, and festivals; it was a wonderful time when I accompanied Romanian theater companies to all major theater festivals in the world and became a fixture as a theater critic for TV and a promising personality in the theater world of Romania.
I produced hundreds of segments on top Romanian and International theater directors and actors, over ten documentaries and a couple of live award shows. In 1997 the French Government offered me a fellowship COURANTES to study and visit all the major audiovisual institutions in Paris.
So, I was on top of my game when again I stocked everybody and moved to New York where I didn’t know a soul. I soon married a young and handsome TV music producer, (who I later divorced) and I started working as a foreign correspondent for Romanian TV Evening News and reported on stories like “The State of the Union Address” (98,99), the Grammies, openings at the Metropolitan Opera, etc, for Romanian TV evening news.
In the summer of 2000 I started working as a producer/writer with the Network News Service of CBS News where I produced stories ranging from Campaign 2000, 2004, many hurricaines, accidents, the black out. I even happened to work as the North East Producer in the morning of 9/11. It was an amazing experience, and I still miss the adrenaline rush and team work whenever we had breaking news. Yet, this got old fast. I increasingly felt as a misfit, and looked for an outlet to be more creative and also to have more time for my family in Bucharest.
In May 2004, I became an American citizen, enrolled in a PhD and started to toy about writing. In 2005 I left television and started to write full time for about eight months, I finished the first draft of Dream Junkies, wrote the play, and completed some older unfinished writing projects. Boy, I had such a great time! The next fall, I started a new career in the United Nations system.
Books published:
"Dream Junkies" - English. Translated in Romanian by Larisa Copaceanu; Polirom Publishing House, May 2008. Novel. 443 pages.
“Waking Beauty” - A three Act Play, 66 pages, 7 characters, 1 child, 5 extras. The play was published in a blingual version, Ro and En, and sold at the Drama Book Store in New York and in Bucharest. It was also published in the Respiro literary magazine.
“Stranded in the past,” a collection of short stories and plays, Cartea Romaneasca Publishing House, 2005.
“Sam Shepard – A Genius of Rigoris Mortis“, Aldine Publishing House, 2005.
Upcoming projects:
“American Theater From 1980 To Present” – an overview of American theater in the last 25 years. The book will be a byproduct of my PhD.
"Manhattan Chronicles" - Short Stories.
Documentary Films that I produced, directed and wrote ,which were broadcast at Romanian Television TVR:
“A Certain State of Mind” – What happens when a young and rebellious theater director is trying to stage a new kind of “Don Giovanni” at the Romanian National Opera. 52 minutes. 1995.
“Les Danaides in New York” - A docudrama starrring George Ivascu about the biggest international co-production of recent times staged by Romanian director Silviu Purcarete which opened the Lincoln Center Festival in 1997. 30 mins.
“Remembering the future” - A film that will explore whatever happened with the dreams of future enacted by some significant theater companies in the 60s (Living Theater, Open Theater at BITEF, Belgrade International Theater Festival, 30 years after they were trying to revolutionize the world. 52 minutes.
“Profile Victor Rebengiuc” – The work in theater and film of one of Romania biggest stars, known for hundreds of performances including the lead in the Palm D’Or Award winning film “Forest of Strangled Men” directed by Liviu Ciulei (now, director in Residence at NYU). 90 minutes, 2 parts. 1993.
“Avignon 94” and “Avignon 95” - two films about the international theater festival of Avignon. 45 mins each.
Affiliations:
Playwrights Guild of America
Writers Union of Romania
Education:
PhD, American Theater 1980 to present. 2007, UNATC.
