Cristina A. Bejan (Founding Executive Director of Bucharest Inside the Beltway) is an award-winning Romanian-American theatre artist, historian and spoken word poet based in Denver, CO. In 2022 her plays have appeared in the Colorado Women's Theatre Festival and at Baron's Court Theatre, London, UK. She has been a practicing theatre artist for over thirty years and is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild of America, the International Center for Women's Playwrights, and the BETC Writers Group. Bejan has written nineteen plays, many of which have been produced in the United States and internationally. She has directed, assistant directed, sound designed, dialect coached, marketed, produced and worked as dramaturg or actor on countless productions. She trained at Northwestern University, Interlochen Center for the Arts and Washington DC's Studio Theatre Conservatory. Bejan is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild of America and Butterfly Ensemble Theatre Company (BETC)'s Writers Group. As a theatre artist has collaborated with the Source Theatre (DC, Mead Theater Lab Program), Mosaic Theater Company (DC), Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (DC), Theatre J (DC), Washington DC Coalition for Theatre and Social Justice, Wilton's Music Hall (London), Teatrul Foarte Mic (Bucharest), Burning Coal Theatre (Raleigh, NC) and Fearless Theatre (Denver, CO), among others. Her work has been featured in the Capital Fringe Festival, DC Black Theatre Festival, Kennedy Center Page to Stage Festival, NC Women's Theatre Festival, Jersey City New Play Festival, and Rough Draft Playwrights (CO), among others. She is certified in Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed and has also served as a Henry Awards Judge with the Colorado Theatre Guild. She currently teaches history and theatre at Metropolitan State University of Denver. As a professor Bejan has taught at four universities (including Duke and Georgetown) and Wake Technical Community College, and she has also had professional appointments at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has authored 19 plays, two books ("Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association" and "Green Horses on the Walls - a collection of poems") and numerous essays. Selected play titles by Bejan include: "Districtland," "Colombo Calling – a play from Sri Lanka," "To Those Who Haven’t Stopped Thinking" and "In Search of Couches." Two of her plays ("Finally Quiet in My Head" and "Etrangere") were selected as finalists in the Oxford University Dramatic Society New Writing Festival and "Buchenwald" has been published in Romania. Her most recent play "J'y suis j'y reste / Here I am, here I stay," was published in the 2020 Solis Press anthology about refugees and immigrants "Voices on the Move" (edited by playwright Domnica Radulescu and poet Roxana Cazan). Bejan has also directed for the theatre and film in the US, UK, Romania and Vanuatu: DC credits include "Zalmoxis" (Georgetown), "The Journals of Mihail Sebastian" (WWC) and "Dirty Laundry" (Ticket to Bollywood). Bejan was the creative consultant for Caryl Churchill’s "Mad Forest" directed by Lila Neugebauer at the 2014 Williamstown Theatre Festival. As an actor, she has performed in countless productions since childhood. Bejan is a certified Yoga Instructor and integrates yoga, movement, dance and meditation into her rehearsals. She also is passionate about (and has credits in) sound design and dramaturgy. Bejan's theatre work has been featured in "The Washington Post," "The Huffington Post," "Evenimentul Zilei" and "Observator Cultural." As an artist, she has also been interviewed frequently for Romanian TV and radio. In her creative career, Bejan is honored to have worked with such distinguished theatre artists as Maia Morgenstern, Isabela Neamtu, Ana Popescu, Lou Stein, Henry Goodman and Rosamund Pike. She has also had the pleasure of producing plays to sponsor such causes as the LiteracyLab DC, International Medical Corps, Ovidiu Rom and UNIFEM. From 2005-2008 She was the Artistic Director of Théâtre Fille de Chambre, a 'feminine' theatre company in Oxford, UK. Bejan developed and directed "Ol Woman Naoia," a collaborative production with female artists in the South Pacific island archipelago Vanuatu about women’s rights and empowerment. Out of the success of that project Bejan was approached by the World Bank to write plays for development for the northern islands of Vanuatu. She turned the offer down to brave the rat-race of Washington DC, where she became a spoken word poet, performing under her stage-name Lady Godiva. In 2013 Bejan cofounded the arts collective and creative platform Bucharest Inside the Beltway (BiB), inspired by the fearlessness of artists in Bucharest. For the past 8 years she has served as Executive Director of BiB, which is now headquartered in Denver, Colorado. She is a proud dual citizen of USA and Romania (EU) and (to her knowledge) Romania's only Rhodes Scholar.