Why Doesn't Winnie Grab the Shovel? Staging Beckett’s Happy Days in Early Post-Communist Romania Published in Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 29 (2017), p. 298–311 Doi: 10.1163/18757405-02902007 Traian Penciuc Lecturer, University of Arts, Târgu-Mureș, Romania Abstract: The end of communism came so fast in 1989 that it took all of us Romanians by surprise. When, after two to three years, we finally understood that we really were free, we were seized by a great torpor. Suddenly, we discovered the freedom to do nothing. Working was communist, working hard, worse, Stalinist. Chatter was good. In this historical moment, against that mentality, I staged Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days in 1995, at the National Theatre Târgu-Mureș, offering a critical perspective on Winnie and using a style I called the immobile Commedia dell’arte. This essay will describe the director’s understanding of Beckett’s text, as well as the staging process in which the crucial point was the search for a theatrical expression of the play’s musicality. Résume : La fin du communisme est venue si vite en 1989 qu’ elle a surpris tous les Roumains. Lorsque, après deux a trois ans, nous avons finalement compris que nous étions vrai- ment libres, nous avons été saisis par une grande torpeur. Soudainement, nous avons découvert la liberté de ne rien faire. Travailler, c’était communiste; travailler dur, c’était pire: stalinien. On découvrait les bienfaits du bavardage. Dans ce moment historique, et contre cette mentalité, j’ai mis en scène Oh les beaux jours de Samuel Beckett en 1995, au Théâtre National Târgu-Mureș. Je voulais ouvrir une perspective critique nouvelle sur le personnage de Winnie, en usant d’un style que j’ai appelé la Commedia dell’arte immobile. Cet essai fait état de l’interprétation par le metteur en scène du texte de Beckett, ainsi que du principe qui a préside a une mise en scène dont le point crucial était la recherche d’une expression théâtrale de la musicalité. Keywords: Happy Days - musicality - fragmentation - Romanian theatre – staging Staging Beckett in Romania until 1995 Beckett’s presence in Romanian theatre in the Communist period was itself marked by the absurd. For example, between 1957 and 1966, Samuel Beckett is mentioned in almost every issue of the Teatrul (Theatre) journal, being, in some of the articles, the exclusive subject, although none of his plays were staged in this period. After 1966, Beckett was rarely mentioned, and his plays still weren’t staged. The explanation lies in the fact that his theatre was perceived by the communist ideologists as subversive and written for the so-called ‘rotten’ bourgeoisie. Therefore the articles in that decade were critical, strongly suggesting to theatre people that staging Beckett was a political offence. This official attitude changed only with the fall of the communist regime in 1989. There were two exceptions, two short, shiny periods in this dark cultural perception of Beckett’s works. The first was between 1965 and 1969, when some voices were raised to support Beckett as a ‘positive’ writer. A translation of Happy Days