Franco-Romanian theatre critic likens Manea to Argentinian director "maudit" Victor Garcia and describes him as an exponent of "absolute theatre, incandescent theatre," whose genius was recognised and admired at the time by Jean Genet and Peter Brook. Banu followed Manea's career from the very beginning, writing a review of his first production, Rosmersholm, staged at the State Theatre of Sibiu in 1968. According to Banu, Manea's production succeeded in creating an intense sense of unease in both cast and audience by embodying Ibsen as a ghostly presence moving among the actors on stage. Manea continued to stage innovative, visually arresting productions at theatres around Romania, including Racine's Britannicus at the Piatra NeamțYouth Theatre in 1969.
In 1975, Manea's production of Twelfth Night, staged at the Cluj National Theatre, with sets by Paul Salzberger, drew standing ovations. The following year, hisMacbeth, staged at the Ploiești Theatre in 1976, drew on Japanese Kabuki theatre, with a stark set that evoked a desolate, snowy landscape, dominated by a wooden throne symbolising Macbeth's barbarous, brutal power, "adorned with furs and animal heads, which were trophies of earlier conquests and omens of the death that was to come." A contemporary reviewer saw the production as a "cosmic" clash "between Good and Evil, between Life and Death, between order and chaos, or between nature and the human being as a representative of social convulsion." During his career, Manea staged only one production in Bucharest, however, since he saw the actors there as "too big" and preferred to work with lesser-known actors, who were not given to displays of ego and did not contest his direction. As a director, he saw theatre not as a vehicle for individual actors, but rather as the "art of solidarity", "a ritual of togetherness" uniting actors and audience.
Writing
In 1983, Manea published Energiile spectacolului, a series of short meditations on directors and directing; playwrights ; actors and acting; the ritual and psychological laws governing stage properties; the mechanisms of attention during performance ; theatre as officiation of a sacral rite; directorial intention, improvisation, chance, and the "entropic phenomenon" in theatrical performance; and the fundamental enigma and ephemerality of the theatrical act. In Spectacole imaginare, published in 1986, Manea takes nineteen plays by Shakespeare and imagines a production that might penetrate the enigma of each play, its timeless human mystery. The "Imaginary Performances" are followed by a series of "Confessions", in which Manea meditates on his work as a director, on his past productions and work with specific actors and playwrights, on the puppet theatre, on performance as a ritual of profound communion between audience and actors, on the giants of universal drama. In 2012, Viorica Samson Manea, the director's sister, edited and published a collection of Manea's writings: the trilogy of plays Penelope Falls to Thinking, The Theatre Rehearsal, and The Fairy from the East, short stories, and an essay. Penelope Falls to Thinking was presented in the Reading Performances section of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in 2012. In 2013, the Cluj National Theatre staged a production of Manea's trilogy of plays, directed by Gábor Tompa.
