Elise Wilk
playwright
ABOUT THE RESIDENT
Elise Wilk, born in Brașov in 1981 into a bilingual German-Romanian family, is a playwright and journalist.
Her plays have been staged at numerous theatres in Romania and internationally, including in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Georgia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Finland, Serbia, and South Korea. Her work has been translated into 16 languages and published in eight countries. She is the author of more than 20 plays, which have received numerous awards, most recently the Aurora Award for Eastern European Playwriting, which she received in Poland in 2022 for her play “Dispariții”.
Forbes Romania named her one of the young trendsetters of 2014, while Decât o Revistă included her among the 100 People for Tomorrow’s Romania in 2018.
She has participated in international programmes including the European Young Authors Forum at the Wiesbaden Theatre Biennale in Germany (2014), Hot Ink at the Lark Theater in New York (2015), Fabulamundi. Playwriting Europe (2013–2020), GalataPerform in Istanbul (2021), What Europe Dreams About in Belgrade (2024), and Fabulamundi. New Voices (since 2023).
She holds a PhD in Theatre and Performing Arts from the University of Arts in Târgu Mureș (2020), with a thesis on theatre for young audiences in Romania. Since 2021, she has been a university lecturer at the same institution, where she teaches in the Master’s Programme in Dramatic Writing.
ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
Homo viator and the memory of the place
Terra Borza Teutonica represents, within the architecture of the project, the idea of the threshold taken to its extreme, both as a metaphor and as a concrete physical space. The courtyard of a fortress, a fortified church, a watchtower or a house: all of these are places of passage, spaces that literally mark the boundary between inside and outside, between safety and exposure. Of all the artistic disciplines proposed along the trail, theatre is perhaps the most suited to inhabit precisely this kind of space, because it is itself an art of liminality.
This is also where the residency’s central premise comes from: the play written here could not exist anywhere else. We are not talking about a text that is performed “also” in that particular place, but about a text written specifically for that place. The play belongs to the respective community, brings to the surface a story that resonates with it, while the space itself becomes literally part of the scenography and guides the direction.
The residency involves identifying a precise location (a fortress courtyard, the courtyard of a fortified church, a watchtower, a particular house) and writing a short play conceived specifically for that space. The aim is to create, from scratch, a text that can be performed with members of the local community, in that very place.
What story does this particular place demand to have told there, and nowhere else?
ABOUT THE REGION
Terra Borza Teutonica is the first extension of the main Via Transilvanica maior route, stretching for 170 km. At its centre lies Brașov, an important gateway to the heart of the trail. The route begins in Viscri and passes through Saxon and Hungarian villages, medieval or even older settlements, and small towns that bear the names of mountains.
In Șona, a community that holds a special place along the route, hikers encounter something particularly interesting: how art, creativity, and collaboration can become processes through which the history of a place can be remembered and brought back to life. From architecture and painting to old customs, all these elements become, in a sense, characters in a theatrical play—one that feels alive, in which the hiker seems to have a role as well.
Terra Borza Teutonica offers hikers a new tool for understanding the places they encounter, enriching their experience and preparing them for the discoveries that lie ahead.
ABOUT THE CULTURAL IMPRINT LEFT ON THE REGION
What remains is not just a text—although the play’s script, as a literary document, has value in its own right—but also a repeatable theatrical event, ideally staged year after year, always in the same place, with the same people. In essence, the residency does not leave behind a static artefact, but a new cultural ritual: a moment that is periodically reactivated, transforming the chosen location from a mere point on the map into a landmark with its own theatrical memory, while also inspiring and encouraging other playwrights and directors to undertake similar projects.
