A Culture Power event

Acting the Manager and Managing the Act

Behind the scenes with Constantin Chiriac, in an open discussion with Dr Mike Phillips OBE

Followed by a Q&A session

Thursday 3 February 2011, 19.00-21.00, The Ratiu Foundation / Romanian Cultural Centre, Manchester Square, 18 Fitzhardinge Street, London W1H 6EQ; Tel. 020 7486 0295, ext 108; e-mail: bookings@romanianculturalcentre.org.uk; Entry is free but booking is essential.

“Constantin Chiriac, the acclaimed Romanian actor-manager, will be in London for the third time at the invitation of the Ratiu Foundation, after two very successful talks in 2006 and 2007. On this occasion, Constantin will take part in a public discussion with Dr Mike Phillips OBE at the Ratiu Foundation, on 3 February 2011. With the support of the Foundation, Constantin will also participate in a series of high-profile meetings aimed at forging and strengthening long-term cultural relationships between the UK and Romania, with an accent on the city of Sibiu”, said Ramona Mitrica, Director of the Ratiu Foundation.

For more than seventeen years, Constantin Chiriac has been running the extremely successful SIBFEST, the annual international theatre festival in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu, Romania. He has also been a star of the Romanian stage and screen and an important influence in East-European theatre management, running the ‘Radu Stanca’ National Theatre of Sibiu since 2000. In 2007 the town of Sibiu was appointed European Capital of Culture, a year before Liverpool, and Constantin was a major influence in the successful bid.

However you look at it, Constantin seems to be a very busy man indeed – a true Renaissance man.

Dr Mike Phillips OBE, a long term friend and critic of Constantin’s, invites you to assist in a public discussion about the director’s work and the “backstage” events at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival. In the context of a troubled economy, public anger about cuts, and a consistent challenge to arts expenditure, Mike’s questions will attempt to explore the political economy of cultural entrepreneurship in the contemporary East, trying to find out the following:

- What did it take to create an international theatre festival in 1990’s Romania, at a time when the transition to a market economy seemed to have no end in sight?
- What does it take to host in Sibiu one of the largest events of its kind in Central and South-eastern Europe?
- How is it possible to create bigger and better editions of the festival each year, in spite of the transition and in the context of the current economic crisis?
- How can political interference from the local and national authorities be kept at bay, and how does one deal with officials of all sorts bent on making a propaganda tool of any public event?
- And, not least, how can one physically cope with so many tasks?

Constantin Chiriac is a theatre director and manager with a very successful career as a stage and film actor, with more than 45 theatre characters, 23 one-man shows, and 17 films.

Dr Mike Phillips OBE is a novelist, historian and curator, a member of the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Expert Panel, and consultant to various cultural organisations across Europe.

Culture Power is a programme initiated by the Ratiu Foundation, consisting of a number of presentations and constructive dialogue with an invited audience.

Organised by The Ratiu Foundation / Romanian Cultural Centre in London.

With the support of ProFusion International Creative Consultancy.

Photo: Constantin Chiriac during the reading performance of ‘You Think You Know Me But You Don’t’ by Mike Phillips, London 2006 © Adrian Cherciu.