International Women Stage Directors

Romania

Romania Diana Manole1 Women started directing professionally in Romania only at the end of the Second World War, and their number increased very slowly. During the communist dictatorship, from 1947 to 1989, very few women were accepted into the country’s only bachelor of arts program in stage directing and even fewer worked after graduation . After the fall of communism in 1989, Romanian mainstream theatre remained male-dominated, although more women pursued professional directing, working for state- and city-subsidized repertory theatres but often founding small, private companies and/or freelancing in Romania and abroad. Women’s Rights: Historical Context For centuries, Romanian women were traditionally destined to be wives and mothers , while legally being treated as minors. The first pleas for emancipation occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, when the first Romanian women earned university degrees and founded feminist associations and magazines. At the 1898 Reunion of the Women’s League from Iaşi, Eliza Popescu was the first to plead for the Romanian women’s right to vote, later supported by the other societies. However, only the increase of women in the workforce after the First World War determined changes in the constitution with the inclusion of partial suffrage in 1923 and the stipulation of women’s right to vote in 1938. The 1946 Election Law ratified gender equality, followed by the first general elections in the same year, the results of which were falsified by the Romanian Communist Party (RCP), leading to the proclamation of a popular republic with a sole political party under the control of the Soviet Union. During the 1947–1989 communist regime, men maintained their privileged position despite the official politics of gender equality. The communist regime’s duplicity became even clearer in 1966, when an anti-abortion law was enacted , exposing the official treatment of women as “baby-makers” and causing the deaths of more than ten thousand women from illegal abortions (Betea 251). By 1987 women held 34 percent of the Great National Assembly2 membership—five out of the forty ministries—and women held only two of twenty-one seats, for 9.5 percent of the RCP Executive Bureau (Scutaru). Women continued to receive lower salaries for the same work and struggled with the surviving patriarchal mentalities of almost the entire society and especially of men in power, who considered women the only ones responsible for housework and childrearing. Early Women Directors At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Princess Ralu Caragea initiated the transformation of a ballroom into the first theatre house in Bucharest. Here, the St. Sava School’s students presented the first performance in Romanian in 1819 (Masoff, Midnight 247–49). Despite its start under feminine auspices, until the end of the Second World War, Romanian professional theatre limited women’s presence to acting and founding private companies, for which they hired male directors. The first bachelor of arts in stage directing was established in 1950 at the Theatre Institute in Bucharest, which was later called the Institute of Theatrical and Cinematographic Arts (IATC) and after 1989 the I. L. Caragiale National University of Theatrical and Cinematographic Arts (UNATC). Earning this degree soon became the primary avenue to becoming a stage director and working professionally. Although a small number of women finished their degrees in stage directing before the end of communism in 1989, most gave up working in professional theatre after graduation. All arts and media suffered from the communist regime’s drastic political oppression and censorship. In 1948 the government expropriated all private companies and opened several national and municipal theatres across the country, where “propaganda replaced art” (Runcan 222). Taking advantage of the short period of relative freedom that followed Stalin’s death in 1953, the newly founded Young Directors’ Circle denounced the lack of professionalism that dominated Romanian theatre. In a 1957 public report, the organization asked for artistic freedom and professionally trained artistic directors instead of the usual police informants appointed by the communist government (Runcan 270–82). After Nicolae Ceauşescu delivered a pivotal speech in 1971 that focused on communist and socialist reform, political oppression and censorship increased again. Theatre productions underwent several previews with state censors, who often required significant changes or banned shows that even remotely criticized 252 Diana Manole the regime or did not conform to the socialist realist style. Stage directors who did not want to leave the country or obey the official...