page_title: Aureliu Manea
section_title: Work as a director
hierarchical_section_title: Aureliu Manea / Work as a director
caption_attribution_description: English: scanned period photograph of Aureliu Manea's production of Twelfth Night, Cluj National Theatre, 1975
context_page_description: Aureliu Manea was a Romanian theatre director, actor, and writer.
context_section_description: Franco-Romanian theatre critic Georges Banu likens Manea to Argentinian director "maudit" Victor Garcia and describes him as an exponent of "absolute theatre, incandescent theatre," whose genius was recognised and admired at the time by Jean Genet and Peter Brook. Banu followed Manea's career from the very beginning, writing a review of his first production, Rosmersholm, staged at the State Theatre of Sibiu in 1968. According to Banu, Manea's production succeeded in creating an intense sense of unease in both cast and audience by embodying Ibsen as a ghostly presence moving among the actors on stage. Manea continued to stage innovative, visually arresting productions at theatres around Romania, including Racine's Britannicus at the Piatra Neamț Youth Theatre in 1969. 
   
   
  In 1975, Manea's production of Twelfth Night, staged at the Cluj National Theatre, with sets by Paul Salzberger, drew standing ovations. The following year, hisMacbeth, staged at the Ploiești Theatre in 1976, drew on Japanese Kabuki theatre, with a stark set that evoked a desolate, snowy landscape, dominated by a wooden throne symbolising Macbeth's barbarous, brutal power, "adorned with furs and animal heads, which were trophies of earlier conquests and omens of the death that was to come." A contemporary reviewer saw the production as a "cosmic" clash "between Good and Evil, between Life and Death, between order and chaos, or between nature and the human being as a representative of social convulsion." 
  During his career, Manea staged only one production in Bucharest, however, since he saw the actors there as "too big" and preferred to work with lesser-known actors, who were not given to displays of ego and did not contest his direction. As a director, he saw theatre not as a vehicle for individual actors, but rather as the "art of solidarity", "a ritual of togetherness" uniting actors and audience.
caption: Twelfth Night, directed by Aureliu Manea, Cluj National Theatre, 1975
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