Maria Manolescu

Maria Manolescu was born in Braşov, Romania, in 1980. She made her debut with the novel »The Weightlifter from Vitan« in 2006; her second novel, »Like Drops of Blood on the Elevator Floor«, was published in 2010. She has won the Romanian award for best new playwright dramAcum for the plays »With a little help from my friends« and »Sado-Maso Blues Bar«. In 2007, she attended the International Residency for Emerging Playwrights at the Royal Court Theatre, where she developed »I’m Not Jesus Christ«. Other plays include »Re:Re:Re:Hamlet« and »Love Thyself«. Maria Manolescu lives in Bucharest.

© internationales literaturfestival berlin

MARIA MANOLESCU, ROMANIA
»CA PE TINE ÎNSUŢI« (LIKE YOURSELF)

The protagonists of Maria Manolescu’s play »Ca pe tine însuţi« (Like yourself) are three homeless people whose emotions grow cold in the wintry streets of Bucharest. Maria, Rafa and John no longer want to live in this broken-down world. They feel outcast by society and yearn for death. But they don’t want to be lost in the anonymous mass of homeless who freeze to death in Romania’s capital. Their survival instinct seems to conquer all rational deliberations. A sad round dance of intimacy and distance, love, hate and insanity unfolds in the course of eight scenes. Like calls from the netherworld, varying chorus sequences run through they play, as if to provide a poetic counterweight to structure the rhythm of the events.