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Performing Womanhood in Eastern Europe explores a distinctive form of womanhood that emerged in post-World War II Eastern Europe, offering an alternative to Western typologies.
This work interweaves theatre history with personal narratives while addressing contemporary issues that continue to resonate. In Eastern Europe's patriarchal landscape, the stage has become a vital space for authentic critical analysis and introspection, with women's previously silenced voices now taking center stage. The book examines performances and dramatic works by creators from Romania, Poland, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova, and former Yugoslavia, revealing how they represent female experiences within Eastern Europe's complex geopolitical environment. It questions whether theatrical expression can bridge the feminist divide between East and West, and if performance spaces might serve as forums where marginalised narratives and multidirectional memories can be renegotiated. Ultimately, it explores how the personal can reclaim its political dimension, allowing womanhood in all its manifestations to be performed authentically, either shielded from or actively challenging the male gaze.
This book will particularly appeal to scholars of Eastern European studies, feminist theatre historians, and performance artists interested in gendered cultural expression across post-communist spaces.
List of contents
AcknowledgmentsList of FiguresChapter 1. Myself as bait: An introduction
Chapter 2. Female theatre makers under surveillance: Gender issues in the archives of secret police
Chapter 3. If you had only spoken . . .: Counter-narratives and marginalised histories of women before and after 1989
Chapter 4. Cross-dressing as resistance under dictatorship: The case of Milu¿¿ Gheorghiu
Chapter 5. A little inferno: The reinforcement of women's stereotyped roles through theatre repertories yesterday and today
Chapter 6. Witnesses of history: The women behind great men on stage: Danuta Wä¿sa, Raisa Gorbachev, Elena Ceau¿escu
Chapter 7. 'Divorcing' Stanislavski to 'marry' Brecht: Brechtian strategies in productions authored by women theatre makers in Eastern Europe
Chapter 8. The Cinderella Complex: Five new plays from post socialist Eastern Europe
Chapter 9. Re-structuring the self: Stories of exile, displacement, the alienation effect and its creative power on- and off-stage
Chapter 10. The feminist geopolitical gap: Can it be closed on-stage?
Index
About the author
Cristina Modreanu is a theatre critic, curator and researcher at the University of the Arts in Târgu-Mure¿, Romania. Holding a PhD in theatre studies from National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest, she is a Fulbright Alumna and the author of six books on Romanian theatre, including
A History of Romanian Theatre from Communism to Capitalism (Routledge, 2020).
