Romanian director Alexandra Badea and writer Cristian Fulaş awarded by French Academy
Director and playwright Alexandra Badea and writer and translator Cristian Fulaş are among the 67 laureates of the awards granted this year by the French Academy.
Alexandra Badea received the "Prix du Théâtre. Ensemble de son œuvre dramatique" (Theater Prize for her entire dramatic work), while Cristian Fulaş was honored with the "Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises" (Prize for remarkable contributions to the French language and literature). Both prestigious awards fall under the category of "Grands Prix," as stated by the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) and cited by news.ro.
The French Academy annually awards two categories of literary prizes: "Grands Prix," for which nominations are exclusively made by members of the Academy (31 laureates in 2023), and "Prix de fondations," for which authors and publishers can submit proposals (36 laureates in 2023).
The two Romanians are among the cultural figures whose work has been promoted by the Romanian Cultural Institute.
The prize received by Romanian-born author Alexandra Badea was initiated in 1980 and previous laureates include playwrights such as Marguerite Duras, Hélène Cixous, and Marie NDiaye. Badea is the first writer whose native language is not French to receive this award.
As a theater and film director, playwright, and novelist, Alexandra Badea has been residing in France since 2003. She has published twelve plays with the prestigious publishing house L'Arche and two novels.
Badea’s texts, written in French, have been translated into several languages and performed on major stages worldwide. In 2013, she received the Grand Prix de littérature dramatique (Grand Prize for Dramatic Literature) from the French National Theater Center for her play "Pulvérisés." In 2016, she was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of Arts and Letters) by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2019, she was invited by the Avignon Festival to create the second part of the trilogy "Points de non-retour," which was later presented at the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris.
Alexandra Badea is a graduate of the UNATC Bucharest, Theater Directing department, and Sorbonne Nouvelle University. In Romania, Tracus Arte Publishing has released the volume "Exil," a play that achieved remarkable success when staged at the National Theatre of Bucharest in 2022.
Writer and translator Cristian Fulaş was awarded the "Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises," médaille de vermeil. This annual prize, established by the French Academy in 1960, is traditionally given to French or foreign personalities who have made remarkable contributions to the language and literature.
Alongside Cristian Fulaş, this year's recipients of the same prize include Valentina Hristova, a historian of Hungarian origin, Stenio Solinas, an Italian writer and editor, Bernard Michel, for his contribution to rediscovering the work of René Maran, and Thi Hao Tran, a Vietnamese-born French-language novelist.
Fulaş graduated from the Faculty of Letters in Baia Mare and pursued advanced studies in literary theory at the University of Bucharest. He has translated approximately fifty books from English, Italian, and French, and since 2019 he has been working on a new translation of Marcel Proust's novel "In Search of Lost Time." Fulaş authored the fictionalized biography "Celan. Am trăit, da" (2022). His most recent novel, "Specii," was published by Polirom in 2023.
Both laureates are among the authors whose work has been promoted over time by the ICR. For example, the Romanian Cultural Institute and La Peuplade Publishing House in Canada organized a literary tour in France and Belgium in November 2022 to present Cristian Fulaş's novel "Ioşca" in French translation by Florica Courriol and Jean-Louis Courriol. Presentations and meetings with readers were held in bookstores and cultural centers in Paris, Nantes, Bordeaux, Lyon, and Brussels, followed by coverage in the specialized press. Furthermore, the French edition of the novel "Ioşca" was presented at the Romania booth during the Festival du Livre de Paris in April 2023, organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute.
The Romanian Cultural Institute in Paris supported Badea's participation in Strasbourg in January 2020 to supervise an ambitious project of the University of Strasbourg, the Artlingo workshop, where students studying Romanian language courses at the university familiarized themselves with the subtleties of the Romanian language through theater.
(Photo source: Icr.ro)
