Theatre
Minerii
Not translated into English
Mihail Davidoglu · 1949
Synopsis
In the Jiu Valley, in 1948, the miner Anton Nastai, a party member and a veteran of the 1929 Lupeni strike, develops a new method for extracting more coal and exceeding the annual plan. He finds himself opposed by a reactionary storekeeper, the wife of the former mine director who went over to the West, an agent of the imperialists, a Jehovah's Witness, and his own wife, who fears for him. According to the author, a saboteur spreads his rumours among the miners' wives, and Ianco, a miner without conviction, commits wrongs against his comrades. A first attempt fails.
Context
According to Eszter Szabó-Reznek, the plot essentially follows the suggestions of the censors. The author stayed in Lupeni, went down the mine and read his play to the miners, taking up several of their remarks, as he related in Scînteia in January 1949. Premiered at the National Theatre of Cluj on 30 April or 1 May 1949, then in Bucharest on 18 May, with Emil Botta as Anton Nastai, it was staged the same year in theatres throughout the country, in Romanian and in Hungarian. It received the Caragiale Prize of the Academy, and the Revue roumaine published a French translation of it in 1949.
Who it is for
A play in three acts, in copyright, a French translation of which appeared in the very year of its premiere.
Prizes and reception
For Traian Șelmaru, in 1949, the first play in which the working class appears in its historic role; Ana Maria Narti reads in it nothing but propaganda.
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The pages consulted to check this page.