Magda Romanska
Magda Romanska is an interdisciplinary scholar at the intersection of theatre, digital humanities, and technology, whose work is reshaping how we understand performance in the digital age. Her research spans transmedia storytelling, hybrid dramaturgy, and computational analysis of dramatic texts, including the development of drametrics — a transvergent quantitative, computational methodology that builds on earlier work in mathematical poetics, and blends classical dramatic theory with mathematical models. Her current research on pattern recognition includes quantum dramaturgy, which applies concepts like superposition, entanglement, and the observer effect to multi-voiced, and networked narratives; posthuman disability studies and the ethics of mimicry (in theatre, AI, VR, and post-human enhancements), with a focus on human–AI interaction and cognitive liberty.
Romanska is a Professor of Performing Arts at Emerson College in Boston, MA, a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard and Researcher at Harvard metaLAB, where she has led initiatives examining how digital technologies are transforming theatre and performance, including the Digital Access Research Project, and the Future Stage project. She chairs the Transmedia Arts seminar at Harvard University’s Mahindra Humanities Center. She is the Founder, Executive Director, and Editor-in-Chief of TheTheatreTimes.com, the largest global digital theatre portal, which has been recognized with numerous international awards, including a 2025 Webby Honoree, the 2024 ATHE-ASTR Award for Excellence in Digital Scholarship from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy from Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of Americas. Under her leadership, TheTheatreTimes.com launched Performap.org, an interactive digital map of theatre festivals; and IOTF: International Online Theatre Festival, a yearly streaming global theatre festival, which won a second-place Culture Online International Award for “Best Online Project,” chosen among 452 projects from 20 countries.
Romanska’s past publications cover a range of areas, from post-traumatic theatre and theory, to a theory of comedy, tragedy, and dramaturgy. She is the author of five critically acclaimed scholarly books, including TheaterMachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context (2020); Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2016); The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, (2014) a leading and best-selling handbook of dramaturgy; The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor (2012); and Boguslaw Schaeffer: An Anthology (2013).
Romanska is a Professor of Performing Arts at Emerson College in Boston, MA, a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard and Researcher at Harvard metaLAB, where she has led initiatives examining how digital technologies are transforming theatre and performance, including the Digital Access Research Project, and the Future Stage project. She chairs the Transmedia Arts seminar at Harvard University’s Mahindra Humanities Center. She is the Founder, Executive Director, and Editor-in-Chief of TheTheatreTimes.com, the largest global digital theatre portal, which has been recognized with numerous international awards, including a 2025 Webby Honoree, the 2024 ATHE-ASTR Award for Excellence in Digital Scholarship from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy from Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of Americas. Under her leadership, TheTheatreTimes.com launched Performap.org, an interactive digital map of theatre festivals; and IOTF: International Online Theatre Festival, a yearly streaming global theatre festival, which won a second-place Culture Online International Award for “Best Online Project,” chosen among 452 projects from 20 countries.
Romanska’s past publications cover a range of areas, from post-traumatic theatre and theory, to a theory of comedy, tragedy, and dramaturgy. She is the author of five critically acclaimed scholarly books, including TheaterMachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context (2020); Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2016); The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, (2014) a leading and best-selling handbook of dramaturgy; The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor (2012); and Boguslaw Schaeffer: An Anthology (2013).
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Books by Magda Romanska
Book info: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/digital-accessibility-of-performing-arts
The book traces the digital pivot during and after the pandemic, outlining the relationship between copyright laws and disability laws, the post-pandemic collapse of theatre audiences, and the role that AI can play in the future of the performing arts. Straddling the disciplines of performance studies, digital humanities, disability studies, law, and public policy, the book argues for increased accessibility to the performing arts via digital tools.
It would be of interest to artistic directors, managers, directors, dramaturgs, and anyone concerned with the future of theatre in a new tech era.
The book was selected by the Knowledge Unlatched Selection Committee — a global, volunteer group of over 200 libraries — for inclusion in the 2026 Digital Lives: Technology’s Influence on Contemporary Life Collection that brings together the 20 most important new books published in 2026 that explore how technology shapes society, culture, governance, and individual lives. The titles chosen for open access (OA) are available at Open Research Library.
The book is now available for download in Open Access:
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/345/monograph/book/138797/pdf
Endorsements:
"Polemically embracing disabled communities’ Right to Art, Digital Access marshals legal and cultural experts to assess inhibiting policies in a livestreaming age. Differently-abled folks were able to access culture with unprecedented ease during the coronavirus pandemic, when pivoting to digital online performance suddenly became urgent. The current book gathers the data about how this historical event enlarged audiences and became dramatically more inclusive – but also reveals the absence of any economic model to sustain it. Magda Romanska, tireless theorizer of transmedia and performance studies, here summons a team of legal experts and digital mavens to report on how online accessibility is faring across cultures in the Anglophone world. Extending the Future Stage manifesto that framed live performance within online culture and accessibility, Digital Access posits streaming as a new creative vehicle of inclusive, dynamic, dramaturgical might.
-Caroline Jones, Professor and Director of Transmedia Storytelling Initiative at MIT
"This is an urgent and necessary book. It insists, without apology, that digital access to performance is not a luxury, but a lifeline – a matter of both disability rights and human rights. By offering practical tools for theatre makers to reach disabled, elderly, homebound and geographically isolated audiences – as well as the digital natives who grew up online – it challenges our field to expand its horizons and embrace the communities that sustained it during the darkest months of the pandemic. In doing so, it calls upon artists, institutions and funders alike to imagine a future of both access and artistry."
Anne Bogart, Theatre Director, Professor and Head of the Directing, Columbia University
“These rich and profound essays not only place Kantor retrospectively into the theatrical past, but also argue persuasively for his relevance in the 21st century as an avatar of postdramatic and posthuman performance, and of object theater and performance art.”
– Choice Magazine
“In their edited collection, Theatermachine, Magda Romanska and Kathleen Cioffi address the lack of recognition and critical attention given to Polish theater maker Tadeusz Kantor and attempt the important work of remedying this dearth of scholarship by repositioning the study of his productions and theoretical writings as productive sites of contemporary theory and aesthetics.” – TDR: The Drama Review
“This diversity of authors – and the resulting various research views – is very valuable. It makes it possible to avoid situations where the same researchers write about Kantor’s works over and over again, but above all, it enables the editors to achieve the goal of showing the variety of contexts in which it can be successfully and in an interesting way placed. The work of the editors of the volume deserves recognition. The book they have prepared above all proves that Tadeusz Kantor’s work can still inspire, surprise and provoke discussion.”
– Didaskalia
“The most important result of this publication is that through this entanglement of different discourses, cultures, and narrations, Kantor’s art reveals itself not only as practice but also as a strong theoretical proposal.”
– Modern Drama
“Romanska and Cioffi’s edited volume comes out at a perfect moment; Kantor’s legacy needs new analysis.”
– Theatre and Performance Design
“In 2020, American theatre-related circles received an outstanding book covering multiple aspects of the work of Tadeusz Kantor. Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context starts with the introduction by Magda Romańska (one of the editors). She points out that as much as Jerzy Grotowski’s focus on the body in his theatre practice made him the exemplary theatre figure of the second-half of the twentieth century, Kantor’s disembodied, truncated, object-oriented productions make him the signpost of the twenty-first century post-dramatic theatre that challenges the unified structure of the performance, gets rid of the character and plot, leaving the space for disconnected bits and pieces of transient reality. The theme of Kantor’s post-dramatic bent iterates in many other chapters as post-memory (Klaudiusz Święcicki, Anna Róża Burzyńska), or post-human age (Romańska) and is referenced as post-dramatic tragedy by Hans-Thies Lehmann. The arrangement of the consecutive chapters indicates how meticulously the editors were choosing the texts in order to continue the main thematic trajectories, but at the same time add a different perspective and a new angle to every section. We are confronted with myriads of [Kantor’s] ideas and the book edited by Magda Romańska and Kathleen Cioffi, like a real “Kantormachine,” is the best representation of this phenomenon. And the machine rolls on.”
– The Polish Review
PEER REVIEWS:
“This groundbreaking collection of beautifully edited essays is impressive in both scope and depth. The book deftly interweaves Kantor’s Polish, Jewish, international, and theoretical roots, thus illuminating essential connections between each in thrilling new ways.”
—Dassia Posner, Northwestern University, author of The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde
“A unique collection, full of splendid writing and vivid insight, destined to become an essential resource on one of the twentieth century’s seminal experimental theater artists.”—Jonathan Kalb, Hunter College, the author of Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater
“An invaluable and much-needed collection on the incomparable Kantor—his work, his life, his theatrical prescience. Kantor confronted the twentieth century in profound ways that changed the future of theater. This volume approaches his methods and means through twenty-first-century lenses that Kantor’s own work might be said to have forecast—post-dramatic theory, new materialism, thing theory, and posthumanism. As such, Theatermachine expands our understanding not only of the theater artist but of theory and practice that would follow.”—Rebecca Schneider, Brown University, the author of Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment
Magda Romanska and Alan Ackerman’s Reader in Comedy is a well-thought-out anthology that embarks on a challenging enterprise: to provide an overview of theories related to comedy, broadly conceived, starting with the ancient Greek comedy and ending with the present-day sitcoms, vaudeville performances, slapstick comedy, and Internet humor. The general introduction, in turn, offers a valuable outline of the book: it explains the provenance of key terms, outlines debates on the role of comedy in particular periods, discusses typical comic plots and character-types, and ends with a brief synopsis of relevant theories of humor and laughter. Combined with the useful bibliographies following each of these prefatory studies, the Reader is an invaluable tool for teachers and students alike. The section on the twentieth and early twenty-first century, on the other hand, contains a superb selection of texts, from expected pieces by Luigi Pirandello, Jacques Derrida, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Northrop Frye, to insightful analyses by contemporary theorists, such as Glenda R. Carpio (with a piece on black humor in slavery fictions), Ruth Wisse (on Jewish humor), and Magda Romanska (on disability in tragic and comic frame). This selection provides, thus, an inspiring diversity of views on the modern comic theory that could inform courses on comedy and/or dramatic art in both literature and theater departments.
– SharpWeb.com
The task of assembling a reader is daunting, and editors Magda Romanska and Alan Ackerman admit the difficulty of their task up front. They model a clear acceptance of historical shifts in ideas on the function of comedy, providing rigorous contextualization that locates each idea in its moment in time, and makes this a robust and useful primer for Western comedy theory through the ages. After the “General Introduction,” which admirably establishes the comic vocabulary in use throughout the text and sets the stage for the rest of the book, the text is divided into five chronological sections covering “Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” “The Renaissance,” “Restoration to Romanticism,” “The Industrial Age,” and “The Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century.” Each section contains an introduction of its own that deepens the discussion that was begun in the broader strokes of the “General Introduction.” Though each introductory section is, of course, focused on its respective time period, the editors mark reference points throughout, noting connections and contrasts that bridge the eras while looking forward and back along the evolution of writing on comedy. What [this volume] does—and does well—is assemble a strong collection of foundational texts for those looking to ground themselves in Western scholarship of the comic over time.
– Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism
The question of how to define what comedy is or should be is one that can never be fully answered in literary and dramatic criticism. Magda Romanska and Alan Ackerman’s anthology embraces the difficulty in defining the genre that has existed since its inception in their lively and informed introduction, which is followed by sixty-four excerpts from literary and critical texts that reflect the changing definition of this slippery and amorphous genre. The volume takes us clearly and concisely on its journey of exploring the genre, with a particular focus on dramatic comedy. The passages which are presented demonstrate a considerable diversity in their interpretation of what comedy is, and should be. There is also a welcome range in terms of genre and time period. The main benefit of this collection is in presenting these texts together as a starting place for those interested in genre studies. It makes a welcome addition to the Bloomsbury Methuen Drama series.
– Forum for Modern Language Studies
Editors Magda Romanska and Alan Ackerman open their book by admitting the difficulty of their tasks: to historicize a genre so diverse in form and style and to define a genre (and its many subgenres) that itself resists definition. Rising to the challenge, the editors of Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism have created a temporally expansive analysis of western comic theory. Romanska and Ackerman’s collection of theoretical texts tells a story of how comedy and comic theory reflect and influence theatrical and performance conventions, social structures, technology, philosophy, and civic life. It is a substantial anthology that interweaves performance studies, drama, literature, and critical theory. Romanska and Ackerman have curated a collection that charts continuity in comic theory without diluting historical specificities. Each introduction to the chapters succinctly contextualizes the comic theory of its time and also links the annotated texts to previous chapters. Consequently, I would recommend this text for a survey course on comedy and comic theory in the United States and Europe, or to any scholar seeking a broad overview of writings on comedy.
– Modern Drama
In 64 extracts, this comprehensive anthology covers 2375 years of mainly philosophical texts in 375 dense pages. this is an immense resource covering a lot of ground.When choosing a theme like this, a motif to draw through history, it’s fascinating how many other aspects of personal, social and existential life begin to cohere around the topic. What one wants from an anthology is breadth as well as detail; one wants the reach but also the specifics. What’s important is not only the selection, but making choices within the selection itself, knowing what to cut and paste. This anthology certainly has the range and there were, for me, many new discoveries, such as links with religion, aesthetics and diversity politics.
– South African Theatre Journal, December 2017
A work of scholarship spanning this breadth of time, featuring the text of so many contributors, and from so many languages runs the risk of being bogged down by the weight of its information. In reaching backward and forward in time at so many points without creating confusion, the Reader is a testament to the work of Romanska and Ackerman. Reader in Comedy feels appropriately challenging and would make an ideal text for university-level coursework…..As the unique challenges of the twenty-first century materialize, Reader in Comedy arrives precisely when it is needed most, and it provides an excellent starting point for those looking for relief, resistance or both.
– Platform Journal of Theatre and Performing Arts, November 2017
Romanska and Ackerman’s Reader in Comedy is a very ambitious project, which draws on a range of sources from antiquity to the twenty-first century to compile an authoritative volume of works about comedy. …The editors have created [anthology] with remarkable breadth.
– Studies in Theatre and Performance, August 2017
An impressive cast of notable contributors offers their definitions of comedy and its historical contexts, themes, narrative structures, plots, character types and tropes. As a valuable precis of historical writings on comedy, Reader in Comedy is a full, rich and highly informative anthology that can be dipped into time and time again. It traces the evolution of thinking about comedy and comic text and places this within a consolidated timeline. For the scholar of comic theory and criticism, this is an extremely valuable reference tool.
– Comedy Studies, July 2017
It is not overstating the case to say that this volume will for sure be the book of reference for students, scholars, and dramaturgs in the fields named above if it comes to questions of dramaturgy. The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy goes far beyond a conventional handbook on dramaturgy as a way to structure a text to be staged. Rather, it claims attention to and evokes interest for the variety of a concept and a profession that not only covers crucial aspects of the field, but also implicitly highlights the richesse of dramaturgy as a field of study and therefore advocates theatre, performance and media studies as important disciplines that have a long history whose end is not in sight.
—Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, April 2017
The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy honours the diverse and varied nature of dramaturgical practice. … The range of this book is, as stated, quite extensive: its depth is impressive. Its sections take into account world dramaturgy; dramaturgy and globalization; the dramaturg as mediator and context manager (contexts being transculturalism, translation, adaptation, and contextualisation); dramaturgy in other art forms, such as film, dance, musical theatre, and gaming; the dramaturg in public relations, among others. As well as this, not only are these essays multifarious in scope, but they are also manifold in their written form. Its first section focuses on world dramaturgy and it was particularly satisfying to see the focus was not solely on Europe and North America, but also dramaturgical practices in Syria, Australia, India, Brazil and Latin America. Thus, the collection is at times instructive and often self-reflective. It functions as an introduction to dramaturgy in theory and practice, as well as facilitating a conversation about the profession and even acting as a survey of recent practice. To me, Romanska’s collection is a statement as to where contemporary dramaturgical practice is at present, whilst also envisioning its future(s). With its compiling of multiple voices, techniques, perspectives, and techniques into one compendium—once again, facilitating a conversation seems appropriate in this context—it is a singular, vital, and necessary contribution to the field.
—Platform: Postgraduate Journal of Theatre Arts, Autumn 2016
The book makes a virtue of its eclecticism and allows both term and role to appear across an array of contexts, conceptualizations, and performance practices. Some of the more practical, methodological accounts of dramaturgical work address areas that are underrepresented in other publications. It is an indispensable resource for anyone serious about dramaturgy.
—Contemporary Theatre Review, October 2016
With eighty-five essays, The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy offers comprehensive coverage of dramaturgical theory and practice. The wide range of essays emphasizes versatility and adaptability and the continuing relevance of analytical research processes in professional theatre and education. Contributors address practice from new play development to video game storyboarding, from composition in the university classroom to immersive theatrical experiences in prison barracks, and for performances with dance or puppetry. The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy will prove highly useful in theatre and performance practice, education, and scholarship. Artistic directors, directors of individual productions, and early career and long-time dramaturgs will find support for their artistic missions and new ideas for audience development and outreach. At the college level, undergraduate students will benefit from the insights into text analysis and applications of performance history, while educators will find pedagogical encouragement and inspiration. Finally, scholars of performance and theatre will appreciate the wide-ranging coverage of dramaturgical theory in the rehearsal room and literary classroom.
—Theatre Survey, May 2016
The book offers an impressive range of voices and insights into dramaturgical practice in the form of short articles (four to five pages) structured into meaningful divisions. It certainly serves its purpose as a primary sourcebook.
—Theatre Research International, October 2015
A timely gift to the world of contemporary theatre. As the newest of collaborative roles in theatremaking, dramaturgy is well established in some performance cultures and still viewed with suspicion in others. The Routledge Companion is a testament to this much-misunderstood practice, and will greatly assist the recognition and consolidation of dramaturgy as an art. This impressively varied volume includes, in its 8 parts, 85 essays that shine different forms of light on dramaturgical theory and practice. Romanska’s intro is magisterial, managing to address, with astuteness and depth, what dramaturgy was, is, and can be.
—American Theatre, July 2015
Romanska has put together a robust, impressively comprehensive volume that covers the ever broadening scope of contemporary dramaturgy within a global context. There is no attempt to define dramaturgy here; instead the intent is to explode open what possibilities the notion of dramaturgy holds in practice and in scholarship. With 85 essays—covering topics from production dramaturgy, translation, season planning, play analysis for nonconventional drama and performance, dramaturgical skills and strategies to the use of social media and new paths for audience outreach—this volume reveals the established, emerging, and imagined ideas of what dramaturgy is and could be. It includes essays that provide global perspectives from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The contributors range from those who have long been invested in the conversation (for example, Elinor Fuchs, Mark Bly, Anne Bogart, and Ann Cantaneo, to name but a few) to new, fresh voices. The volume is destined to become a go to reference for practitioners and students of dramaturgy, along with directors, critics, playwrights, and theater scholars.
—Choice Magazine, May 2015
Romanska attempts to provide a map of contemporary dramaturgical practice and theory, bringing together practising dramaturgs and academics who provide a range of perspectives in their contributions. Romanska has set herself a formidable task in editing this volume. [The book provides] a wide range of working methods in postdramatic theatre outlined in clear terms.
—Theatralia, February 2015
Romanska persuasively argues that the two seminal works named in her title have been vastly under-studied and widely misunderstood; through extensive research, she aims to recover their literary, linguistic, historical, and cultural contexts. At the most basic level, the book assails critics (primarily American) for the hubris of thinking they can review, teach, write about, or even begin to comprehend Akropolis and Dead Class without knowing “Polish,” by which Romanska means the language itself, of course, but also Poland’s literature and history, and its profound relationship to the Holocaust. She demonstrates how both productions were deeply political responses to that “taboo subject,” but written under Soviet repression in a “coded language” that Romanska painstakingly works to decode. At its largest level, the book reaches beyond the ostensible objects of its study to boldly indict the entire field of Performance Studies as an inherently flawed mode of inquiry. She seeks to restore meaning to those two productions by retrieving their sources; the larger implication of her study is to challenge contemporary scholars to follow her model by conducting similarly rigorous inquiries into other theatrical work. Those who do know and teach these pieces will undoubtedly find Romanska’s work to be an invaluable resource. Her book will also serve as a provocation to scholars in the fields of theatre and performance, as she throws down the gauntlet, challenging them to reconsider the question of meaning in productions by replacing subjective “responses” with rigorous, contextual analysis.
—Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies, September 2015
Addressing a gap in western scholarship, Magda Romanska expertly and accessibly places these central works [Jerzy Grotowski’s Akropolis and Tadeusz Kantor’s Dead Class] into the cultural and historical context she convincingly argues is essential to their understanding. This text is a valuable resource for those looking to better understand the complex creativity of Grotowski and Kantor within their Polish historical, social, and literary context. [The book] is not only a rich explanation of these dramatists, but also serves as an engaging overview of the Polish literary tradition. Romanska offers a broad introduction to Grotowski and Kantor, as well as the historical and literary tradition of which they are a part. Of particular interest is her concise explanation of their respective theatrical philosophies, as well as the complicated traditions of Jewish mysticism and Romantic messianism that reverberate through the works.
—Pol-Intel.org, August 2014
Richly documented chapters interweave primary sources, critical commentary, and contemporary theory (for example, Adorno, Agamben, Bettelheim, Améry) on each topic. Through its argumentation and design, the book demonstrates a sophisticated dramaturgical strategy for re-historicizing and recontextualizing theatre and performance events [….] The book also introduces English-language students to a significant national literature and encourages them to undertake equally rigorous, culturally specific readings in their fields of interest.
—Theatre Journal, May 2014
Non-Polish-speaking scholars of Grotowski and Kantor will be grateful for Romanska’s work. She opens up areas of these two productions which have been unavailable; trauma and Holocaust survivors will be glad to be made aware of them; and Romanska indicates the direction for further analysis in this area.
—New Theatre Quarterly, November 2013
Romanska’s fundamental objective is to reconstruct and provide the complex historical and cultural context that is necessary for a proper and deep understanding of the works—and thus to illustrate the possibilities and necessity of nuanced interpretations that take into account the text, subtext, and literary references. The task, which the author sets out and performs, starting from such a clearly defined research perspective, is both remarkable and impressive in its momentum and size.
—Performer, June 2013
"I place Boguslaw Schaeffer's genius firmly at the centre of the European cultural heritage which expressed avant-gardism during my life-time." – Richard Demarco, from the Foreword
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Journal Articles by Magda Romanska
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0
to re-enact their every fantasy. Filming Salò, Pasolini’s goal was to remain faithful to Sade’s novel. The characters, events and structure of the story remain the same. The more controversial aspect of the film, however, was Pasolini’s idea of relocating Sade’s novel into the actual historical context of the fascist Republic of Salò. For Pasolini, the gesture of moving Sade to Salò was to draw an actual analogy between the fascism and sadism. For some critics, the parallel between fascism and sadism was unfortunate exactly because it presented fascism, a real and palpable
phenomenon, as an abstraction (the way that Sade’s world functions).
2011 AQUILA POLONICA ARTICLE PRIZE
The biennial prize, funded by Aquila Polonica Publishing, is awarded by the Polish Studies Association to the author of "the best article written in English during the previous two years on any aspect of Polish studies."
FROM THE AWARD COMMITTEE:
Romanska’s article "succeeds taking a relatively difficult and opaque subject, Grotowski’s 1962 re-staging of Wyspiański’s Akropolis against the background of Auschwitz, both accessible and rewarding for readers who are not specialists in Polish theatre. While Romanska’s analysis remains grounded in theatre, and her conclusion is ultimately about theatrical production, she raises many questions about history, memory, and national mythology that most readers will want to learn more about. What is particularly impressive is the scope of the article, which ranges over the entire twentieth century. [...] Romanska’s work makes a convincing argument that we need to be paying more attention to theatre in Poland."
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2010 GERALD KAHAN SCHOLAR'S PRIZE
Awarded by the American Society for Theatre Research, for “best essay written and published in English in a refereed scholarly journal.” The winning essay is judged as "displaying originality in the broad field of theatre and performance, exhibiting critical rigor, showing an acquaintance with related research in theatre and performance, and promising future professional development in the field.”
FROM THE AWARD COMMITTEE:
Romanska’s essay offers“an excellent unpacking of both Stanislaw Wyspianski’s 1904 drama, Akropolis, and its production history. Her essay made use of extensive sources to tell a complicated story-layered text, performance, and context, paying attention to the original script as well as performances, especially, those directed by Jerzy Grotowski. The essay provides a missing, though essential, analysis of a production that is often cited, but perhaps rarely understood in its full context. The methods of historiography and documentary analysis are excellent and provide an instructive model for future performance scholarship.”"""
Book Chapters by Magda Romanska