Octavian Cotescu

Octavian Cotescu was a Romanian actor, stage director, and acting professor. Born into a working-class family in Dorohoi, he spent his childhood in various towns, traveling across the Romanian Kingdom. He settled in Iași as World War II was coming to an end, and began acting there as a young teenager; he entered the local drama conservatory, graduating at age nineteen. Young Cotescu had by then been in contact with the Romanian Communist Party's regional bodies, which established a Soviet-style republic in 1948. He was called up to a permanent employment at the Municipal (Bulandra) Theater…