Mihaela Drăgan is a multidisciplinary artist with an education in theatre who lives in Bucharest and works in several other countries. In 2014, she founds Giuvlipen Theatre Company, for which she is an actress and playwright, together with other Roma actresses. Over the last years she has been working in Berlin as an actress for Maxim Gorki Theatre, Heimathafen Neukölln, Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg. She is also a trainer at Theatre of the Oppressed where she works with Roma women on their specific issues in Romania. In addition, she has been worked with refugee girls in Germany as a theatre trainer.
She was one of the six finalists for The 2017 Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award from New York and a 2020 nominee, an award which acknowledges the exceptional work of 20 theatre women around the world.
In 2018, Drăgan was a resident artist in Hong Kong at Para Site Contemporary Art Centre where she was developing Roma Futurism - that lies at the intersection of Roma culture with technology and witchcraft. Her performance “Roma Futurism” has been showcased in art spaces as the Museum of Contemporary Art from Belgrade; at FutuRoma - collateral exhibition at Venice Biennale; at Critical Romani Studies conference at Central European University in Budapest or Romanian Cultural Institute in London.
In the same year is acknowledged by PEN World Voices International Play Festival 2018 in New York as one of the ten most respected dramatists of the world.
In 2019 is one of the playwrights selected for the acclaimed Royal Court Theatre International Summer Residency in London where she wrote a science fictional play about a future utopian society of Roma witches who control technology and fight neo-fascist politics in Europe.
