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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Andrei Șerban: The Search for ‘New Forms’

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This chapter discusses the theatre of Andrei Șerban, definitely one of the most important theatre directors of the second half of the twentieth century. He began directing in Communist Romania in the 1960s and had to deal with censorship, so in order to avoid this uncomfortable context, he focused on interpreting the text—he constantly searched for new nuances and made use of all possible subtexts. These are the premises of his work and when he moved to the USA, he continued this artistic strategy. Throughout his career, Andrei Șerban has been passionate about staging The Seagull (five times), as he is constantly looking for new forms, just like Chekhov’s character Treplev. A special accent is placed on his preoccupation with the text’s interpretation going along with a particular kind of discrete theatricality and on his constant search for a certain artistic “beyond.”