Tuesday, September 11 at 6:30 PM – 9 PM
Studio Cinema Belmont – 376 Trapelo Rd, Belmont, MA 02478
For English speaking audience, subtitles are projected on the back screen.
ILEANA, PRINCESS OF ROMANIA
History is one of the three main genres in Western theater alongside tragedy and comedy, although it originated, in its modern form, thousands of years later than the other primary genres.
Dramatization by Edith Negulici after the autobiographical novel “I Live Again”, the performance about Princess Ileana’s life is a charming and dramatic evocation of the main moments in the life of the author and of the history she had lived.
“Yes, to live again, because after I left home, which for me was always Romania, I was as dead. Not the circumstances were hard to bear, but even the need to live. I never doubted of the necessity of being close to my six children, but inside, the “personal self” that existed independent of the mother, the wife, the friend who I was – the essential ego, on which all was built – suffered a deadly shock when I was dismissed from my people.” – Princess Ileana
In 1961, Ileana entered the Orthodox Monastery of the Protection of the Mother of God, in Bussy-en-Othe, France. On her tonsuring as a monastic, in 1967, Sister Ileana was given the name Mother Alexandra. She moved back to the United States and founded the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, the first English language Orthodox monastery in North America. She was the third female descendant of Queen Victoria to become a Mother Superior in a convent of her own foundation. She served as abbess until her retirement in 1981, remaining at the monastery until her death.
Princess Ileana fought for others, was at the service of her people, and served those in need. She created hospitals, canteens, nursing schools, all sorts of ways to raise funds for wounded, orphaned, ill, poor, less fortunate than her, who was the daughter of an important King, Ferdinand Integrator and a Queen of Excellence, Queen Mary of Romania.
The life of Princess Ileana/Mother Alexandra, imposes her as a model to be followed and legitimizes her in front of posterity.”