Why I Love and Make Theater
Why I Love and Make Theater
https://www.catalinaflorescu.com/
MY PLAYS (FREE COPIES AVAILABLE HERE): https://newplayexchange.org/users/30111/catalina-florina-florescu
Playwright’s bio: I grew up in communist Romania falling in love with theatrical productions on the radio and TV. Despite being in one of the worst dictatorships of all times in the world, with no freedom of speech, with censors always ready to intervene, surprisingly theater managed to maintain its high standard. I grew up listening to or viewing on TV productions of famous international and Romanian playwrights. When communism fell, I had the immense honor to read the entire body of work of Romanian born French playwright Eugène Ionesco. In part, his style has influenced mine. When I came to the States I knew that I would study American Theater, but did not know that I would combine it with Medical Humanities. I hold a Ph.D. from Purdue University with a double major; I teach at Pace University in Manhattan; I am a published author with books catalogued at famous universities and at NYPL and Library of Congress; I am a playwright; and I am a mother. My passion is to discover voices that tell inclusive, unheard stories and to reach that goal I am the curator for The New Plays Series at Jersey City Theater Center.
Biography of my plays:
Mia is a play about breast cancer and femininity post mastectomy. Given its medical humanities approach, it’s also a morally prophylactic play about how we can stop the illness to be overtly sexualized, how women are not objects of pleasure but how their bodies are active sites, full of inquiries that may not be answered but rather felt and respected. Stage reading directed this past spring, 2019. World premiere this fall, 2020 at HERE: Arts Center, New York. Mia is part of The Rebelled Body Plays, published by NoPassport Press, ed. Caridad Svich. Library of Congress Call Number: https://lccn.loc.gov/2018487029 Its Romanian version appeared in Teatru at Tracus Arte. (The play is part of STAGING BREAST CANCER – A TRILOGY: https://www.facebook.com/Staging-Breast-Cancer-106536531120646/?modal=admin_todo_tour)
Suicidal Dog and Laika, a parable, is a play about how history needs to be told from the perspective of the one whose voice is either silenced or marginalized. In this case, on the one hand, Laika’s voice, the first (female) creature to be sent and die in space “in the name of science” and, on the other hand, Dog’s, an immigrant from the Middle East who thought starting a new life in “the new world” would be the adventure of his lifetime. This play has had the most stage readings: 3 in NYC and one in London. It is considered for production in London in 2020. Because of C-19, that production has been postponed indefinitely. An online premiere is scheduled for this May (2020) with actors from the US, UK and Romania. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTyTzipLRAThe play is part of The Rebelled Body Plays. Its Romanian version appeared in Teatru at Tracus Arte.
Three as in Tri-Angle, or the Aftertastes of Life is a metatheatrical piece revising and revisiting views on masculinities and how men should not be viewed as the monolithic blocks of patriarchy but as gentle and fragile creatures, and how equally lost they may feel when transitioning from a one-sided view on their masculinity to a more ?uid and complex identity. As a result, men are not portrayed as villains but as people who, helped by an open-minded society, need to dismantle archaic, toxic views. The Romanian version of the play had a reading in Bucharest in the fall of 2018. The play was invited to be part of a workshop titled “Pushing the Limits of Gender Roles through Performance” (Canadian Language Museum, Toronto.) The play is part of The Rebelled Body Plays, published by NoPassport Press, ed. Caridad Svich. The Romanian version appeared in Teatru at Tracus Arte.
La Tiza, a One-Act play, about a D.A.C.A. boy of Mexican ancestry who, after witnessing the brutal deportation of his parents, looks into our eyes to see how low can humanity succumb before admitting our collective guilt, i.e., that deporting one human relies on our hypocritical complicity that perpetuates injustice and intolerance of those “other”... like us. It is part of Voices on the Move: Writing by and about Refugees: https://www.bookdepository.com/Voices-on-the-Move-Domnica-Radulescu-Roxana-Cazan/9781910146460
It is part of Valdez Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Anchorage, Alaska (rescheduled for 2021). The play will have stage reading during “Finding Home” event, Gypsy House Café, Denver, CO. The play had a Zoom reading at The Shawnee Playwrights Original Series, Shawnee on Delaware, PA https://www.facebook.com/106005740899504/videos/872808133201268/
Vecinele, my first play written directly in my native language. It’s a play marking the centennial anniversary since the Great Union in Romania that solidified us as one nation. But due to corruption, political immaturity, and socio-economic discrepancies, we can see and feel those 100 years not as fruitful as we would have hoped. Which in turn begs the question, since this is not an exclusive Romanian problem, but it applies to other ex-communist countries, has their journey to adapt to democracy a victory or a forever delayed achievement? The play can be read here: https://editura.liternet.ro/carte/362/Catalina-Florescu/Vecinele.html
Am aflat... acum, my second play written directly in Romanian and my first commissioned play possible via an AFCN award. This is my first play to be fully staged and it’s also my first play with an almost exclusive cast of teenagers. With the exception of the janitor, all the eleven characters are in high school. They meet and talk about topics that concern every adolescent, from falling in love, to looking for their future, to discovering who they are. The play won the 2nd prize at the National Comedy Competition (in Romania). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLTWSoBygmE&feature=youtu.be
Snowdrops and Chlorine is my second play in a trilogy about breast cancer. The play talks about cancer debunking the idea that only women get it, that cancer is heredity, that all bodies once diagnosed with the illness should go through chemotherapy, and that after mastectomy reconstruction is a must. The play’s world premiere is possible via an AFCN grant and it would a hybrid production due to C-19. (The play is part of STAGING BREAST CANCER – A TRILOGY: https://www.facebook.com/Staging-Breast-Cancer-106536531120646/?modal=admin_todo_tour.
The play advertised in Broadway World: https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Staging-Breast-Cancer-Presents-SNOWDROPS-AND-CHLORINE-20200619)
Map of T/Errors is my first immersive play in three tableaux with two presidents from two different countries morph into puppets, more specifically pi?atas. This is an intergenerational, transnational play with two pairs, a niece and her grandfather, and a nephew and his grandfather, respectively, plus one character in V.O. In this play, history becomes exactly what it should (have) be(en): a geographical map overlapping an anatomical one. When the two pairs from the two different countries meet, they discover that they have been sharing the stage the whole time. By so doing and by inviting the audience to participate, the play seeks a way to alleviate the heavy load of political propaganda transforming it into something else. There is no ending to the play, not in the strict way anyway, because with each audience the play has the option to be rewritten via a set of uncoreographed bodily gestures and sounds. At this point, language is superfluous.
Cancer Choreographed: A monologue about rape represented only via dance. The text will be interpreted via movement. The intention is not to silence a victim of sexual abuse, but to make sure their body is not traumatized again via relived experience. (The play is part of STAGING BREAST CANCER – A TRILOGY: https://www.facebook.com/Staging-Breast-Cancer-106536531120646/?modal=admin_todo_tour)
Zoom Plays (part of a Play Slam coordinated by Domnica Radulescu ): Cliffhanger (2 neighbors discuss the early days of the pandemic pushing the dialogue towards sexual needs); In Her Head (A woman wonders if her lover will ever admit that what is between them is more than an affair); In the Air (A couple are questioning the passage of time and the possibility that one of them might be diagnosed with an aggressive neurological illness); The Space Between Us (A woman awaits for her spouse to return from outer space from where he went to try to find her a cure for cancer); Clean (A woman in her sixties talks about the intimate relationship between water and women). Cliffhanger will be published in a journal of medical humanities (part of the Hektoen Institute of Medicine: https://hekint.org/2020/05/11/covid-19-and-the-mind-a-short-play/) and The Space Between Us will be part of the series’ festival. Cliffhanger will be part of the Short Plays Festival, July 2020, Zoom edition.
Flap, Flap, Dive narrates the struggles of four faculty adjuncts and it shifts between personal stories to docu-drama. It’s a testimony of daily humiliation. It is grim and depressive, just like these people's reality. It relates, in part, to a performance from the late '70's, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Touch Sanitation Performance. The piece brings into view not only the lack of rights of these faculty, but also how or if the relatively new views on poverty could be applied to salvage a tiny bit from the deeply broken system of education. It deserves to come to the attention of the public because there is no play on such topic in which education is radically questioned, in which the morals of those in charge are questioned, in which we listen to testimony and other facts from reliable published sources to get a glimpse into what's happening and how, many adjuncts, are very close to become homeless at any moment. This project relates to social theater and theater of the oppressed and it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. (Notes about depression, invisibility, etc. are also components of this docu-play.)
Femeia care tot uita sa se nasca (Romanian) in a way combines narratives of two beloved children’s stories, The Musicians from Bremen and The Wizard of Oz. It is a story of five women who want to get a fresh start, away from men, away from what they have been told to do. The play talks about how domesticity is an abuse that needs to be corrected by women themselves. The play was a Finalist in the Play of the Year UNITER, Romania. https://www.uniter.ro/rezultatele-concursului-de-dramaturgie-cea-mai-buna-piesa-romaneasca-a-anului-2019-un-proiect-al-uniter/
Rehearsing Lines is a Ten-Minute play about a woman who is so alone that she starts conversations with strangers while pretending to wait for a bus. It delves into issues related to ageing and loneliness.
Effervesce is a Ten-Minute play about a grandson and his immigrant grandfather who has requested be euthanized on a night full with stars, in the woods, while in his head he is playing the famous The Blue Danube Waltz.
Moss is a One-Act about a grandmother in a nursing home that reveals her painful truth and how her own family denied her own sexual needs. She makes this confession afraid that her granddaughter will make the same mistake. The play had its debut at The Players Theater, Short Plays Festival, New York. About it here: https://stagebiz.com/catalina-florina-florescu-brings-moss-to-sex/
Ana is a play that rewrites a famous Romanian legend (“Mesterul Manole”) according to which, in order to be erected, a monastery needs a human sacrifice. In this One-Act/Monologue, the woman retells and reclaims her story and body. https://youtu.be/nXXfdcE3cME
Unpack is a monologue that tells the story of a woman who recounts her magical moments spent with her father. The monologue transports us back in time when the woman was a teen until when she lost her father.