Liviu Ciulei, Romanian actor, writer and director, died after a long illness he was 88.

Liviu Ciulei  was a Romanian theater and film director, film writer, actor, architect, educator, costume and set designer. During a career spanning over 50 years, he was described by Newsweek as "one of the boldest and most challenging figures on the international scene".^[2]

(July 7, 1923 – October 24, 2011^[1])

Biography

Born in Bucharest to Liviu Ciulley [sic], a lawyer and constructor, Ciulei studied architecture and theater at the Royal Conservatory of Music and Theatre. He made his theater debut in 1946, as Puck in an Odeon Theatre production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Soon after, he joined the theater company known as Teatrul Municipal din Bucureşti, later renamed Teatrul Bulandra, and directed his first stage production in 1957 — The Rainmaker.
In 1961, Ciulei gained an overall recognition for his version of Shakespeare's As You Like It. He was the recipient of the Directors' Award at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival for The Forest of the Hanged,^[3] the film version of the Liviu Rebreanu's eponymous novel (where he also starred in the role of Klapka). In the 1980s, he was marginalized by the regime and transferred to work at Sahia film studio, as documentary filmmaker.
Ciulei was the artistic director of Teatrul Bulandra for more than a decade. During his tenure at the Bulandra he staged a wide range of classics. His Shakespeare productions include "As You Like it" "Macbeth" and "The Tempest", which was awarded Romania's Critics' Prize for Best Production of 1979. Also at the Bulandra, he staged such European classics as Gorki's "The Lower Depths and "The Children of the Sun", Buchner's "Danton's Death" and "Leonce and Lena", and Brecht's "Threepenny Opera". His productions of American classics include Williams' "A Street Named Desire", Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life", and O'Neill's "Long Day Journey into Night". Ciulei has been guest director in many theaters around the world: in West Berlin, Paris, Göttingen, Düsseldorf, Munich and Vancouver. In Sydney, he won the 1977 Australian Critics'Award for his production of "The Lower Depths". In 1974 he made his American debut at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., as director and designer with "Leonce and Lena". In 1980 he directed and created sets for the Shostakovitch opera "The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" at the Spoleto Festival in Italy: and in May 1982, he redirected the same opera for the Lyric Opera in Chicago. Between 1980-85, he was the artistic director of Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the Guthrie he has directed "The Tempest", "Eve of Retirement", "As You Like it", "Requiem for a Nun", "Peer Gynt", "The Threepenny Opera", "Three Sisters", "Twelfth Night", "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, back in his native Romania, Ciulei directed a series of stage productions that have been both publicly and critically acclaimed. He was named Honorary Director of the theater he has always loved the most, Bulandra. Besides being the costume and set designer of the majority of his own productions, Ciulei, as an architect, contributed to the rebuilding of the auditorium of Bulandra Theatre.

Family

He was first married to actress Clody Bertola.^[4] He remarried, to journalist Helga Reiter-Ciulei. His son by the second marriage is film director Thomas Ciulei.

Death

Ciulei died on October 24, 2011, in a hospital in Munich, aged 88; he had been suffering from multiple illnesses.

Filmography

• În sat la noi (1951), actor
• Mitrea Cocor (1951), writer
• Nepoţii gornistului (1953), actor/writer
• Răsare soarele (1954), writer
• Alarmă în munţi (1955), actor
• Pasărea furtunii (1957), writer
• Erupţia (1957), director
• Valurile Dunării (1959), director and actor
• Soldaţi fără uniformă (1960), actor
• Cerul n-are gratii (1962), actor
• Pădurea spânzuraţilor (1964), actor/director
• Facerea lumii (1971), writer/actor
• Decolarea (1971), actor
• Dragostea începe vineri (1972), actor
• Dimitrie Cantemir (1973), actor
• Ceaţa (1973), actor
• Mastodontul (1975), actor
• O scrisoare pierdută (1977), writer/director
• Falansterul (1979), actor

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