Andrei Serban is a famous Romanian director who is known for his provocative visual images and the way he reinterprets classical works such as Greek tragedy or Chekhov. He has worked for the major theatres in US and Europe, including the American Repertory Theatre in Boston, where he has been directing for more than two decades.

By Alexandra Fodor

Andrei Serban was born in 1943 in Bucharest, Romania. He studied directing at the Theatre Institute in Bucharest and in 1969, he received a Ford Foundation Grant, which took him to La MaMa Experimental Theatre Center in New York City.

In 1970, he traveled to Paris to study at Peter Brook’s International Centre for Theatre Research and in 1977, he directed Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at the Lincoln Center in New York. The production starring Irene Worth and Meryl Streep won a Tony Award for Best Revival.

Over the years Serban has worked with A.R.T, LaMama ETC, the Public Theater, Lincoln Center, Circle in the Square, Yale Repertory Theatre, the Guthrie Theatre, A.C.T., and the New York City, Seattle and Los Angeles Operas. In Europe, he has worked at the Welsh National Opera, Covent Garden, Théâtre de la Ville, Helsinki Lilla Teatern, and the Paris, Geneva, Vienna, and Bologna Opera Houses. Several of the operas he directed in Europe have been released on DVD.

He taught acting and directing at various universities and international theatre institutes including Yale University, University of California, Harvard University, Carnegie-Mellon, Sarah Lawrence College, the Paris Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique, and the American Repertory Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training.

Hi directed opera and theatre productions such as The Seagull (1980), The Marriage of Figaro (1982), Uncle Vanya (1983), Sweet Table at the Richelieu (1986), Twelfth Night (1989), The Fiery Angel (1992), Les contes d'Hoffman (1994), The Taming of the Shrew (1997–1998), The Merchant of Venice (1998–1999), The King Stag, Hamlet (2000), Lysistrata, (2002), Pericles (2003).

In 1999, he received from the Boston Theater Critics Association the Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence. The same year, he received from the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers the prestigious George Abbot Award, honoring artists who have made a major impact on theatre in the 20th century.

In 2007, The Andrei Serban Traveling Academy was launched at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. This is an experimental theatre workshop organized in Romania and the USA under his patronage. A comprehensive photographic retrospective of his entire career, "My Journeys – Theatre/Opera", was published in 2008.

He is currently the Director of the Oscar Hammerstein Center for the Performing Arts at Columbia University, where he heads the MFA acting program.

alex@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Columbia University)