Aurel Baranga

Between 1934 and 1940, he submitted reportages, satirical pieces and drama reviews to Facla, Cuvântul liber, Reporter, Azi and Lumea românească.

[1] Baranga's first play, written in the socialist realist style promoted by the governing Romanian Communist Party, was the 1946 Bal în Făgădău.

His first real success came with the comedy Mielul turbat (1954), which featured characters special to his drama, and who reappeared in Adam și Eva (1963), Sfântul Mitică Blajinu (1966), Opinia publică (1967), and Interesul general (1971).

The 1978 Jurnal de atelier features a selection of diary entries covering thirty years and reworked from a 1970s perspective; they include information about the conception and composition of his plays, fragments of poetry, autobiographical notes, sketches of artists and acidic portraits of nomenklatura members, written with the cynicism of a man who was himself the beneficiary of many privileges from the communist regime.

There, he recognized the failure of part of his work, confessing that it featured "manipulated mannequins" and "minutely made-up characters", which, as a "rudimentary notion of aesthetics" could reveal, disfigured the reality they sought to convey.

[3] The ruling party appreciated him for following its directives in his writing, while the public enjoyed his ironic comments toward bureaucracy and demagogy, which seemed to indicate a form of assertiveness.