Aureliu Manea
4 February 1945 - 13 March 2014
The director Aureliu Manea was born in Bucharest, on 4 February 1945, in a family of artists (his father was First Trombonist in the orchestra of the Bucharest Opera). Aureliu Manea graduated from the „I. L. Caragiale" Theatre and Film Institute, Bucharest, in 1968, and his professors were Radu Penciulescu and Mihai Dimiu. He debuted in the same year at the Sibiu National Theatre with Rosmersholm by H. Ibsen. The production was shocking due to its daring approach to the play, and Manea became known from the very beginning as a "spiritual leader" of his generation, a "visionary".
"Aureliu Manea’s Rosmersholm seems to me to be the production which today offers the most innovative vision of theatre, the firmest declaration against all constrictions concerning the traditional depiction of the reality on stage; it’s an iconoclastic production, but not a negative, show-off iconoclasm, but the iconoclasm of a priest aspiring to new, meaningful truths. An iconoclasm like that of Luther, founded on the rehabilitation of fanaticism.", remarked the director Lucian Pintile in his review of the performance.
The director Aureliu Manea collaborated with many theatres in the country: Timişoara National Theatre, Ploieşti Muncipal Theatre, Cluj-Napoca National Theatre, Turda State Theatre, Piatra Neamţ Youth Theatre and others. His most representative productions include: Four Seasons by Arnold Wesker, Philoctet by Sofocle, Britannicus by Racine, Macbeth and Twelfth Night by W. Shakespeare, The Seagull by A. P. Cehov, A stormy Night and Conul Leonida faces the reaction by I. L. Caragiale, A royal celebration and Under the Moonlight by Theodor Mazilu. He published Energiile spectacolului[The Energies of the Performance], essays on directing, Spectacole imaginare [Imaginary Performances], writings about possible productions based on Shakespeare’s plays, Texte regăsite [Retrieved Text], collection volume of original texts. Aureliu Manea’s only three plays were staged in 2013 by Gábor Tompa at the Cluj-Napoca National Theatre, under the title The Aureliu Manea Trilogy. The production can be seen in the current theatre season.
In 1992 he received the UNITER Life Achievement Award and in 1999, he received the Excellency Diploma for Outstanding Merits in Promoting the Art of Theatre, awarded by the Ploieşti City Hall and the Toma Caragiu Theatre from Ploieşti.
Because of health problems, Aureliu Manea retired in 1991, at the Center for Recuperation and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation from Galda de Jos. He passed away on Thursday, 13 March 2014.
May God rest his soul in peace!
