WRITER | RESEARCHER | DRAMATURG
MAGDA ROMANSKA
Professor of Performing Arts, EMERSON COLLEGE
Faculty Associate, BERKMAN KLEIN CENTER FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY AT HARVARD
Chair, Transmedia Arts Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Researcher, metaLAB, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, THETHEATRETIMES.COM
Affiliate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Advisory Board Member, DIGITAL THEATRE +
Member, LEONARDO NETWORK
New Book
Digital Access to the Performing Arts (Bristol University Press, 2026) was selected by the Knowledge Unlatched Selection Committee — a group of over 200 international libraries — for inclusion in the 2026 Digital Lives —Technology’s Influence on Contemporary Life Collection, which brings together 20 most important new books published in 2026 that explore how technology shapes society, culture, governance, and individual lives. It is now available via open access.
“Magda Romanska, tireless theorizer of transmedia and performance studies, here summons a team of legal experts and digital mavens to report on how online accessibility is faring across cultures in the Anglophone world. Digital Access posits streaming as a new creative vehicle of inclusive, dynamic, dramaturgical might.”
– Caroline Jones, MIT
“This is an urgent and necessary book. It insists, without apology, that digital access to performance is not a luxury, but a lifeline – a matter of both disability rights and human rights.”
– Anne Bogart, Columbia University
“These rich and profound essays not only place Kantor retrospectively into the theatrical past, but also argue persuasively for his relevance in the 21st century as an avatar of postdramatic and posthuman performance, and of object theater and performance art.”
-Choice Magazine
“Richly documented chapters interweave primary sources, critical commentary, and contemporary theory (for example, Adorno, Agamben, Bettelheim, Améry) on each topic. Through its argumentation and design, the book demonstrates a sophisticated dramaturgical strategy for re-historicizing and recontextualizing theatre and performance events.”
-Theatre Journal
“An impressive cast of notable contributors offers their definitions of comedy and its historical contexts, themes, narrative structures, plots, character types and tropes. As a valuable precis of historical writings on comedy, Reader in Comedy is a full, rich and highly informative anthology that can be dipped into time and time again. For the scholar of comic theory and criticism, this is an extremely valuable reference tool.”
-Comedy Studies
“Romanska has put together a robust, impressively comprehensive volume that covers the ever-broadening scope of contemporary dramaturgy within a global context. With 85 essays, this volume reveals the established, emerging, and imagined ideas of what dramaturgy is and could be. The volume is destined to become a go-to reference for practitioners and students of dramaturgy, along with directors, critics, playwrights, and theater scholars.”
““This beautiful new volume, a collection of three plays translated by Magda Romanska, is an accessible and illustrative introduction to the work of Bogusław Schaeffer. Romanska’s translations not only bring Schaeffer’s unique works to an English-speaking audience, but do so in a way that preserves the rhythm, humor, and linguistic play of the originals. They are a pleasure to read and frequently offer irreverent, surprising, and entertaining perspectives on contemporary art.”
-The Cosmopolitan Review
UPDATES
Digital Access to the Performing Arts: A Comparative Study of Legal and Structural Challenges (Bristol University Press, 2026) was selected by the Knowledge Unlatched Selection Committee — a global, volunteer group of over 200 libraries — for inclusion in the 2026 Digital Lives: Technology’s Influence on Contemporary Life Collection, wich includes the 20 most important new books published in 2026 that explore how technology shapes society, culture, governance, and individual lives. The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy was translated into Persian and published in Iran – 2025. Article, “The Bionic Body: Technology, Disability, and Posthumanism” – originally published in Body, Space & Technology, 23 (1): 1-16, was translated into Chinese and published in Journal of Medicine & Philosophy – 2025. Essay “Artificial Intelligence, Totalitarianism, and the Future of Cognitive Liberty” was published in The Humanist, Sept 2, 2025. Opheliamachine was produced at the Universitateitstheater, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (performed in Dutch, 2026); Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazdrul Islam University in Dhaka, Bangladesh (performed in Bengali, 2026); and Cendrev Teatro Garcia de Resende, University of Évora in Portugal (performed in Portuguese, 2025). Opheliamachine was published in multilingual publication (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Romanian and Polish) in Methuen Drama Play Collection by Bloomsbury Press – 2024. Keynote Lecture, “Quantum Dramaturgy: Theory of Polyphonic Drama,” at The 20th Crossover Dialogues International Conference on Performing Arts Studies, Taiwan University, Taiwan – 2025. Panelist at: “Futures at Play: AI and Impact on Theatre,” Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria – 2025. Webinar guest: Digital Theatre +: “AI and Theatre: From Pedagogy to Performance” – 2025. TheTheatreTimes.com becomes Webby Honoree. Hailed as “Internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times, The Webby Awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) – 2025. TheTheatreTimes.com wins the ATHE-ASTR Award for Excellence in Digital Scholarship from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the American Society for Theatre Research – 2024
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