Romanian Theatre Criticism during the Stalinist Era. Construction and Deconstruction of the Critical Discourse

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to capture the way theatre criticism changed once the communist regime was finally established in Romania. The focus is on the years of Stalinist reign, as they might be considered the most oppresive, especially in the cultural domain. The article aims, on one hand, to draw a historical context in which the change occured, while, on the other, it analyzes the various ways Socialist Realism affected critical thinking, substituting aesthetics for ideology in drama reviews and forcing critics to concentrate almost obsessively on the dramaturgy, in the detriment of the performance itself.