Carmen Lidia Vidu’s MIGRATION DIARY. NEW YORK CITY EDITION at La MaMa Theatre
- RCI USA
- Jun 8
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 8
Real People, Real Stories, No Fiction
About The Event
This June, the legendary La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club welcomes the return of a Romanian production after more than four decades with "Migration Diary. New York City Edition" — a raw, visually immersive new multimedia theater experience created by award-winning Romanian director Carmen Lidia Vidu.
Presented by La MaMa together with the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, the production brings real lives to the stage inside one of the world’s most influential homes of experimental theater. No invented characters. No fictional dialogue. Just the stories people carry across borders.
Built through an extensive documentary process of interviews, personal archives, video diaries, and autobiographical testimony, "Migration Diary" continues the groundbreaking artistic method Vidu created more than a decade ago for her internationally acclaimed "Diary of Romania" („Jurnal de România”) series, presented across Europe at major festivals and theaters. Performed by Sam Xu, Lia Fietz, Ana-Maria Bandean, and Ellen Ko, the show follows women whose lives passed through Romania, China, Germany, Portugal, Singapore, London, Moscow, and finally New York — and asks the question this city has always asked, and never fully answered: what does it mean to stay?
Blending live performance with haunting multimedia created by visual artist Sabina Costinel and media designer Constantin Șimon, the production transforms documentary footage, family archives, childhood photographs, digital collage, and projected imagery into a living landscape of memory, displacement, reinvention, and belonging.
Urgent, intimate, and deeply contemporary, "Migration Diary. New York City Edition" speaks directly to New York’s immigrant soul — and to everyone who has ever left one life behind to begin another.
MIGRATION DIARY. NEW YORK CITY EDITION
Concept, Research, Script & Artistic Director: Carmen Lidia Vidu
Performers: Sam Xu, Lia Fietz, Ana-Maria Bandean, Ellen Ko
Multimedia Production: Sabina Costinel
Media Design: Constantin Șimon
Styling: Lizhen Mei
Press Representative David Gibbs / DARR Publicity
Presented by La MaMa Theatre together with the Romanian Cultural Institute New York
In partnership with "I.L. Caragiale" National Theatre of Bucharest.
With the support of the Ministry of Culture of Romania and Asociația Ataraxia.
Special thanks to Mrs. Dana Bucin, Honorary Consul of Romania to Connecticut, and Partner at Harris Beach Murtha, for her legal support; and to Ana-Maria Bandean for her additional support in developing this project.
Performance Schedule:
MIGRATION DIARY. NEW YORK CITY EDITION will run from June 25 - 28, 2026. The full schedule is available HERE.
Please note that tickets are required for attendance.
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