Eszter Szalczer

Areas of Expertise: Theatre history, criticism, and theory; dramatic literature, modern drama, Scandinavian drama and theatre; performance studies and dramaturgy

Affiliated Faculty: Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Eszter Szalczer is a dramaturg, theatre historian, and scholar of modern drama. Her recent book August Strindberg (Routledge 2010) focuses on the Swedish playwright as one of the most radical innovators of the modern stage. Her previous book, Writing Daughters: August Strindberg’s Other Voices (Norvik Press 2008) explores the creative processes of writing, the role of memory, the fine line between fiction and non-fiction, and how the same story could be told differently from several different perspectives.

Eszter teaches theatre history, play and performance analysis, dramatic literature, theory and research. Her writings have been published internationally in periodicals such as Theatre Journal, Scandinavian Studies, Strindbergiana, Modernism/Modernity, Slavic and East European Performance, Western European Stages, and in scholarly anthologies including The Cambridge Companion to August Strindberg (2009) and The International Strindberg (2012) among others. Recently she served as co-editor of the centennial special Strindberg issue of Scandinavian Studies (Fall 2012): August Strindberg: A Hundred-Year Legacy.

She worked as dramaturg in stage productions in the U.S., Sweden and St. Petersburg, Russia. Between 1999-2001 she served as co-producer, organizer, and dramaturg for the “August in January” festivals (starting with the 150th anniversary of Strindberg’s birth in 1999), which presented full productions of a series of Strindberg plays conjoined with scholarly symposia in NYC. In 2012 she was a co-founder of the August Strindberg Repertory Theatre, which is currently resident company at the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York. Eszter holds a Doctorate in Comparative Literature from Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary and a Ph.D. in Theatre History from the City University of New York.