Studio & Archive · 2026-08-14
A Romanian radio drama caravan through the summer nights of the regional stations
While theatres take their summer break, the regional network of Romania's public radio broadcasts radio drama night after night — travelling from studio to studio as a "caravan". Meanwhile the Bucharest radio theatre's archive remains permanently available online, free of charge.
The second season of "Caravana Teatrului Radiofonic – Vara Dramaturgiei Românești" (The Radio Theatre Caravan – The Summer of Romanian Dramaturgy) began on 6 July and runs until 6 September: a joint undertaking of Radio România Regional and the National Radio Theatre in Bucharest, in which radio drama visits all nine territorial studios of the public broadcaster in turn. Each studio gets one week, every night from 10 pm to 6 am — seven nights, fifty-six hours of continuous radio drama. The nine stations are Brașov, Bucharest, Cluj, Constanța, Craiova, Iași, Reșița, Târgu Mureș and Timișoara. The idea may go back to the travelling theatre companies that moved from village to village, a living tradition in Transylvania and other parts of Romania.
This year the caravan started in Brașov between 6 and 12 July. Last year's first caravan was built on the classics — works by Tudor Mușatescu, Victor Ion Popa, Mihail Sebastian, Caragiale, Eminescu and Mircea Eliade. This year's edition deliberately selects contemporary writers instead, and mostly ones who are not professional playwrights: according to the announcement it presents texts by "novelists, journalists, directors or screenwriters", among them George Arion, Matei Vișniec, Mircea Cărtărescu, Emanuel Pârvu, Alina Grigore and Mihaela Michailov. Alongside them are original scripts written for sound by directors Mihnea Chelaru, Ilinca Stihi and Cezarina Udrescu, and a programme in memory of the poet Nina Cassian.
This summer's caravan has been joined by a more permanent form of access. The radio theatre's own online platform, eteatru.ro, was relaunched on 15 January 2026, Romania's National Culture Day, and is entirely free: it offers a separate section for children and thematic collections (comedies, dramas, new and award-winning productions). Its operators say dozens of new productions are added every month and that the catalogue will soon run into the thousands. Anyone who misses the nightly marathon can therefore listen later — with one restriction: only Romanian-language productions are available there. The Hungarian-language archive recordings of the Cluj and Târgu Mureș stations are still waiting for a permanent online home.
Sources: Radio România Reșița — network announcement of the caravan (2026-07-02) · Radio Vacanța — the same announcement, with the list of authors (2026-07-02) · Radio România Brașov FM — the opening week (6–12 July) (2026-07-09) · Radio România Constanța — the nightly marathon programme (2026-08-13) · Radio România Timișoara — the classical repertoire of last year's edition (2025-08-24) · National Radio Theatre — full schedule of last year's first edition (2025-07-17) · eteatru.ro — the radio theatre's about page (2026-08-13) · Radio România Timișoara — launch of the new eteatru.ro (2026-01-15)
AI involvement — Research: partly · Writing: partly · Verification: partly. The article is based on machine translation of original texts in Romanian.