Launch of new Ireland-Romania Theatre Award – “The Irish Embassy Award”

Launch of new Ireland-Romania Theatre Award – “The Irish Embassy Award”

A new award to a Romanian playwright is being offered to celebrate the long-standing connections between Irish and Romanian theatre.   Called ‘The Irish Embassy Award’, it will be offered annually to an emerging writer for the theatre in Romania.  The award will carry a cash prize of €1,000; the offer of a translation of one of the winner’s plays into English by an Irish playwright; plus a rehearsed reading of the play at the Abbey Theatre – Ireland’s National Theatre – during the Dublin International Theatre Festival.

The idea for the Award grew out of the extensive interaction between young Romanian and Irish playwrights.  In recent years there have been several published anthologies with the playwrights working on translations of one another, and many resulting productions in both countries. Names like Gianina Carbunariu, Lia Bugnar, and Mimi Branescu are now known to Irish audiences.  

Many of the Irish writers involved in these exchanges have been recipients of awards from the Stewart Parker Trust. This is an Irish organisation devoted to the encouragement of new writing for the stage and named after a distinguished Northern Irish playwright.  As a result of the new Irish Embassy Award, emerging writers in Romania and Ireland will be further drawn together: each year the Parker Trust and the Irish Embassy Award winners will have the opportunity of working together to translate and promote each other’s work.  Advising the Irish Ambassador on the selection of the winner is a panel chaired by distinguished director Alexandru Dabija who has been at the forefront of encouraging new Romanian writing.  Supporting him on the panel are Aura Gaidarji, Tudor Jiţianu, Andrei Marinescu and Ionut Sociu, all of whom are well-known in Romanian theatre

The first recipient of the Irish Embassy Award, which will be presented by  Ireland’s Ambassador to Romania, John Morahan, at a special ceremony in Bucharest on November 4, is Mimi Brănescu. Besides appearances as an actor in many major Romanian films, Mimi Brănescu’s  plays have been staged with critical success at the Act Theatre and other avant garde Bucharest venues, some of these have been translated into English and have been given rehearsed readings in  Irish theatres.

The Irish Embassy Award is sponsored by the Ireland Romania Cultural Foundation and the Stewart Parker Trust. The ceremony will be attended by the Joint Chairs of the Foundation, Ion Caramitru, and former Irish Minister of Education, Gemma Hussey, together with Stewart Parker Trust director, John Fairleigh. Making the direct link between the new talent contributing to Romanian and Irish theatre will be two visiting young Irish playwrights, Abbie Spallen, who received the 2008 Stewart Parker Award, and Phillip McMahon, who currently is Writer in Association with the Abbey Theatre.

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4th  November 2009

Press Office