THE “GEORGE BANU” MODEL: LECTURE-PERFORMANCES AND THE CREATION OF THEATRICAL MEANING AT THE SIBIU INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL
THE “GEORGE BANU” MODEL: LECTURE-PERFORMANCES AND THE CREATION OF THEATRICAL MEANING AT THE SIBIU INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL

Summary/Abstract: This article examines George Banu’s lecture-performances within the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (FITS), understood as a hybrid form between lecture and performance at the intersection of theatre criticism, essayistic writing, and performative practice. It argues that Banu’s interventions exceed the format of the academic lecture, functioning instead as mechanisms of cultural memory and contributors to the festival’s symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1993). Based on a corpus of lectures delivered over three decades, the analysis shows that the “George Banu model” operates simultaneously as critical interpretation, cultural commemoration, and institutional validation (Bourdieu, 1993). Within FITS, these lecture-performances have contributed to the transformation of the festival into a major European centre of theatrical thought, integrating critical discourse and performance into a shared economy of meaning (Fischer-Lichte, 2008). The article concludes that these lectures should be understood not as a secondary supplement to the theatrical event, but as a constitutive practice that actively shapes the festival’s symbolic identity.

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