“The book deals with the relevance of dramaturgy in the communist period. It includes a wide-ranging enquiry among theatre people, supported by text commentaries, files on productions, and comments by leading writers and thinkers on the way in which our communist past is reflected in the mentalities of the extreme contemporary, not only in political and socio-economic thinking, but also in literature and film. In other words, it investigates, and at the same time documents, how present this past is, and what the general attitude of society is towards it. It is not only a book of theatre history, but one of reflection on communism and transition, which seeks to respond to problems in the understanding and metabolizing of these historical stages.
“How do we look at communism today? The intention has been to put together divergent opinions that resonate with and respond to one another. The result is a prismatic volume in which generations meet, perspectives intersect, plans are superimposed, refusing to be the same but together composing a picture from which it is possible to reconstruct an age.” (Liviu Malița)
Guest: Liviu Malița – critic and literary historian, professor and dean of the Faculty of Theatre and Television of Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. He is the author or coordinator of a number of volumes about the phenomenon of censorship in the communist period. He was part of the Revista Echinox group and is a member of the Romanian Writers’ Union and the Vlad Mugur Centre for Research and Creation in Theatre, Film, and Media.