Mihaela Drăgan is a multidisciplinary artist with an education in theatre who lives in Bucharest and works in several other countries. In 2014, she co-founded Giuvlipen Theatre Company, for which she is an actress and playwright, together with other Roma actresses.
Over the last years she has been working in Berlin as an actress for Maxim Gorki Theatre, Heimathafen Neukölln, Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg. She is also a trainer at Theatre of the Oppressed where she works with Roma women on their specific issues in Romania. In addition, she has worked with refugee girls in Germany as a theatre trainer.
She was one of the six finalists for The 2017 Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award from New York, an award which acknowledges the exceptional work of 20 theatre women around the world. In 2020 she was nominated again and she is the recipient of the Special Award of the League.
In 2018, Drăgan was a resident artist in Hong Kong at Para Site Contemporary Art Centre where she was developing Roma Futurism – that lies at the intersection of Roma culture with technology and witchcraft. Her performance “Roma Futurism” has been showcased in art spaces as the Museum of Contemporary Art from Belgrade; at FutuRoma – collateral exhibition at Venice Biennale; at Critical Romani Studies conference at Central European University in Budapest or Romanian Cultural Institute in London.
In the same year is acknowledged by PEN World Voices International Play Festival 2018 in New York as one of the ten most respected dramatists of the world.
In 2019 is one of the playwrights selected for the acclaimed Royal Court Theatre International Summer Residency in London where she wrote a science fiction play about a future utopian society of Roma witches who control technology and fight neo-fascist politics in Europe.
In 2021 she exhibited her first video installation at the Goethe Institut in Bucharest – ”The Future is a safe place hidden in my braids” divided into 3 short films that depict futuristic rituals for healing transgenerational trauma of Roma people and are projecting a safe future for the community.
The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) is an annual event showcasing films drawn from the world of theatre and performance. The festival presents experimental, emerging, and established theatre artists and filmmakers from around the world to audiences and industry professionals.
The Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) is produced by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center under the Graduate Centre at the City Univerity of New York (CUNY), Executive Director Frank Hentschker
Co- Curated by Frank Hentschker, Andie Lerner, and Tanvi Shah.
Festival Coordination by Bukola John Omokore
Web Design by Gaurav Singh Nijjer
Digital Marketing by Cactus Juice
Intro/Outro Theme credit: Second Sight (India) courtesy Anusha Ramasubramoney and Pushkar Srivatsal.