| Friday, January 16, 7 PMRomanian Cultural Institute(200 East 38th Street) |
We are pleased to invite you to a special event marking National Culture Day of Romania, dedicated to the remarkable artistic journey of Gábor Tompa — internationally acclaimed theatre, film, and opera director, poet, and mentor. The evening will feature a curated dialogue on Tompa’s life and work, illustrated with poetry, rare images and video excerpts from his landmark stage productions, alongside multilingual poetry readings and a live musical moment inspired by the artistic traditions of Transylvania. Guest performers: actors Vas Eli and Eszter Balint, and cellist Mihai Marica.
Gábor Tompa is an internationally acclaimed theatre, film, and opera director, poet, and cultural leader, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in contemporary European theatre. He graduated in 1981 from the I.L. Caragiale Institute of Theatre and Film in Bucharest, Faculty of Theatre, Film, and Television Directing, where he studied with renowned artists such as Liviu Ciulei, Cătălina Buzoianu, and Silviu Purcărete. Since 1990, he has served as General Director of the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj-Napoca, transforming it into a major presence on the international stage. Between 1990 and 1995 he taught directing at the Academy of Theatre in Târgu Mureș, and from 2006 to 2019 he was Head of the Directing Program at the University of California, San Diego (USA). Since 2018, he has been President of the Union of Theatres of Europe. Tompa has directed over 120 theatre productions in Europe, North America, and Asia, working extensively across Romania, Hungary, Western Europe, the United States, Canada, and South Korea. His work has been presented at leading international festivals and is recognized for its intellectual rigor and distinctive visual language. Among the authors he has staged most frequently are Shakespeare, Molière, Büchner, Ionesco, Beckett, Bulgakov, Caragiale, and Mrożek. In opera, he has collaborated with major houses in San Diego, Maribor, Cluj, and Graz, directing works such as Dido and Aeneas (Purcell), Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute (Mozart), Bluebeard’s Castle (Bartók), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Shostakovich), and A Spanish Hour and The Child and the Spells (Ravel). A prolific writer, Gábor Tompa has published twelve volumes of poetry and two volumes of essays. His numerous distinctions include ten UNITER Awards (six for Best Director, three for Best Production, and the Excellence Award), the Order of the Star of Romania (Knight), Best Foreign Production in the United Kingdom, the Theaterpreis Stuttgart, the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (France), and honors such as Merited Artist and Ambassador of Culture of Hungary.
