Doctoral Defense: IBSEN at the Theatrical Crossroads of Europe: A Performance History of Henrik Ibsen’s Plays on the Romanian Stages (1894–1947)

The dissertation of Gianina Druta investigates the early performance history of Henrik Ibsen in Romania between 1894 and 1947. It is also the first analysis within Romanian Ibsen scholarship and theatre history to combine digital humanities tools with a traditional theatre historiographical approach. In this respect, the use of the IbsenStage database and of histoire crois ee provides the methodological and theoretical framework of this study. The Romanian quantitative and qualitative data have revealed a contradiction: Ibsen was not performed with great frequency, yet historical sources suggest that he had a significant impact on national acting and staging practices. The dissertation embarks on an exploration of this contradiction. First, it analyzes the aesthetic diversity of influences brought into Romania by French, Italian, German, Hungarian and Yiddish touring performances. Second, it pinpoints commercialism, protectionism and aesthetics as the strongest forces of constraint within the unstable administrative, financial and legislative structures of the early Romanian theatre. Then, it assesses how these forces worked for and against the production of Ibsen’s plays. Third, the dissertation considers the impact of twelve Romanian Ibsenites in three production hubs: the National Theatre of Ias, i,