Performing Arts Faculty

Magda Romanska

Associate Professor (2006)
B.A. Stanford University, M.A. Cornell University, Ph.D. Cornell University
http://www.magdaromanska.com

Magda Romanska is an award-winning writer, theatre scholar, and dramaturg. A former exchange scholar at the Yale School of Drama and fellow at the Mellon School of Theatre and Performance Research at Harvard University, Dr. Romanska teaches courses in Theatre History, Theory, and Dramaturgy. She is a research associate at Harvard University's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, a member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and a recipient of the 2011 Aquila Polonica Article Prize and the 2010 Gerald Kahan Scholar's Prize.

Herbooks include The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor (Anthem Press, 2012), Boguslaw Schaeffer: An Anthology (Oberon Books, 2012), Comedy: Theory and Criticism (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2013), and The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy (Routledge, forthcoming 2014).

Romanska's book chapters are anthologized in International Women Stage Directors (2011), Re-writing Chekhov: The Text and Its Mutations (2011), The Sacred Tropes (2009), The Cultural Politics of Heiner Muller (2008), and Ghosts, Stories, Histories (2007). Selected articles have appeared in Theatre Survey, TDR: The Drama Review, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, and Mercurian: A Theatrical Translation Review. Other contributions include entries for The Oxford Encyclopedia of African American History ( 2009), The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest (2009), and The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama (2007).

She has served on the editorial board of Theater, the Yale Journal of Law and Humanities, and Diacritics, a review journal of criticism and theory. She was also a founding editor of Palimpsest: Yale Literary and Arts Magazine, which was featured in Print's Regional Design Annual (2004) and chosen from among over twenty thousand entries. She serves on the boards of Masks: Journal of Law and Theatre, and the Polish Theatre Perspectives Journal.

In addition to her scholarly work, Romanska writes creative fiction and nonfiction. Most recently, her humorous short story "How I Survived Socialism" was published in The Cosmopolitan Review. She is a co-author of the musical based on the life of Leonardo da Vinci, and a screenplay based on the life of Richard Wright. Her selected dramaturgical credits include Marat/Sade, Hamlet, Macbeth, Amadeus, and The Three Sisters. In 2012, she was a dramaturg for Café Variations, a co-production of SITI Company, Arts Emerson, and Emerson Stage, directed by Anne Bogart.