Complementing the substantial Romanian presence in Scotland's capital this summer, Romania’s foremost theatre critic and historian Octavian Saiu chairs two of the most expected talks at the Edinburgh Festival: "The Scottish Supernatural" and "The British Gothic". These two Insights feature famous journalist, art critic and social commentator Andrew Graham-Dixon along with Professors Penny Fielding and Randall Stevens from the University of Edinburgh.
Octavian Saiu has taught Theatre and Dramatic Literature as Associate Professor at the National University of Theatre and Cinematography (NUTC) in Bucharest and as Guest Lecturer at the University of Otago in New Zealand. In 2008-2009, he was Visiting Fellow at the University of London. He holds a PhD in Theatre Studies (NUTC) and one in Comparative Literature (Otago). He has been actively involved in several worldwide theatre events and academic conferences in Romania, Israel, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, Sweden, Ireland etc. Since 2004, he is the Chair of the Academic Conferences of Sibiu International Theatre Festival (SibFest), one of the largest performing arts festivals in the world. A former co-editor of Theatre Nowadays, he is a founding editor of Romanian Studies in Theatre Theory. He is currently the Vice-President of the Romanian Section of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC). He has published four theatre books, one of which received the Critics’ Award in 2010. His most recent publication in English is the monograph In Search of Lost Space (NUTC Press, 2010). He is Vice-President of the Romanian Section of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC) and Director of the Eugène Ionesco–Samuel Beckett Research Centre at NUTC.
Text: ICR website
Image: EIF Website
