Keynote Session: Ion Caramitru
Keynote Session:
Speaker: Ion Caramitru
Time: 15:00 – 16:00
Location: DeVere Hall
Ion Caramitru has a truly extraordinary story to tell. His career in theatre has spanned the years of Ceausescu’s oppressive dictatorship through to the
much-dreamt of freedom post the 1989 Romanian Revolution.
An acclaimed actor at the time of the revolution against the dictator, he was a prominent and active participant, and was asked to participate in government in the days that followed, but instead he wanted to fight for the arts in those confusing and frightening early days of political and social upheaval.
Founding UNITER, the new theatre industry association, in the house of one of Ceausescu’s sons, he has been a dynamic and passionate President of the association, a position he still holds to this day, bringing international writers, actors, critics, poets and many others to Romania since the early 1990s. Through this period he still continued to act and direct, both internationally as well as in Romania. He previously visited Ireland to play Leos Janacek in Performances by Brian Friel at The Gate Theatre. He was appointed Minister of Culture from 1996 to 2000, when he became fully engaged in the challenge of making the arts continue to matter in post-communist Romania.
Now General Director of the National Theatre of Bucharest he shares many of the struggles we all face, in a country where the arts once really mattered. Has it been worth it, and what happens now?
Biography
Ion Caramitru is a Romanian stage and film actor, and theatre and opera director. Born in Bucharest, he graduated from the “I.L. Caragiale” Theatre and Cinema Institute, Bucharest in 1964. He is currently the General Director of the National Theatre of Bucharest, where he also acts.
Ion Caramitru has played the leading role in a series of theatrical productions which include: for Bulandra Theatre, Leonce in Leonce and Lena, by Georg Büchner directed by Liviu Ciulei, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, directed by Alexandru Tocilescu, Iuri Zvonariov in Sorry by Aleksandr Galin, directed by Yuriy Kordonskiy, The Director in Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author; for the National Theatre of Bucharest Edward III, directed by Alexandru Tocilescu; for The Gate Theatre, Leos Janacek in Performances by Brian Friel directed by Patrick Mason.
He has starred in over 50 films, both Romanian and international. Directing credits include: My Fair Lady for The Constanta Musical Theatre; Eminescu for The National Opera House of Bucharest; The Tragedy of Carmen (Peter Brook’s version) and Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky for The Belfast Opera House; The Merchant of Venice, Othello by William Shakespeare and Macbett by Eugene Ionesco for Theatre du Signe, Tokyo; The Shape of the Table by David Edgar, Home by David Storey and Insignificance by Terry Johnson for Bulandra Theatre, Bucharest.
He was drama professor for the Bucharest University of Arts and Drama (1976-1981). Between 1996 and 2000 he was Artistic Director of the Bulandra Theatre in Bucharest and Romania’s Minister of Culture. Since 1990 he has been the President of the Romanian Theatre People Guild, UNITER.
In recognition of his contribution to establishing cultural bridges between Great Britain and Romania, he became an Honorary Officer of the British Empire in 1995. In 1997 he was honoured with the title Chevalier dans L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He was also decorated in 2000 with the Romanian Order of Merit in the rank of Great Cross.